16 of the 20th century's leading artistic innovators talk forcefully about their work: Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Henry Moore, Kurt Schwitters, Max Ernst, El Lissitzky, Fernand Léger, and more.

Francois Albera is professor of film and cinema studies at UniversitT de Lausanne in Switzerland. Maria Tortajada is professor in the Department of History and Aesthetics of Film at the same university. --Book Jacket.

A book of heroic dimensions, this is the first full-length biography of one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century—a man as fascinating, difficult, and compelling as the paintings he produced. Drawing on exclusive access to Mark Rothko's personal papers and over one hundred interviews with artists, patrons, and dealers, James Breslin tells the story of a life in art—the personal costs and professional triumphs, the convergence of genius and ego, the clash of culture and commerce. Breslin offers us not only an enticing look at Rothko as a person, but delivers a lush, in-depth portrait of the New York art scene of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s—the world of Abstract Expressionism, of Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning, and Klein, which would influence artists for generations to come. "In Breslin, Rothko has the ideal biographer—thorough but never tedious, a good storyteller with an ear for the spoken word, fond but not fawning, and possessed of a most rare ability to comment on non-representational art without sounding preposterous."—Robert Kiely, Boston Book Review "Breslin impressively recreates Mark Rothko's troubled nature, his tormented life, and his disturbing canvases. . . . The artist's paintings become almost tangible within Breslin's pages, and Rothko himself emerges as an alarming physical force."—Robert Warde, Hungry Mind Review "This remains beyond question the finest biography so far devoted to an artist of the New York School."-Arthur C. Danto, Boston Sunday Globe "Clearly written, full of intelligent insights, and thorough."—Hayden Herrera, Art in America "Breslin spent seven years working on this book, and he has definitely done his homework."-Nancy M. Barnes, Boston Phoenix "He's made the tragedy of his subject's life the more poignant."—Eric Gibson, The New Criterion "Mr. Breslin's book is, in my opinion, the best life of an American painter that has yet been written . . . a biographical classic. It is painstakingly researched, fluently written and unfailingly intelligent in tracing the tragic course of its subject's tormented character."—Hilton Kramer, New York Times Book Review, front page review James E. B. Breslin (1936-1996) was professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of From Modern to Contemporary: American Poetry, 1945-1965 and William Carlos Williams: An American Artist.

A comprehensive look at the life and work of a pioneering 20th-century artist

Alongside Salvador Dalí and André Breton, Max Ernst remains one of the most famous names to be associated with Surrealism, and must now be regarded as one of the most original, prolific and best-known artists of the 20th century. Assembled in 1947, when Ernst had attained the height of his artistic powers, BEYOND PAINTING is a definitive autobiographical document of the painter and the creative processes behind his work, enhanced by testaments by many of his friends including fellow Surrealists André Breton, Paul Éluard, Roberto Matta and Hans Arp, as well as others such as New York art dealer Julien Levy. BEYOND PAINTING also contains over 150 illustrations dating from 1917-1947, including complete versions of Ernst's revolutionary experiments in frottage and collage, Natural History and The Lion of Belfort. Also included is a preface by New York artist Robert Motherwell and a chronology of Ernst's life written by the painter himself. Solar Art Directives features the most innovative artists of the 20th century.

For a century and a half, journalists made a good business out of selling the latest news or selling ads next to that news. Now that news pours out of the Internet and our mobile devices—fast, abundant, and mostly free—that era is ending. Our best journalists, Mitchell Stephens argues, instead must offer original, challenging perspectives—not just slightly more thorough accounts of widely reported events. His book proposes a new standard: “wisdom journalism,” an amalgam of the more rarified forms of reporting—exclusive, enterprising, investigative—and informed, insightful, interpretive, explanatory, even opinionated takes on current events. This book features an original, sometimes critical examination of contemporary journalism, both on- and offline. And it finds inspiration for a more ambitious and effective understanding of journalism in examples from twenty-first-century articles and blogs, as well as in a selection of outstanding twentieth-century journalism and Benjamin Franklin’s eighteenth-century writings. Most attempts to deal with journalism’s current crisis emphasize technology. This book emphasizes mindsets and the need to rethink what journalism has been and might become.

Linda Anderson explores Elizabeth Bishop's poetry, from her early days at Vassar College to her last great poems in Geography III and the later uncollected poems. Drawing generously on Bishop's notebooks and letters, the book situates Bishop both in her historical and cultural context and in terms of her own writing process, where the years between beginning a poem and completing it, for which Bishop is legendary, are seen as a necessary part of their composition. The book begins by offering a new reading of Bishop's relationship with Marianne Moore and with modernism. Through her journeys to Europe Bishop, it is also argued, learned a great deal from visual artists and from surrealism. However the book also follows the way Bishop came back to memories of her childhood, developing ideas about narrative, in order to explore time, both the losses it demands and the connections it makes possible. The lines of connections are both those between Bishop and her contemporaries and her context and those she inscribed through her own work, suggesting how her poems incorporate a process of arrival and create new possibilities of meaning