Item consists of essays or articles about artists and people from the art world.

Dragons, unicorns, mermaids ... all the famous creatures of myth and legend are to be found in the Torah, Talmud and Midrash. But what are we to make of them? Do they really exist? Did the Torah scholars of old believe in their existence? And if not, why did they describe these creatures? Sacred Monsters is a thoroughly revised and vastly expanded edition of the bestselling book Mysterious Creatures. Rabbi Natan Slifkin, the famous "Zoo Rabbi," revisits all the creatures of that work as well as a host of new ones, including werewolves, giants, dwarfs, two-headed mutants, and the enigmatic shamir-worm. Sacred Monsters explores these cases in detail and discusses a range of different approaches for understanding them. Aside from the fascinating insights into these cryptic creatures, Sacred Monsters also presents a framework within which to approach any conflict between classical Jewish texts and the modern scientific worldview. Complete with extraordinary photographs and fascinating ancient illustrations, Sacred Monsters is a scholarly yet stimulating work that will be a treasured addition to your bookshelf

"From the author of Strapless and Guest of Honor, a book about a little-known road trip Andy Warhol took from New York to LA in 1963, and how that journey - and the numerous artists and celebrities he encountered - profoundly affected his life and art"--

Despairing of his volatile, unstable wife, T. S. Eliot, at 44, resolves to put an end to the torture of his eighteen-year marriage.He breaks free from September 1932 by becoming Norton Lecturer at Harvard. His lectures will be published as The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (1933). He also delivers the Page-Barbour Lectures at Virginia (After Strange Gods, 1934). At Christmas he visits Emily Hale, to whom he is 'obviously devoted'. He gives talks all over - New York, California, Missouri, Minnesota, Chicago - and the letters describing encounters with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edmund Wilson and Marianne Moore ('a real Gillette blade') brim with gossip. High points include the première at Vassar College of his comic melodrama Sweeney Agonistes (1932). The year 'was the happiest I can ever remember in my life . . . successful and amusing.'Returning home, he hides out in the country while making known to Vivien his decision to leave her. But he is exasperated when she buries herself in denial: she will not accept a Deed of Separation. The close of 1933 is lifted when Eliot 'breaks into Show Business'. He is commissioned to write a 'mammoth Pageant': The Rock. This collaborative enterprise will be the proving-ground for the choric triumph of Murder in the Cathedral (1935).

Aristocrat, novelist, essayist, traveler, and lover of Virginia Woolf, Vita Sackville-West lived a fascinating and daring life on the periphery of the Bloomsbury circle. She wrote in an astounding variety of genres, including travel narrative, historical and literary studies, poetry, fiction, and essays, and is probably best known or her novels, The Edwardians and All Passion Spent, and incomparable writings about English country houses and gardens. Here, for the first time, is an anthology that represents the full expanse of her interests and styles. Over half of the works, including intimate diaries and a dream notebook, have never been published. Edited by a foremost expert on the Bloomsbury circle, Vita Sackville-West: Selected Writings provides the best and most accessible introduction to this unique writer.

"John Richardson's riveting memoir about growing up in England and, at twenty-five, beginning his twelve-year adventure with the controversial art collector Douglas Cooper. With a new introduction by Jed Perl, here is John Richardson's richly entertaining memoir of his life with the brilliant but difficult British art expert Douglas Cooper--a fiendish, colorful, Evelyn Waugh-like figure who single-handedly assembled the world's most important private collection of Cubist paintings. John Richardson tells the story of their ill-fated but comical association, which began in London in 1949 when Richardson was twenty-five and moved onto the Chãateau de Castille, the famous colonnaded folly in Provence that they restored and filled with masterpieces by Picasso, Braque, Lâeger, and Juan Gris. Richardson unfurls a fascinating adventure through twelve years, encompassing famous artists and writers, collectors and other celebrities--Francis Bacon, Jean Cocteau, Luis Miguel Dominguâin, Dora Maar, Peggy Guggenheim, and Henri Matisse, to name only a few. And central to the book is Richardson's close friendship with Picasso, which coincided with the emergence of the artist's new mistress, Jacqueline Roque, and gave Richardson an inside view of the repercussions she would have on Picasso's life and work. With an eye for detail, an ear for scandal, and a sparkling narrative style, Richardson has written a unique, fast-paced saga of modernism behind the scenes."--provided by publisher.

Dearborn's unprecedented access to Guggenheim's family, friends, and papers contributes rich insight to her traumatic childhood in New York, her self-education in the ways of art and artists, her battles with other art-collecting Guggenheims, and her legendary sexual appetites.