Robert Polito recounts Thompson's relationship with his father, a disgraced Oklahoma sheriff, with the women he adored in life and murdered on the page, with alcohol, would-be censors, and Hollywood auteurs. Unrelenting and empathetic, casting light into the darker caverns of our collective psyche, Savage Art is an exemplary homage to an American original. A National Book Critics Circle Award winner. 57 photos.

Death was his art. She would be his masterpiece. They called him Leonardo-a master skilled in the art of murder. One year ago, Cincinnati was his canvas. A scalpel was his tool. And women were his works-in-progress. FBI profiler Casey McKinley was one of them. She has the scars-and the nightmares-to prove it.

This is the first time most of these cover paintings have been collected and reproduced in their original form. Uncensored genre art that splashed the covers of American news stand pulp magazines in the 1930s and 40s frequently expressed male violence. "Savage Art" showcases this popular period illustration - that prefigured and helped create the violent visual language in much of today's aboveground cinema ("Pulp Fiction", "Kill Bill"), comic books ("The Dark Knight Returns", "Sin City") and ultra-violent multi-million copy video games ("Grand Theft Auto", and "Metal Gear Solid"). Featuring the original disturbing paintings by Walter Baumhofer, Rafael de Soto, Jerome Rozen and other pulp illustrators, many shown here for the first time, this lavishly-produced full colour collection documents Depression era masculine aggression as depicted on the covers of popular literature.

'Our Savage Art' features the corrosive wit and substantial critiques that are the trademarks of William Logan's style. Opening with a defence of the critical eye, this collection features essays on Robert Lowell's correspondence, Elizabeth Bishop's unfinished poems, and the inflated reputation of Hart Crane.

A recreation of events from the childhood and early career of Augusta Savage, a pioneering female sculptor and major figure of the Harlem Renaissance.

Publisher Description

The Taste of Art offers a sample of scholarly essays that examine the role of food in Western contemporary art practices. The contributors are scholars from a range of disciplines, including art history, philosophy, film studies, and history. As a whole, the volume illustrates how artists engage with food as matter and process in order to explore alternative aesthetic strategies and indicate countercultural shifts in society. The collection opens by exploring the theoretical intersections of art and food, food art’s historical root in Futurism, and the ways in which food carries gendered meaning in popular film. Subsequent sections analyze the ways in which artists challenge mainstream ideas through food in a variety of scenarios. Beginning from a focus on the body and subjectivity, the authors zoom out to look at the domestic sphere, and finally the public sphere. Here are essays that study a range of artists including, among others, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Daniel Spoerri, Dieter Roth, Joseph Beuys, Al Ruppersberg, Alison Knowles, Martha Rosler, Robin Weltsch, Vicki Hodgetts, Paul McCarthy, Luciano Fabro, Carries Mae Weems, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Janine Antoni, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Liza Lou, Tom Marioni, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Michael Rakowitz, and Natalie Jeremijenko.