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28 Paradises by Patrick Modiano / Dominique Zehrfuss
Category: Poetry | Series: Ekphrasis Ser.
28 Paradises is a rare book: it reveals not only the individual talents of the authors, Modiano and Zehrfuss, but also the depth of the couple's creative union. Sensitively translated into English for the first time by Damion Searls, 28 Paradises captures the exquisite sadness of waking from a beautiful ...Show more
A Balthus Notebook by Guy Davenport; Judith Thurman (Contribution by); Lucas Zwirner (Contribution by)
Category: Art | Series: Ekphrasis Ser.
In his 1989 book on Balthus--the storied and controversial artist who worked in Paris throughout the twentieth century--Guy Davenport gives one of the most nuanced, literary, and compelling readings of the work of this master. Reading it today highlights the change in perspectives on sexuality and nudit ...Show more
Blue by Derek Jarman
Category: Art and Design | Series: Ekphrasis Ser.
"For Blue there are no boundaries or solutions." —Derek JarmanOriginally released as a feature film in 1993, the year before the acclaimed artist and filmmaker Derek Jarman's death due to an AIDS-related illness, Blue is a daring and powerful work of art. The film - and this highly-anticipated book's te ...Show more
Degas and His Model by Alice Michel
Category: Art and Design | Series: Ekphrasis
Never before translated into English, the text's original publication in Mercure de France in 1919, shortly after the artist's death, has been treated as an important account of the master sculptor at work. We know that Alice was writing under a pseudonym, but who the real person behind this account was ...Show more
Dix Portraits by Gertrude Stein, Lynne Tillman
Category: Art Instructional | Series: Ekphrasis Ser.
Originally published in 1930 in an edition of one hundred copies, Gertrude Stein's Dix Portraits pairs her singular literary style with original lithographs by Pablo Picasso and other artists in Stein's circle to create an exceptional artist book exploring written and visual portraiture. Written between ...Show more
Duchamp's Last Day by Donald Shambroom
Category: Art and Design | Series: Ekphrasis Ser.
Published on the fiftieth anniversary of Marcel Duchamp's death, Duchamp's Last Day offers a radical reading of the artist's final hours. Just moments after Duchamp died, his closest friend Man Ray took a photograph of him. His face is wan; his eyes are closed; he appears calm. Taking this image as a po ...Show more
Giotto and His Works in Padua by John Ruskin
Category: Art and Design | Series: Ekphrasis Ser.
Kandinsky: Incarnating Beauty by Alexandre Kojève; Boris Groys (Introduction by)
Category: Art Instructional | Series: Ekphrasis Ser.
A teacher to Jacques Lacan, André Breton and Albert Camus, Kojève defined art as the act of extracting the beautiful from objective reality. His poetic text, "The Concrete Paintings of Kandinsky," endorses nonrepresentational art as uniquely manifesting beauty. Taking the paintings of his renowned unc ...Show more
Letters to a Young Painter by Damion Searls (Translator); Rachel Corbett (Introduction by)
Category: Art and Design | Series: Ekphrasis Ser.
Never before translated into English, Rainer Maria Rilke's fascinating Letters to a Very Young Painter , written toward the end of his life between 1920 and 1926, is a surprising companion to his infamous Letters to a Young Poet , earlier correspondence from 1902 to 1908. While the latter has become a g ...Show more
Mad about Painting by Katsushika Hokusai
Category: Art and Design | Series: Ekphrasis Ser.
Best known for his iconic print Under the Wave off Kanagawa, also known as the Great Wave, Katsushika Hokusai was a revolutionary printmaker. His mastery of ukiyo-e in the nineteenth century has inspired generations of artists since, and his works exposed the world to the delicate beauty and power of Ja ...Show more
Marcel Proust on Chardin and Rembrandt by Marcel Proust
Category: Art and Design | Series: Ekphrasis
"Only a petty mind, an artist who at most speaks and dresses as such, looks solely for people in whom he recognizes the harmonious proportions of allegorical figures. For the true artist, as for the natural scientist, every type is interesting, and even the smallest muscle has its importance." --Marcel ...Show more
My Friend Van Gogh by Émile Bernard
Category: Art Instructional | Series: Ekphrasis Ser.
An intimate testament to the power of friendship between two creative forces-available again in English after more than a century. "I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but I still don't invent the whole of painting; on the contrary, I find it ready-made, but to be untangled, in the r ...Show more