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Picasso: The Self-Portraits
£30.00The first book dedicated to Picasso’s self-portraits, many held in private collections and published here for the first time.
Much has been said and written about Picasso’s life and art, but until now his self-portraits have never been studied and presented in a single book, perhaps because the artist always left many doubts about his work. However, there is no doubt that Picasso represented himself ceaselessly, whether in a dashed-off pencil sketch, as a flourish at the bottom of a letter, or on a giant canvas.
At the suggestion of Picasso’s widow Jacqueline, the distinguished art historian Pascal Bonafoux began researching Picasso’s self-portraits more than forty years ago. This meticulously researched book presents the fruits of his decades-long project. From the first attributed painting in 1894 as a thirteen-year-old boy, until Picasso’s final self-portrait in 1972, a year before his death, Bonafoux charts the evolution of the artist’s life and art. Here is Picasso as a student; as a young bohemian; an impetuous artist in Paris; as harlequin; as lover, husband and father; and finally, as an old man confronting his mortality. The book comprises about 170 drawings, paintings and photographs, some from private collections and previously unpublished, bringing together for the first time the attributed self-portraits of this genius of 20th-century art.
Robin Darwin: Visionary Educator and Painter
£30.00Sir Robert Vere (‘Robin’) Darwin, great-grandson of Charles Darwin, was a British artist of note and the highly influential Rector of the Royal College of Art from 1948 until 1971. His story, beginning in 1910, takes in life as an art student and then a teacher, his wartime involvement in camouflage, British postwar reconstruction and the Festival of Britain 1951. His influence in shaping British arts education for the future is uncontested (the list of RCA graduates from 1950-1980 is particularly impressive, including not only fine artists (David Hockney, Peter Blake) but also leaders in industrial design such as James Dyson.
The current status of the Royal College of Art is largely the result of one man, a formidable force with the drive, vision and ability to inspire huge loyalty and first-class creative thinking in others. The list of RCA professors, tutors and visiting lecturers recruited by Darwin reads like a rollcall of the best in post-war British design and art, and their influence continues to inspire students to this day.
Being Elvis: A Lonely Life
Elvis Presley is a giant figure in American popular culture, a man whose talent and fame were matched only by his later excesses and tragic end. A godlike entity in the history of rock and roll, this twentieth-century icon with a dazzling voice blended gospel and traditionally black rhythm and blues with country to create a completely new kind of music and new way of expressing male sexuality, which simply blew the doors off a staid and repressed 1950s America.
In Being Elvis veteran rock journalist Ray Connolly takes a fresh look at the career of the world’s most loved singer, placing him, forty years after his death, not exhaustively in the garish neon lights of Las Vegas but back in his mid-twentieth-century, distinctly southern world. For new and seasoned fans alike, Connolly, who interviewed Elvis in 1969, re-creates a man who sprang from poverty in Tupelo, Mississippi, to unprecedented overnight fame, eclipsing Frank Sinatra and then inspiring the Beatles along the way.
Intimate and unsparing, Being Elvis explores the extravagance and irrationality inherent in the Elvis mythology, ultimately offering a thoughtful celebration of an immortal life.
” My books are marked down because most of them are marked with a on the edge by publishers.”
Savanna Walker
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Marr’s Guitars
£45.00‘Guitars have been the obsession of my life … they’ve been a mission and sometimes a lifeline’ – Johnny Marr
The guitarist’s guitarist, Johnny Marr redefined music for a generation. His ringing arpeggios and chordal innovations helped elevate The Smiths to be one of the most influential and important British bands of all time.
Tracing Marr’s career from his teenage years to his recent work on the Bond soundtrack, Marr’s Guitars showcases the most significant of Marr’s superb collection of electric and acoustic guitars, revealing through them the evolution of his iconic sound and style of playing. Each guitar is identified with a crucial moment, a specific song or a particular sound, and each embodies a key aspect of Marr’s lifelong passion.
Renowned photographer Pat Graham presents each instrument as a full portrait, supported by micro shots highlighting the specific details that make each one unique, while Johnny Marr himself reveals in his accompanying commentary on what tracks and at which shows the guitars were played. Many of the guitars are closely associated with Marr, such as the Rickenbacker 330, the Gibson ES-355 and the Johnny Marr Signature Fender Jaguar. Some were passed down to him, including Nile Rodgers’ Stratocaster, Bryan Ferry’s Roxy Music Hagstrom and Bert Jansch’s Yamaha. Others are guitars once owned by Marr that have since been passed on to the next generation of guitar heroes, including the Stratocaster used by Noel Gallagher on ‘Wonderwall’ and the Gibson Les Paul Goldtop used on In Rainbows by Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien.
Punctuating the photography of the guitars and the accompanying commentary are contextual studio, backstage and onstage shots. Together, they make Marr’s Guitars a unique cultural history of modern music and guitar playing told through the prism of Johnny Marr’s experiences and achievements.
This edition of Marr’s Guitars is a casebound hardback book with printed imitation cloth and is manufactured in the UK.
