Literature in Art Books

Ages 5-12 and parents and teachers will appreciate this unusual focus: a collection of art activities for this age group that provides a visual focus on the basic elements of Pop Art. Six artists plus the author provide a survey of Pop Art elements and explore the stories behind major art works - then moves beyond to encourage kids to create their own Pop Art. Bright pages of color examples and a question/answer format promises learning and fun.

I think The Naked Brothers Band is the best. So if The Naked Brothers Band is go i think Making Of The Naked Brothers Band will be great

As a remedial reading teacher, I am always looking for good literature to teach language arts skills such as parts of speech, story elements, as well as phonics. This book makes it simple to find a quality piece of literature to use as a springboard for other skill activities. I highly recommend it to ANY teacher who wants to teach students skills through literature!!

This outstanding, readable book examines the images of black women on stage and film. The work, written in clear, beautiful prose, is a creative reading of the relationship between popular cultural representation and the powers of interpretation and imagery. Particularly noteworthy is the author's creative discussion of tragedy. Often, the so-called "tragic mulatta" is analyzed without a theory of tragedy at work. Anderson presents a theory from which the notion of tragedy is shown to be misguided here. Anderson traces the misgudied motif through to contemporary popular cultural representations such as Mariah Carey and Lisa Jones's recent critical work. Chapters are wonderfully characterized: "Mama on the Couch," "Mulattas, Tragedy, and Myth," "the Myth of the Whore," and "Representationand Resistance in an Antiblack World." The discussion avoids reductionism and remains atuned to the travails of contemporary race politics and theory. This is a wonderful book. It should be read widely--not only by students and scholars, but everyday folk who simply would like to gain an understanding of the powers of image and critical insight into the pitfalls of silence. Professor Lewis R. Gordon, Afro-American Studies, Contemporary Religious Thought, Latin American Studies, and Presidential Faculty Fellow of the Pembroke Center for the Study and Teaching of Women, Brown University

Michael Fried published his magnum opus 'Manet's Modernism: or, The Face of Painting in the 1860s' in 1996, the compendium of three books, actually, that remain the most significant resource of the study of the much maligned painter Edouard Manet. In Manet's time he was essentially hidden in the rise of the more popular Impressionists, garnering criticism form his colleagues and critics alike for works that appeared to mannered, too posed, to unnaturally lighted. But fine author and historian Michael Fried introduces some new ideas about the painter that could just place him in the echelon of the first of the Modernists.

Fried 'suggests' that Manet's paintings were for the most part tableaus created in his studio from professional and non-professional models wearing costumes suggestive of the many allegories and historical events that Manet painted. That fact, in and of itself, does not venture Manet much further thatn say, Caravaggio et al, but it is the interplay between the subjects and the painter (and hence the observer) that Fried alls to our attention. The lighting of his paintings seem to have its source from the front as opposed to the back lighting or streams of side lighting usually chosen by other painters. And to make the controversy even more interesting, Fried suggests that this studio technique coupled with various observances of his models' features (eg. barefeet that suggest having worn contemporary type shoes) may - and the important word is 'may' - represent the uses of photography as the tool Manet used! Horrors! you say? But then by the time of the painting period of the 1860s that Fried is exploring, photography was well known and fairly widely used as a means of documenting history, battles, families etc. So why should an artist of Manet's importance not include this new tool in his painting paraphernalia?

It is an interesting concept and one that in today's widely used techniques among artists of not only using photographs to reference 'sittings' for later solo studio work but also to include photography in the canvases (witness Rauschenberg, etc) makes complete sense. Gone are the prejudices against photography as not being 'pure'. And it just may be that Manet, if he indeed used photographs in his painting preparation, is more important in the overall history of painting advancement than he has been regarded! A fascinating book (even at 676 pages) and a fine addition to the library. Grady Harp, January 07

While Ricky Jay has long been considered one of the world's great sleight-of-hand artists, his career is further distinguished by the remarkable variety of his accomplishments as an author, actor, historian, and consultant.

His one man show Ricky Jay & His 52 Assistants was directed by David Mamet and garnered for Mr. Jay the Lucille Lortel and Obie Awards for Outstanding Achievement. Subsequent productions were staged at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater, the Melbourne International Arts Festival, the Tiffany Theater in Los Angeles, The Spoletto Festival in Charleston and the Old Vic in London. His most recent show, Ricky Jay: On the Stem, also directed by Mr. Mamet, just closed a seven-month critically acclaimed run in New York City.

As an actor, Mr. Jay debuted in the Joseph Papp production of Midsummer Night's Dream at the New York Shakespeare Festival. He has appeared in David Mamet's films: House of Games, Homicide, Things Change, Spanish Prisoner, State and Main, and Heist. He can be seen in many other films including Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and the James Bond film, Tomorrow Never Dies. He also starred in the heralded episode of the X-Files, "The Great Maleeni."

A serious student of his art, he has been elected to membership in the American Antiquarian Society for whom he authored Many Mysteries Unraveled: Conjuring Literature in America 1786-1874. He is a contributor to The Cambridge Guide to American Theater and has defined the terms of his art for the Encyclopædia Britannica. Mr. Jay's book, Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women was published to critical and popular acclaim and was voted one of the outstanding books of the year by the Theater Library Association and one of the "Notable Books of the Year" by The New York Times Book Review, which hailed his work in a rave front page review.

As a writer and speaker on subjects as varied as conjuring literature, con games, sense perception and unusual entertainments, Jay has authored numerous articles and has delivered many lecture/ demonstrations. Among his presentations are:

"Hocus Pocus in Perfection: Four Hundred Years of Conjuring and Conjuring Literature," the Harold Smith Memorial Lecture at Brown University;

"Splendors of Decaying Celluloid" with Errol Morris, Rosamond Purcell and Bill Morrison at the New York Institute for the Humanities.

"The Origins of the Confidence Game",for the conference of Police Against Confidence Crime;

"Chirosophi: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century Conjuring Literature," at the Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California;

"Fast and Loose: The Techniques and Literature of Cheating" at the William Andrew Clark Memorial Library, UCLA;

"The Mystery of Fasting Impostors," and "The Avant Garde Art of Armless Calligraphers" at Amherst College;

"Sense, Perception, & Nonsense" at the University of Rhode Island Festival of the Arts;

and the keynote address at the International Design Conference in Aspen on "Illusion as Truth."

He has spoken on "Prose & Cons: The Early Literature of Cheating" in the Pforzheimer Lecture Series on the book arts at the New York Public Library and at the Chicago Humanities Festival, and on "Magic & Science" for the T.E.D. Conference (Technology, Entertainment, & Design) in Monterey, California.

Mr. Jay is a founder of the biennial Conference on Magic History and is the former curator of the Mulholland Library of Conjuring and the Allied Arts. He is the author and co-designer of The Magic Magic Book, an illustrated history of the earliest trick conjuring books, published in the Writers and Artists Series of the Whitney Museum of American Art. His book Jay's Journal of Anomalies, based on his fine press periodical of the same name, was recently named one of the "Notable Books of the Year" by the New York Times and one of the "Best Books of the Year" by the Los Angeles Times. His most recent book, with photographs by Rosamond Purcell, is Dice: Deception, Fate & Rotten Luck.

Mr. Jay's consulting firm Deceptive Practices has provided expertise on projects as diverse as the film Forrest Gump and the Broadway production of Angels in America: Perestroika. He was a consultant on the Devices of Wonder exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and was the guest curator for an exhibition on conjuring at the Harvard Theatre Collection.

He has written and hosted his own television specials for CBS, HBO, and the BBC, and was the host and narrator of the first documentary mini- series on conjuring, "The Story of Magic," for the A&E network. He presented of a series of films on con games for Turner Classic Movies and in March of 2003 he debuted as a weekly essayist on the National Public Radio station, KCRW, in Los Angeles.

Marc Chagall's paintings are beautiful and intricate, and this book attempts to deliver both reproductions of his paintings and an abbreviated biography. There are a few photographs scattered throughout as well, mostly of Chagall's family. I would warn readers, however, that even though the book is listed as suitable for children ages 4-8, a 4-year-old is not likely to enjoy this book, except perhaps as a free-form discussion tool. The narrative is too dense (short as it is) to hold such a young child's attention. My daughter, 4, is very bright and social, but she still couldn't look at the book with me in a conventional way. Instead we talked about what we saw in the pictures and how the colors blended together and created a mood, sometimes sad, sometimes happy. The book is worth purchasing for an older child, however, and I would recommend it for children at least age 6 and up. It is rather thin, but is filled with wonderful things.

This is a fascinating collection of stories by a great cross-section of writers. My favorite story was the touching and funny "Destiny" by Patricia Wallace. Ms. Wallace has written numerous outstanding horror and mystery novels, including the Sydney Bryant private eye series.

This offbeat anthology should find a permanent place on many bookshelves.

I ordered this book after first finding a copy of the book Mark Twain & the Bible at a book sale. That book, now out of print I would think, is very impressive in its thoroughness (regarding MT's writings and the Bible) and its reasonable conclusions. Wanting to learn more, I ordered Mr. Phipps's book, and it too is impressive. He seems to have read everything that MT wrote, he displays a solid understanding of the Bible and theology, and he packages his examples clearly and entertainingly. Though it is written by a scholar and published by a university press, the book can be greatly enjoyed by a general reader. Phipps (especially in early chapters) strings together many anecdotes and quotes by and about MT, almost too many. You find yourself wanting him to stand back and generalize more often on the importance of all the examples. (The other book mentioned above is very good at that.) But this is a minor complaint. I got through this 380-page book in just a day or two, and it succeeded in making me hungry to learn even more about MT.

This book is perfect for preteens and teens! Even adults can read this to younger children. This book is the bomb!!!