Before Hitchcock and Herrmann, before Herzog and Kinski, there was Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. Despite their shared nickname, writer-producer Charles Brackett and writer-director Billy Wilder were not, in fact, the “happiest couple in Hollywood.” Actually, they disliked each other intensely, even as they collaborated on some of the most iconic films of Hollywood’s Golden Age, including Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity (from which Brackett eventually withdrew), The Lost Weekend, and A Foreign Affair. Just how two men who found each other so irritating could together make such enduring contributions to cinematic history is the subject of Double Solitaire, a joint biography of a fascinating and explosive creative collaboration. In the course of making their mark on genres ranging from film noir to the screwball comedy, they achieved an almost inexplicable alchemy that highlights the paradoxical nature of shared genius. Author Donald Brackett—whose great-great-grandfather was Charles Brackett’s cousin—delves into family lore, correspondence, contemporary media reports, and all other manner of historical records to reconstruct the strange magic of Brackett & Wilder’s combustible partnership, showing how their creative tensions yielded one classic film after another, and how their entrepreneurial drive pushed against the constraints of the studio system, anticipating the independent-producer models of today.
Fleetwood Mac's distinctive sound, first really captured in the 1977 record Rumours, launched the group into the commercial stratosphere, and over the past three decades they have never looked back. All along the way their dysfunctional relationships have informed their professional success, as well as their personal downfalls. By writing and singing about their problems, Fleetwood Mac has transformed what breaks them apart into what keeps them together. They have turned their dark relationship dilemmas into glittering entertainment. In this highly entertaining chronicle, author Donald Brackett provides readers with a special opportunity to review the band's complicated history and reconsider the personal, dynamic sources of their classic albums and enduring hits. The band drummer Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie started in 1967 has gone through more personnel changes and stylistic innovations than any other pop group in our cultural history. The story of the group began when John Mayall and Alexis Korner, the band's mentors, launched a mid-'60s British blues revival. Ex-Mayall players Fleetwood and McVie then went on to form an incendiary band of psychedelic blues under the name Fleetwood Mac. But it was not until hearing a little-known 1973 record from Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks that Mick Fleetwood heard the future sound and true pop potential of his own group.
Singer-songwriters' lyrical reflections have a magical way of expressing our own sentiments and feelings. Almost all of the singer-songwriters discussed here — including Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Tom Waits, Amy Winehouse, The White Stripes, and many more — sing in an exotic and raw vocal style, which one would not traditionally call reassuring, and yet their profoundly unique voices appear to be the only ones capable of conveying their unique messages. One of the key elements being studied in this book is the fact that singer-songwriters often suffer from a deep sense of loneliness, perhaps associated with a sense of being the only one who could adequately sing and perform what they compose. Often, even those who write within a famed partnership still compose for that other voice exclusively, much to their chagrin. The irony here is that it is this very tendency towards self-absorption that allows these artists to speak so eloquently for all the rest of us. Utilizing firsthand musical reflections on the nature of the singer-songwriter psychology and its consequences on art and private life, Dark Mirror explores the intricate nature of isolation and self-absorption in the singer-songwriter's creative work. Lyrical reflections have a magical way of expressing our own sentiments and feelings. Almost all of the singer-songwriters discussed in this volume-including Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Tom Waits, Amy Winehouse, The White Stripes, and many more — sing in an exotic and raw vocal style, which one would not traditionally call reassuring, and yet their voices appear to be the only ones capable of conveying their own unique messages. One of the key elements being studied in this book is the fact that singer-songwriters often suffer from a deep sense of loneliness, perhaps associated with a sense of being the only one who could adequately sing and perform what they compose. Often, even those who write within a famed partnership still compose for that other voice exclusively - much to their chagrin. The irony here is that it is this very tendency towards self-absorption that allows these artists to speak so eloquently for all the rest of us. This work is divided into three principal sections: part one delves into the singer-songwriters who function primarily as solo artists; part two explores singer-songwriters who function primarily as part of a team - and who wouldn't write quite the same material for a different partner; and part three surveys those who function as members of a larger thematic community or stylistic tribe, within which they share certain creative sentiments. Utilizing firsthand musical reflections on the nature of the singer-songwriter psychology and its consequences on art and private life, Dark Mirror explores the intricate nature of isolation and self-absorption within the singer-songwriter's creative work.
The narrative of Tumult! The Incredible Life and Music of Tina Turner is an extended exploration of the magical transformation of shy country girl Anna Mae Bullock into the boisterous force of nature we know today as Tina Turner. This is creative alchemy in action: turning into Turner is actually also the captivating tale of someone who was already precociously there, a stellar talent just waiting to emerge and grab the global spotlight. Far from the early myths attached to her name by association with her talented but tormenting producer-husband, she was not a Svengali-like creation at all, but rather a fully formed, if vulnerable, young musical prodigy who was going to burst out of the creative shell imposed upon her one way or the other. Even though it took sixteen years to do so, her second career as a solo pop artist is the achievement for which she is rightly remembered. In Turner, we have a case study in triumph over adversity and sheer creative will power: singer, songwriter, dancer, actress, feminist icon. Often referred to as the Queen of Rock and Roll, she has sold over two hundred million records and sold more live concert tickets than any other solo performer in history. In 2019, she celebrated her eighieth birthday and was also lionized in the live Broadway version of her incredible life story, Tina: The Musical, starring Adrienne Warren. In Tumult!, we unearth and examine what uncanny skills enabled her to connect with so many people at such a deep heart-to-heart level. She is, in fact, a beating human heart in high heels.
It is no coincidence that Donald Robertson, known as @drawbertson to his hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, has become the fashion world’s favorite art bomber of the Instagram era.
Donald Judd Interviews presents sixty interviews with the artist over the course of four decades, and is the first compilation of its kind. It is the companion volume to the critically acclaimed and bestselling Donald Judd Writings. This collection of interviews engages a diverse range of topics, from philosophy and politics to Judd’s insightful critiques of his own work and the work of others such as Mark di Suvero, Edward Hopper, Yayoi Kusama, Barnett Newman, and Jackson Pollock. The opening discussion of the volume between Judd, Dan Flavin, and Frank Stella provides the foundation for many of the succeeding conversations, focusing on the nature and material conditions of the new art developing in the 1960s. The publication also gathers a substantial body of unpublished material across a range of mediums including extensive interviews with art historians Lucy R. Lippard and Barbara Rose. Judd’s contributions in interviews, panels, and extemporaneous conversations are marked by his forthright manner and rigorous thinking, whether in dialogue with art critics, art historians, or his contemporaries. In one of the last interviews, he observed, “Generally expensive art is in expensive, chic circumstances; it’s a falsification. The society is basically not interested in art. And most people who are artists do that because they like the work; they like to do that [make art]. Art has an integrity of its own and a purpose of its own, and it’s not to serve the society. That’s been tried now, in the Soviet Union and lots of places, and it doesn’t work. The only role I can think of, in a very general way, for the artist is that they tend to shake up the society a little bit just by their existence, in which case it helps undermine the general political stagnation and, perhaps by providing a little freedom, supports science, which requires freedom. If the artist isn’t free, you won’t have any art.” Donald Judd Interviews is co-published by Judd Foundation and David Zwirner Books. The interviews expand upon the artist’s thinking present in Donald Judd Writings (Judd Foundation/David Zwirner Books, 2016).
Before Hitchcock and Herrmann, before Herzog and Kinski, there was Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. Despite their shared nickname, writer-producer Charles Brackett and writer-director Billy Wilder were not, in fact, the “happiest couple in Hollywood.” Actually, they disliked each other intensely, even as they collaborated on some of the most iconic films of Hollywood’s Golden Age, including Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity (from which Brackett eventually withdrew), The Lost Weekend, and A Foreign Affair. Just how two men who found each other so irritating could together make such enduring contributions to cinematic history is the subject of Double Solitaire, a joint biography of a fascinating and explosive creative collaboration. In the course of making their mark on genres ranging from film noir to the screwball comedy, they achieved an almost inexplicable alchemy that highlights the paradoxical nature of shared genius. Author Donald Brackett—whose great-great-grandfather was Charles Brackett’s cousin—delves into family lore, correspondence, contemporary media reports, and all other manner of historical records to reconstruct the strange magic of Brackett & Wilder’s combustible partnership, showing how their creative tensions yielded one classic film after another, and how their entrepreneurial drive pushed against the constraints of the studio system, anticipating the independent-producer models of today.
With hundreds of pages of new and previously unpublished essays, notes, and letters, Donald Judd Writings is the most comprehensive collection of the artist’s writings assembled to date. This timely publication includes Judd’s best-known essays, as well as little-known texts previously published in limited editions. Moreover, this new collection also includes unpublished college essays and hundreds of never-before-seen notes, a critical but unknown part of Judd’s writing practice. Judd’s earliest published writing, consisting largely of art reviews for hire, defined the terms of art criticism in the 1960s, but his essays as an undergraduate at Columbia University in New York, published here for the first time, contain the seeds of his later writing, and allow readers to trace the development of his critical style. The writings that followed Judd’s early reviews are no less significant art-historically, but have been relegated to smaller publications and have remained largely unavailable until now. The largest addition of newly available material is Judd’s unpublished notes—transcribed from his handwritten accounts of and reactions to subjects ranging from the politics of his time, to the literary texts he admired most. In these intimate reflections we see Judd’s thinking at his least mediated—a mind continuing to grapple with questions of its moment, thinking them through, changing positions, and demonstrating the intensity of thought that continues to make Judd such a formidable presence in contemporary visual art. Edited by the artist’s son, Judd Foundation curator and co-president Flavin Judd, and Judd Foundation archivist Caitlin Murray, this volume finally provides readers with the full extent of Donald Judd’s influence on contemporary art, art history, and art criticism.
Approximately seventy-five prehistoric sites and nearly fifty historic or recent camps are reported in the areas north and west of Great Bear Lake. Collections are small and in most cases superficial, but groupings and periodization are attempted.
This authoritative biography of film icon James Dean offers a clear-eyed look at the actor who crossed America's cinematic landscape with the brilliance and brevity of a meteor.
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