Author: Charles River Editors
Narrator: Michelle Humphries
Unabridged: 2 hr 29 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Findaway Voices
Published: 08/18/2023
Genre: Biography & Autobiography - Artists, Architects, Photographers
By the turn of the 20th century, American entertainment was still preoccupied with European-style operetta, as embodied in the works of cellist-composer Victor Herbert. Traditional dance forms moved from European stories to the American prairie in Oklahoma by the late 1940s, and what was once the property of Bavarian princes became the singing standards of cowboys riding through the corn fields in Oh What a Beautiful Morning and Out of My Dreams. At the time, the availability of classical ballet in America was scant. In contrast to the evolution of an American style in musical theater, Broadway, and film, ballet in the United States was ushered in largely through the efforts of an individual who brought with him a strong traditional sense from Russia and the rest of Europe but was intent on producing a distinctly American style. Other experimentalists appeared, such as Isadora Duncan, but it was George Balanchine who managed to institutionalize and fund both a hybrid traditional as well as experimental form.
In the 1960s, Bob Fosse emerged as one of the leading dancers, actors, choreographers, directors, screenwriters and film directors on Broadway and in Hollywood. He became famous for conquering several fields on the musical stage and film simultaneously in a way that no one has before or since. It is said that “only Busby Berkeley compares” to Fosse despite the fact that Berkeley was never a dancer, and that Fosse enjoyed eight Broadway hits to Berkeley’s one. Fosse forever changed the way the modern audience viewed dance on stage and film. Coupling his rise with the sexual freedom movement, he is known for an “intense, unbelievably driven, provocative, entertaining…sexual, physically demanding” choreographic style. Difficult for even the best dancers, the range of expression encompasses “joyous humor, as well as bleak cynicism.”
Jeffrey Joseph Juliana, nee Geoffrey Giuliano, nee Jaganntha Dasa, is a man of many faces and adventures. A plumber's son from Western, New York now in his mid-sixties, this transient soul has experienced a wide swath of poverty, riches, fame, anony...
Brothers Barry and Tommy Moser were born of the same parents in Chattanooga, Tennessee, slept in the same bedroom, went to the same school, and were both poisoned by their family's deep racism and anti-Semitism. But as they grew older, their perspec...
A poetic immersion into the life and art of Joan Mitchell, the great American abstract expressionist painter A contemporary of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, Joan Mitchell is not as well known as her male counterparts, not only because she ...
In this entertaining, informative collection, listeners will discover the idiosyncrasiessometimes humorous, sometimes tragicof twenty famous artists: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Peter Bruegel, Sofonisba Anguissola, Rembrandt van Rijn...
Teary, big-eyed orphans and a multitude of trashy knockoffs epitomized American kitsch art as they clogged thrift stores for decades. When Adam Parfrey tracked down Walter Keanethe credited artist of the weepy waifsfor a San Diego Reader cover stor...
Some of the twentieth century’s most important artists and writers—from Jackson Pollock to Saul Steinberg, Fairfield Porter to Jean Stafford—lived and worked on the East End of Long Island. The home they made there would affect the...
There is no doubt that Michelangelo is one of the most influential artists of all time, together with some other Renaissance geniuses such as Leonardo and Rafael. Michelangelo had a vision, a dream, and the talent to carry out those imaginations. Hi...
Here is Jon Krakauer’s portrait of the iconoclastic architect Christopher Alexander, whose revolutionary human-centered approach has shaken the foundations of modern architecture. Krakauer delves into Alexander’s life and career, from hi...
Picasso’s work is famous. His art is intricate yet bizarre. Many people have stood still over the wonders and simplicity of cubism and surrealism and have either been disgusted or amazed by it.Picasso’s personal life was filled with stru...