Author: Francine Prose
Narrator: Ann Richardson
Unabridged: 4 hr 41 min
Format: Digital Audiobook
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: 02/11/2020
Genre: Biography & Autobiography - Artists, Architects, Photographers
Francine Prose's life of Caravaggio evokes the genius of this great artist through a brilliant reading of his paintings. Caravaggio defied the aesthetic conventions of his time; his use of ordinary people, realistically portrayed—street boys, prostitutes, the poor, the aged—was a profound and revolutionary innovation that left its mark on generations of artists. His insistence on painting from nature, on rendering the emotional truth of experience, whether religious or secular, makes him an artist who speaks across the centuries to our own time. Born in 1571 near Milan, Michelangelo Merisi (da Caravaggio) moved to Rome when he was twenty-one years old. He became a brilliant and successful artist, protected by the influential Cardinal del Monte and other patrons. But he was also a man of the streets who couldn't seem to free himself from its brawls and vendettas. In 1606 he fled Rome, apparently after killing another man in a dispute. He spent his last years in exile, in Naples, Malta, and Sicily, at once celebrated for his art and tormented by his enemies. Through it all, he produced masterpieces of astonishing complexity and power. Eventually he received a pardon from the Pope, only to die, in mysterious circumstances, on the way back to Rome in 1610.
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 ...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...