Going Gaga for Lady Gaga

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, AKA Lady Gaga, is an American recording artist turned international music sensation. The 24-year-old musician began performing in the rock music scene of NYC's Lower East Side after dropping out of NYU's prestigious Tisch School of the Performing Arts. In 2007 she signed with Streamline Records (an imprint of Interscope Records). Her seemingly overnight rise to fame began with her aptly titled debut album, "The Fame," released in August of 2008.

Gaga's eccentric performances - complete with over-the-top costumes and sets, as well as her glam rock and pop infused music have allowed Lady Gaga to explode onto the contemporary music scene; the artist has sold 10 million albums, plus 35-million singles worldwide.

The Overlook Press recently published the starlet's biography, titled "Lady Gaga: Behind the Fame." Written by Emily Herbert, the book profiles the NYC-born Lady Gaga, a dynamic and talented go-getter who has said,

"I make music and art and design all day long. Yes, I wash my face and go to sleep but when I wake up, I am always Lady Gaga."

Overlook Press publicist Leslie Brandon describes Lady Gaga as "an Upper East Side girl with a downtown attitude." The former outcast has become a fascinating spectacle - skyrocketing to the top of the music charts, charming the pants off the fashion world and securing her place in pop culture history.

"Lady Gaga: Behind the Fame" contains 23 pages of color photographs and details Gaga's inspiring journey from student to superstar, from Stefani Germanotta to Lady Gaga: Classically trained on the piano since age 4. Other highlights of the biography include Gaga's high school experiences with Paris and Nicky Hilton, her meeting and performing for the Queen of England, discussions of gay rights, as well as Gaga's riotous loyal fan base, which the star affectionately calls her "little monsters."

Click here to read more about the #1 hit-maker's biography and purchase a copy.

International Contemporary Masters Volume III

World Wide ArtBooks has recently released its International Contemporary Masters Volume III, which traces the current art world’s latest trends and features the work of select international artists who are helping to mold the evolution of the contemporary art world. International curator and founder of World Wide ArtBooks Despina Tunberg produced the book with the goal of showing that innovation in art is still thriving around the globe.

Greek born Tunberg, who owns galleries in both Europe and the U.S., recognized how artists can spend time struggling to show their art, when they would rather spend time creating it. She created the International Contemporary Masters series as a luxury art publication that would allow artists to introduce their world to the art world. Her books include well known and lesser known artists, all of whom are extremely talented and innovative.

The newest volume features some 400 images of artwork from over 230 artists. Nearly 50 countries’ artists are represented, and each artist was selected by a special committee that adhered to strict criteria of originality and proficiency. Editors sought the inclusion of artists who have broken new ground – even if the artists haven’t yet been discovered by the art world at large. Media presented in the book includes painting, mixed media, sculpture, photography, digital art and installation.

Click here to read more about the book, how Tunberg supports artists beyond including them in her publication, and about World Wide ArtBooks.

Biggest Book in the World on Display

While it's not necessarily a "read-worthy art text," the 350 year-old Klencke Atlas is definitely a "view-worthy art text." The colossal book is five feet tall and six feet wide; it was given to the king by Dutch merchants and placed in his cabinet of curiosities. The Atlas, which has never publicly been displayed with its pages open, will be on view this summer at the British Library. The summer exhibition is dedicated to maps and will be showing about 100 of the world's greatest - about three-quarters of which have never before been on display.

Peter Barber, the British Library's head of map collections, recently stated,

"...[the maps] hold their own with great works of art. This is the first map exhibition of its type because, normally, when you think of maps, you think of geography, or measurement or accuracy."

Furthermore, the exhibition will show how great maps are often as important as great art. They were important status symbols, especially before the 1800s, and were considered to be almost as prominent as paintings, sculptures and tapestries.

Visit the Guardian to read more on the history of maps and other types of maps that will be on display at this summer's unique exhibition.

A Noteworthy Book on the Bauhaus School

"The Bauhaus Group: Six Masters of Modernism," by Nicholas Fox Weber, details the life and works of famed architects Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; painters Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and Josef Albers, and weaver and textile designer Anni Albers (Josef's wife).

Begun by WWI lieutenant Walter Gropius of the German Army, the Bauhaus school, which included a mix of architects, painters and master artisans of various crafts, sought an integration between the art and industrial worlds to benefit humanity. His conception included ideas about reconciling beauty, simplicity, utility and mass production (which was completely different from the contemporary standard of decorative elaboration). The school only lasted from 1919 until 1933 and faced constant opposition during its existence in Germany. However, the Bauhaus initiated global changes in the art and craft realms.

Weber's book explores six of the school's most influential people. In a recent NY Times Book Review, the author is quoted as saying,

"In focusing on six of the people at the school who went far beyond the issues of one period or place, and were geniuses for all time, and in trying to sketch them as human beings, I have attempted to show how they created and lived out a dream that was never equaled before or since."

The author is a specialist in writing biographies about artists; he is the author / co-author of six previous volumes about Josef and Anni Alberses (who he met while studying fine art during graduate school at Yale).

"Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art"

The term "Pop Art" is defined as a visual art movement that challenged tradition (first during the mid-1950s in Britain and then in the late 1950s in the U.S.) by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Case in point: the most well-known American Pop Artist, Andy Warhol, silk-screened a seemingly non-iconic image of a Campbell's soup can onto a canvas and voila, the public became fascinated with the Campbell's Soup image (and the product itself).

As a recent review from the NY Times discusses, James Rosenquist penned "Painting Below Zero: Notes on a Life in Art," an autobiography about the artist's accidental status as a pop artist (as a Midwest painter whose work happens to thematically parallel that of Warhol). Rosenquist started his art career as a sign painter and didn't initially meet Warhol or Roy Lichtenstein until 1964 (after Warhol and Lichtenstein had individually developed their avant-garde styles).

The artist's book contains a detailed biography (including his various art-world experiences), along with photographs (like the one below of the artist standing with his proud mother below his first billboard painting - for Coca-Cola), and various anecdotes. Rosenquist acquired the assistance of David Dalton (a founding editor of Rolling Stone Magazine) as well as Tony Scherman (a veteran music journalist) on his book.



To read the entire article from the NY Times - including more about Rosenquist's autobiography and life, art critic Arthur C. Danto's new pop-art related book, and discussion on new definitions / explanations of "Pop Art," click here.

Tattoos as Art

The art world is constantly evolving - and thus, the definition of art (or maybe just that of "contemporary art") continues to broaden. While tattoos were once considered taboo, or an act of rebellion against conformity, getting permanently inked with body art has turned into a pretty widespread occurrence (at least in the Western world).

Tattoos are now frequently accepted as a form of self-expression, but even more interesting are those who actually create the tattoos and ink them onto bodies. It seems that the growth of acceptance of tattoos has allowed tattooists to be viewed as artists and tattooing - like painting or sculpting - to inch its way to being considered a standard form of art.

More and more contemporary tattooists have fine-arts backgrounds - and many have developed their own unique artistic styles, with their tattoo parlors now resembling specialized art studios and galleries.

Accordingly, the market for tattoo-themed books has expanded over the past several years. One recently published book, Art by Tattooists: Beyond Flash by Jo Waterhouse, is unique among the category.

Tattooist Jo Waterhouse examines drawings and paintings by tattoo artists independent of the bodies they are permanently attached to. Thus, without the images of tattooed bodies, the viewer sees the tattoo as a true piece of art (and can subsequently judge it purely as art, rather than thinking of it as a tattoo).

To read more about Jo Waterhouse's book, click here.

The Letters: A Culmination of the Van Gogh Museum's Fifteen-Year Project

The newest edition of Vincent Van Gogh's letters is a pinnacle of achievement for Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum. The 15-year project, which includes almost one-million words, over 4,000 illustrations and has been published in six volumes, has trumped earlier editions by putting the letters in correct chronological order. The new edition includes more accurate translations and detailed annotations, and it truly transforms our current knowledge and understanding of the famed artist.

With almost all of Van Gogh's illustrations now identified (unlike previously, when the lesser known works had remained unidentified), full annotations - with footnotes and references, as well as the inclusion of other important details - like topography, customs, and historical context - The Letters are remarkably detailed and chillingly revealing.

As an article from The Art Newspaper states,

Although most letters were published in earlier editions, some lines were left out for a variety of reasons. For instance, one delightful and telling phrase was omitted simply because it had been crossed out by Van Gogh. On 7 December 1883, while living with his parents in Nuenen, he had written: “People are like brushes—the ones that look the best do not work the best.” This very much reflected his philosophy, and his family often criticised his scruffy clothes.

Sometimes details were withheld, even as late as in the 1958 edition, because they were still sensitive to the family. For instance, in Van Gogh’s unsent letter to Theo and his wife Jo of 7 July 1890, in the last month of his life, the words “while there are disagreements between you” were omitted...

...The most important completely new discovery is a letter from Van Gogh to his former boss at Goupil’s gallery in The Hague, where he had his first job. Van Gogh is said to have eventually written up to 300 letters to Hermanus Tersteeg, but all were apparently thrown into the fire late in his life when he wanted to warm his room. Recently, one letter surfaced, which had been given by Mrs Tersteeg to an autograph collector in around 1900 (it remains with the collector’s descendants). Sent on 3 August 1877, after the death of Tersteeg’s infant daughter Marie, it is a rambling condolence letter, peppered with Biblical quotations, and written at a time when Van Gogh had a deep religious fervour.

As such, the letters reveal a lot about the various aspects of Van Gogh's life - both personal and professional, as well as what it was like to live and work in Europe during the nineteenth century.

Perhaps most compelling, The Letters allow us to grasp a clearer understanding of Van Gogh's tragic death.

On 10 July 1890 he wrote about his latest picture (possibly Wheatfield with Crows), saying he was painting “immense stretches of wheatfields under turbulent skies, and I made a point of trying to express sadness”. Before posting it, he added to the letter the phrase “extreme loneliness”. Since it was in the wheatfields above Auvers-sur-Oise that he shot himself just 17 days later, these additional two words could well have had a deep significance.

The newest edition of the Letters is on display at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam from October 9 through January 2010.