One of the most important German artists of the twentieth century, Max Beckmann was labeled a "degenerate artist" by the Nazis and chose exile. His artistic production encompassed the realism and figural themes of his early works to the provocatively blunt portraiture, critical urban views, and richly layered symbolic works for which he is now universally recognized. Although he was a prolific writer, his written work has never before been collected and translated into English. Beckmann is known for the depth, pungency, and tremendous sensuous force of his works; only in the last twenty years have we come to learn more about his personal life. Self-Portrait in Words maps out Beckmann's life and draws attention to the occasions on or for which he produced his writings, to the importance writing had for him as a form of expression, and to both the contemporary and personal references of his ideas and images.

A new selection of letters, statements, and interviews reveals the preoccupations, thoughts, and ideas of Francis Bacon, one of the twentieth century’s most influential and important artists. The documents selected for Francis Bacon: A Self-Portrait in Words illustrate Bacon’s sharp wit and ability to express complex ideas in highly personal, memorable language. Included here are not only letters to friends, patrons, and fellow artists, but also intriguing notes and lists of paintings. They often come with a sketch as an aide-mémoire or an injunction to himself as he worked in the studio, and many have only come to light since his death. Bacon's letters mirror and reveal his dominant preoccupations at different points throughout his long career. Most of Bacon's letters have never been published and include several that he wrote to author Michael Peppiatt. Particularly intriguing is the record of a dream that he jotted down, outlining impossibly beautiful paintings he had conjured up in his sleep. Together with photographs, archive material, and works by the artist are numerous reproductions of Bacon's characteristic handwriting, from the briefest jottings and notes to more extensive letters and statements. Bacon frequently came up with memorable epithets and definitions. He delighted in doing with words what he set out to do in painting: "I like phrases that cut me." Peppiatt explores the personal legacy of one of the twentieth century's most important painters and presents a compelling verbal self-portrait that reveals both man and artist.

A rich, penetrating memoir about the author's relationship with a flawed but influential figure—the painter Lucian Freud—and the satisfactions and struggles of a life lived through art. One of Britain's most important contemporary painters, Celia Paul has written a reflective, intimate memoir of her life as an artist. Self-Portrait tells the artist's story in her own words, drawn from early journal entries as well as memory, of her childhood in India and her days as a art student at London's Slade School of Fine Art; of her intense decades-long relationship with the older esteemed painter Lucian Freud and the birth of their son; of the challenges of motherhood, the unresolvable conflict between caring for a child and remaining commited to art; of the "invisible skeins between people," the profound familial connections Paul communicates through her paintings of her mother and sisters; and finally, of the mystical presence in her own solitary vision of the world around her. Self-Portrait is a powerful, liberating evocation of a life and of a life-long dedication to art.

Recorded and transcribed throughout the 1960s, Carla Lonzi's Self-portrait ruptures the linear tradition of art-historical writing. Lonzi first abolishes the role of the critic, her own, seeking change over self-preservation by theorising against the act of theorising. This is the voice of feminist experimentalism in Italian art and literature, and here Lonzi speaks for herself in English. Self-portrait montages her verbatim conversations with fourteen prominent artists working at the time, all men except one. Lonzi's vital feeling that it was impossible to respond professionally to the political and existential problems embedded in the production and distribution of artworks drives the book's contingent structure. Artmaking struck Lonzi as the invitation to be together in a humanly satisfying way. This first English translation brings Lonzi's final work of criticism before her break with 'art' to an international audience. Her uncompromising enactment and pragmatic drop-out discontinues the narration of postwar modern art in Italy and beyond.

At my first sight of a painting by Samuel Bak, I had the keen sense that he was telling me stories with his brush. Now that at long last he has written this book, I find it no wonder that he has painted with his pen.... Among the tens and hundreds of books I have read about the pre-Shoah and post-Shoah period... Bak’s book is unique. Despite being suffused with a sense of loss, horror, degradation, and death, it is ultimately a sanguine, funny book, full of the love of life, rocking with an almost cathartic joy. At times I found myself bursting out laughing... a marvelous ode, a colorful hymn to the forces of life, love, creation, and the joys of the senses. —From the Foreword by Amos Oz In Painted in Words internationally renowned artist Samuel Bak sets aside his brushes to narrate the stories of his life—as a child in Nazi-occupied Vilna, as a youth in European refugee camps, and as a maturing artist in Israel, France, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States. With gentle humor, the child prodigy of the faraway past and the accomplished artist of today engage in a spirited dialogue from which emerges a self-portrait of "The Artist as a Young—and middle-aged and aging—Survivor." The brilliance, vision, and virtuosity that Bak brings to his painting are equally in evidence in his writing. This deeply touching work is an important contribution to Holocaust literature and art history.

Art Workshop for Children is not just another book of straightforward art projects. The book's unique child-led approach provides a framework for cultivating creative thinking and encourages the wonder that comes when children are allowed to freely explore the creative process and their materials. As children work through these open-ended workshops, adults are guided on how to be facilitators who provide questions, encourage deep thinking, and help spark an excitement for discovery. Children explore basic materials and workshops that use minimal supplies, and then gradually add new materials to fill the art cabinets as well as new skills and more complex workshops. Most workshops are suitable to preschool-aged children, and each contains ideas for explorations and new twists to engage older or more experienced artists. Interspersed throughout are sidebar essays that introduce perspectives on mess-making, imperfection, the role of adult, collaborative art, and thoughts on the Reggio Emilia method, a self-guided teaching philosophy. These pieces underscore the value of art-making with children, and support the parent/teacher/care-giver on how to successfully lead, question, and navigate their children through the workshops to result in the fullest experiences.

A revealing collection of letters from Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Anne Sexton While confessional poet Anne Sexton included details of her life and battle with mental illness in her published work, her letters to family, friends, and fellow poets provide an even more intimate glimpse into her private world. Selected from thousands of letters and edited by Linda Gray Sexton, the poet’s daughter, and Lois Ames, one of her closest friends, this collection exposes Sexton’s inner life from her boarding school days through her years of growing fame and ultimately to the months leading up to her suicide. Correspondence with writers like W. D. Snodgrass, Robert Lowell, and May Swenson reveals Sexton’s growing confidence in her identity as a poet as she discusses her craft, publications, and teaching appointments. Her private letters chart her marriage to Alfred “Kayo” Sexton, from the giddy excitement following their elopement to their eventual divorce; her grief over the death of her parents; her great love for her daughters balanced with her frustration with the endless tasks of being a housewife; and her persistent struggle with depression. Going beyond the angst and neuroses of her poetry, these letters portray the full complexities of the woman behind the art: passionate, anguished, ambitious, and yearning for connection.

A Time “Must-Read” Book of 2019 “[Williams] is so honest and fresh in his observations, so skillful at blending his own story with larger principles, that it is hard not to admire him.” —Andrew Solomon, New York Times Book Review (front page) The son of a “black” father and a “white” mother, Thomas Chatterton Williams found himself questioning long-held convictions about race upon the birth of his blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter—and came to realize that these categories cannot adequately capture either of them, or anyone else. In telling the story of his family’s multigenerational transformation from what is called black to what is assumed to be white, he reckons with the way we choose to see and define ourselves. Self-Portrait in Black and White is a beautifully written, urgent work for our time.

Debbie Millman's illustrated essays and visual poems are part philosophy, part art, part deeply personal memoir exposing the universal triumphs and tribulations of being human. Her hand-lettered typography - sometimes tender, sometimes gritty, always breathtaking in its visceral candor - makes Self Portrait as Your Traitor a moving masterpiece of a singular art form that speaks to our deepest longings for beauty, honesty, and the ineffable magic of what it means to live.

A collection of letters written by poet Anne Sexton in which she describes her life, thoughts, and feelings, with previously unpublished poems, family pictures, and memorabilia.