Take a tour through the wilder side of art history, and discover true tales of murder, forgery, and trickery—featuring jaw-dropping profiles over 30 iconic artists like Leonardo Da Vinci and Salvadori Dalí. With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Leonardo Da Vinci to Caravaggio to Edward Hopper, Secret Lives of Great Artists recounts the seamy, steamy and gritty history behind the great masters of international art. Here, you’ll learn that Michelangelo’s body odor was so bad, his assistants couldn’t stand working for him; that Vincent van Gogh sometimes ate paint directly from the tube; and Georgia O’Keeffe loved to paint in the nude. This is one art history lesson you’ll never forget!

In Making the Unknown Known, leading scholars throughout Texas explore the significant role women artists played in developing early Texas art from the nineteenth century through the latter part of the twentieth century. The biographies presented here allow readers to compare these women’s experiences across time as they negotiated the gendered expectations about artists in society at large and the Texas art community itself. Surveying the contributions women made to the visual arts in the Lone Star state, Making the Unknown Known analyzes women’s artistic work with respect to geographic and historical connections. Including surveys of the work of artists such as Louise Wüste, Emma Richardson Cherry, Eleanor Onderdonk, Grace Spaulding John, and others, it offers a groundbreaking assessment of the role women artists have played in interpreting the meaning, history, heritage, and unique character of Texas. It places women artists within the larger social and cultural contexts in which they lived. In that regard, it contains an analysis of their varied styles of art, the media they employed, and the subject matter contained in their art. It thus evaluates the contributions made by women artists to defining the nature of the wider Texas experience as an American region. Beautifully illustrated throughout with rich, full-color reproductions of the works created by the artists, this volume provides an enriched understanding of the important but underappreciated role women artists have played in the development of the fine arts in Texas. At last, the unknown story can be known.

Presents an alphabetical listing of artists who have lived, worked, and exhibited in Texas between 1800 and 1945; features color reproductions of one or more of each artist's works; and includes tables of the major exhibitions and competitions in Texas during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

E. M. (Buck) Schiwetz (1898–1984) could be called a “favorite son” among Texas artists working in the twentieth century. Schiwetz ranks among the state’s best-known early artists, having left behind an important body of iconic Texas imagery produced over a prodigious career spanning some seven decades. Educated as an architect at A&M College of Texas, he parlayed this training with natural acumen to become a consummate draftsman, prominent illustrator, and celebrated artist. In the mid-twentieth century, Schiwetz distinguished himself as an active participant in the rise of Texas art. As the Texas art scene experienced a period of dynamic growth and development, his artwork evolved across successive movements of Lone Star Impressionism, Regionalism, Modernism, and Expressionism. During his lifetime, the artwork of Buck Schiwetz arguably graced more publications than that of any other Texas artist. Featured in popular journals such as The Humble Way or published in the pioneering art books issued by academic presses at both the University of Texas and Texas A&M University, Schiwetz’s Texas imagery has long been employed to portray and celebrate Lone Star history and culture. The Artistic Legacy of Buck Schiwetz provides a long-overdue examination of this important Texas artist and his legacy: the first authoritative treatment of Schiwetz’s career as both fine artist and accomplished illustrator, and the first scholarly examination of his full body of work. See the art exhibition traveling Texas from 2023-2025: Stark Galleries, Texas A&M University: September 21 to December 18, 2023 Tyler Museum of Art: January 19 to April 14, 2024 The Grace Museum, Abilene: April 27 to September 15, 2024 The Capitol of Texas, Austin: October 25, 2024, to January 31, 2025

A look at the mural art work created during the WPA.

This first volume of "CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual picks up where its predecessor, the acclaimed biannual periodical "CrossRoads: A Journal of Southern Culture, left off when the latter ceased publication in the mid-1990s. Formerly edited by several graduate students affiliated with the University of Mississippi's Center for the Study of Southern Culture (primarily by current editor Ted Olson), "Cross Roads: A Southern Culture Annual will continue its original mission: to provide a forum for diverse perspectives on the South and on Southern culture through combining compelling new fiction and poetry from well-known as well as emerging Southern authors, with eloquent articles, memoirs, oral histories, and photo essays that interpret and celebrate relevant manifestations of the Southern cultural experience. "CrossRoads: A Southern Culture Annual will deepen readers' awareness of and connection to the South.

The seven essays included in this volume move beyond the famed Ashcan School to recover the lesser known work of Robert Henri's women students. The contributors, who include well-known scholars of art history, American studies, and cultural studies demonstrate how these women participated in the "modernizing" of women's roles during this era.

Since Audubon visited Galveston in 1837, artists have flocked to the island, some just passing through and others staying their entire lives. But because Galveston remained remote from the nation's cultural centers, its artistic contributions were initially largely ignored. However, the recovery effort from the Great Storm of 1900 spurred a new sense of local pride and civic determination. The Cotton Carnivals attracted people throughout the state, the city's artists united to promote local art through the creation of the Galveston Art League and photographers modernized their practices. In the early 1920s, a new generation, freed from nineteenth-century traditions, started to gain attention both on and off the island. Explore Galveston's artistic heritage with local historian Pat Jakobi, from the portraits of Thomas Flintoff to the Balinese Room murals of Marie Marchi Ragone.

A significant collection of Texas paintings and prints hangs humbly and inconspicuously throughout the offices, conference rooms, and hallways of Texas A&M University Press. These works comprise the Frank H. Wardlaw Collection of Texas Art, named in honor of the Press’s founding director, who was one of the genuine publishing icons of his day. Established in 1983 at the dedication of the new headquarters of Texas A&M University Press on the campus of Texas A&M, the collection began with twenty inaugural contributions that came as gifts from respected Texas artists whose art appeared in the books Wardlaw had shepherded to publication at the Press. Since then, the collection—which continues to be linked to artists published by the Press—has grown to house more than one hundred paintings, photographs, and illustrations. Among the noted artists featured in the collection are E. M. (Buck) Schiwetz, Otis Dozier, Michael Frary, Everett Spruce, Emily Guthrie Smith, Jerry Bywaters, and, among more recent additions, Dorothy Hood and Richard Stout. Through interviews with longtime staff and research into the Press’s book files and correspondence, William and Linda Reaves have uncovered the captivating history of this unlikely collection. In A Book Maker’s Art, they present the freshly assembled story of the Wardlaw collection, from its modest yet unique beginning to its present-day status as one of the university’s excellent collections of Texas art, reflecting the exceptional bond of arts and letters that has come to distinguish Texas A&M University Press.