"I read Hawks on Hawks with passion. I am very happy that this book exists." -- François TruffautHoward Hawks (1896--1977) is often credited as being the most versatile of all of the great American directors, having worked with equal ease in screwball comedies, westerns, gangster movies, musicals, and adventure films. He directed an impressive number of Hollywood's greatest stars -- including Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Rosalind Russell, and Marilyn Monroe -- and some of his most celebrated films include Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Rio Bravo (1959).Hawks on Hawks draws on interviews that author Joseph McBride conducted with the director over the course of seven years, giving rare insight into Hawks's artistic philosophy, his relationships with the stars, and his position in an industry that was rapidly changing. In its new edition, this classic book is both an account of the film legend's life and work and a guidebook on how to make movies.

For more than 65,000,000 years, the alligator has inhabited the North American continent. One of the few remaining links to the age of the dinosaur, these ancient reptiles move gracefully through the water but are relatively awkward on land (though they can charge aggressively if threatened). In so many ways, the alligator embodies all that is truly wild in the world. Renowned photographer Martha Strawn, the founder of "visual ecology," spent a decade traveling throughout the American South, from Texas to North Carolina, taking more than 40,000 unforgettable photographs of this incredible creature—not only in their natural habitat of swamps, lakes, and ponds, rivers, bayous, and estuaries, coastal marshes and backwaters, but also along the white sands of Florida's landscapes and highways of Louisiana's Cajun country, in citrus and avocado groves, and in new suburban and commercial developments that now encroach upon the natural order. The 151 photographs featured here are presented in a series of visual sequences, each based on a concept or feeling designed to inform and recreate a network of field experiences that are complemented by vignettes, poems, lyrics to songs, and engaging text. Here is a unique book that combines art and science, history and folklore, a land ethic and literature in order to tell the story of one of the South's most amazing and evocative creatures. Here are the wetlands and deep waters where alligators feed, bask in the sun, perform courtship dances, mate, nest, and watch over their young. Here is the story about resource management, hunting and the commercial meat and skin industries, and the increasing tension between this wild creature and the human beings they encounter on their ancient landscape. In addition to Strawn's incredible photographs and enlightened text are three guest essays that bring home the relationship between alligators and humans: "Memories of Gator Hunts," by legendary alligator hunter LeRoy Overstreet; "Living by the Wetlands," by Jane Gibbon, a respected conservation anthropologist; and "Living with Alligators," by the acclaimed ecologist J. Whitfield Gibbons. Their stories give voice to the many people—the alligator farmers and hunters, the meat and skin processors, the scientists and wildlife managers—who spend their days and nights with this noble member of the order Crocodilia and who work hard to understand and promote a mutually beneficial relationship between these two dominant species who now must learn to live together in our one living landscape. I ran as fast as I could toward the banana trees with the gator right behind me, gaining on me with every step. Her jaws popping together sounded like a door slamming. I reached the first banana tree just ahead of the gator and climbed right up to it like it had stairs . . . I had climbed up about ten or twelve feet, and I was slipping back down, so I made a desperate effort and managed to get my hands into the base of the leaves. Just as I thought I might be safe, the tree started falling over. - LeRoy Overstreet

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa is well known for his jazz poetry, and this book is the first to bring together the verve and vitality of his oeuvre. The centerpiece of this volume is the libretto "Testimony." Paying homage to Charlie Parker, "Testimony" was commissioned for a radio drama with original music by eminent Australian composer and saxophonist Sandy Evans. Remarkably rich and evocative, encompassing a wide range of musical energy and performers, this moving affirmation of Parker's genius became a milestone in contemporary radio theater. Twenty-eight additional poems spanning the breadth of Komunyakaa's career are included, including two never previously published. Accompanying the poems are interviews and essays featuring Komunyakaa, Evans, radio producer Christopher Williams, jazz critic Miriam Zolin, jazz writer and editor Sascha Feinstein, and musical director, Paul Grabowsky. Sascha Feinstein writes the foreword. The print edition includes two CDs with the entire Australian Broadcast Company recording of Testimony, ebook contains imbedded audio. Check for the online reader's companion at testimony.site.wesleyan.edu.

Andrew Carnegie is remembered as one of the worldÆs great philanthropists. As a boy, he witnessed the benevolence of a businessman who lent his personal book collection to laborerÆs apprentices. That early experience inspired Carnegie to create the \u201cFree to the People\u201d Carnegie Library in 1895 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1896, he founded the Carnegie Institute, which included a music hall, art museum, and science museum. Carnegie deeply believed that education and culture could lift up the common man and should not be the sole province of the wealthy. Today, his Pittsburgh cultural institution encompasses a library, music hall, natural history museum, art museum, science center, the Andy Warhol Museum, and the Carnegie International art exhibition. In Palace of Culture, Robert J. Gangewere presents the first history of a cultural conglomeration that has served millions of people since its inception and inspired the likes of August Wilson, Andy Warhol, and David McCullough. In this fascinating account, Gangewere details the political turmoil, budgetary constraints, and cultural tides that have influenced the caretakers and the collections along the way. He profiles the many benefactors, trustees, directors, and administrators who have stewarded the collections through the years. Gangewere provides individual histories of the library, music hall, museums, and science center, and describes the importance of each as an educational and research facility. Moreover, Palace of Culture documents the importance of cultural institutions to the citizens of large metropolitan areas. The Carnegie Library and Institute have inspired the creation of similar organizations in the United States and serve as models for museum systems throughout the world.

Possessing a unique beauty and refined acting skills, Ann Dvorak (1911--1979) found success in Hollywood at a time when many actors were still struggling to adapt to the era of talkies. Seemingly destined for A-list fame, critics touted her as "Hollywood's New Cinderella" after film mogul Howard Hughes cast her as Cesca in the gangster film Scarface (1932). Dvorak's journey to superstardom was derailed when she walked out on her contractual obligations to Warner Bros. for an extended honeymoon. Later, she initiated a legal dispute over her contract, an action that was unprecedented at a time when studios exercised complete control over actors' careers.As the first full-length biography of an often-overlooked actress, Ann Dvorak: Hollywood's Forgotten Rebel explores the life and career of one of the first individuals who dared to challenge the studio system that ruled Tinseltown. The actress reached her pinnacle during the early 1930s, when the film industry was relatively uncensored and free to produce movies with more daring storylines. She played several female leads in films including The Strange Love of Molly Louvain (1932), Three on a Match (1932), and Heat Lightning (1934), but after her walk-out, Warner Bros retaliated by casting her in less significant roles.Following the casting conflicts and illness, Dvorak filed a lawsuit against the Warner Bros. studio, setting a precedent for other stars who eventually rebelled against the established Hollywood system. In this insightful memoir, Christina Rice explores the spirited rebellion of a talented actress whose promising career fell victim to the studio empire.

From jazz trumpeters drawing on the noises of warfare in Beirut to female heavy metallers in Alexandria, the Arab culture offers a wealth of exciting, challenging, and diverse musics. The essays in this collection investigate the plethora of compositional and improvisational techniques, performance styles, political motivations, professional trainings, and inter-continental collaborations that claim the mantle of "innovation" within Arab and Arab diaspora music. While most books on Middle Eastern music-making focus on notions of tradition and regionally specific genres, The Arab Avant Garde presents a radically hybrid and globally dialectic set of practices. Engaging the "avant-garde"-a term with Eurocentric resonances-this anthology disturbs that presumed exclusivity, drawing on and challenging a growing body of literature about alternative modernities.Chapters delve into genres and modes as diverse as jazz, musical theatre, improvisation, hip hop, and heavy metal as performed in countries like Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and the United States. Focusing on multiple ways in which the "Arab avant-garde" becomes manifest, this anthology brings together international writers with eclectic disciplinary trainings-practicing musicians, area studies specialists, ethnomusicologists, and scholars of popular culture and media. Contributors include Sami W. Asmar, Michael Khoury, Saed Muhssin, Marina Peterson, Kamran Rastegar, Caroline Rooney, and Shayna Silverstein, as well as the editors.

Through the Eyes of a Dancer compiles the writings of noted dance critic and editor Wendy Perron. In pieces for The SoHo Weekly News, Village Voice, The New York Times, and Dance Magazine, Perron limns the larger aesthetic and theoretical shifts in the dance world since the 1960s. She surveys a wide range of styles and genres, from downtown experimental performance to ballets at the Metropolitan Opera House. In opinion pieces, interviews, reviews, brief memoirs, blog posts, and contemplations on the choreographic process, she gives readers an up-close, personalized look at dancing as an art form. Dancers, choreographers, teachers, college dance students-and anyone interested in the intersection between dance and journalism-will find Perron's probing and insightful writings inspiring. Through the Eyes of a Dancer is a nuanced microcosm of dance's recent globalization and modernization that also provides an opportunity for new dancers to look back on the traditions and styles that preceded their own.

In 1966 Mark Gambier-Parry bequeathed to the Courtauld the art collection formed by his grandfather Thomas Gambier Parry (who died in 1888). Since then, of the 28 ivories in the collection, about half have been on permanent display at The Courtauld, yet they have remained largely unknown, even to experts. This scholarly catalogue, full of beautiful new photography, is the first publication dedicated solely to the collection. There are examples of the highest quality of ivory carving, both secular and religious in content, and a number of the objects are of outstanding interest. The earliest objects date from the late 11th century.In his introductory essay, John Lowden discusses the sourcing and use of ivory in art from late Antiquity to the Modern period, comparing the properties of walrus, narwhal, African elephant and Indian elephant tusks. He examines the problems in the modern day study of medieval ivories - the principal problems being the extraordinary reticence of the sources and almost entire lack of inscriptions - and the questions of authenticity raised by copies and casts and radiocarbon dating.The ivories are a revealing tribute to the perceptive eye of Thomas Gambier Parry, a distinguished Victorian collector and Gothic Revival artist responsible for a number of richly painted church interiors in England, such as the Eastern part of the nave ceiling and the octagon at Ely Cathedral. Alexandra Gerstein introduces the Gambier Parry as a collector, not only of ivories but of Trecento and Quattrocento paintings - the area for which he is best known to day - and of 'curiosities', including 16th-century Italian maiolica, marriage chests (cassoni), medieval and Renaissance enamels, Islamic metalwork, and other decorative arts.

During the Tudor Age the South West was famed for the innovation and endeavor of its people. Devon sea dogs Drake, Raleigh and Hawkins sailed to ‘World’s End’ in their pursuit of treasure and glory, Exeter’s Nicholas Hilliard produced exquisite miniature portraits of courtiers while fellow Exonian Thomas Bodley re-founded Oxford University’s library, later named the Bodleian in his honor. These men lived during the religious turmoil and political intrigue of Elizabeth I’s reign– a time of opportunity for the merchants and traders of Devon. Many grew rich on the fruits of overseas trade and expressed their new status through fashionable houses, fine furnishings, decoration and valuable personal possessions. The demand for goods was met by a network of local craft workers: plasterers, masons, carpenters, lace-makers and goldsmiths. Aspects of their lives are revealed in this book, published to accompany the fascinating exhibition at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, which will draw together paintings, artifacts and documents from galleries, museums and record offices to tell the story of the South West and its people set against the backdrop of one of the most,evocative periods in British history. It was during the Elizabethan ‘Golden Age’ that West Country men became famous for their innovation and endeavour. Devon ‘sea dogs’ Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh and John Hawkins sailed to ‘World’s End’ in pursuit of treasure, glory and new dominions for the queen. Exeter’s Nicholas Hilliard produced exquisite miniature portraits of courtiers, while fellow Exonian Thomas Bodley re-founded Oxford University’s library, later named the Bodleian in his honour. These men achieved their fame and fortune in an age of religious turmoil and political intrigue, but it was also a time of opportunity – especially for the merchants of Devon. Many grew rich on the fruits of overseas trade and expressed their new wealth and status through fashionable houses, fine furnishings and valuable personal possessions. The demand for luxury goods for the new elite in society was met by a network of local craft workers. A recent Royal Albert Memorial Museum research project funded by The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art has combed the archives of record offices in search of information on their lives and products. Accompanying an exhibition at RAAM, this book places original manuscripts alongside the work of local goldsmiths, carpenters and masons to tell their tales. Of particular note are the silver communion cups: often fashioned from melted down pre-Reformation chalices, by leading Exeter goldsmiths such as Richard Hilliard (Nicholas’s father) and John Jones. The prosperity of South West merchants at this period fostered a sense of civic pride that was expressed through the foundation of hospitals, schools and almshouses, as well as improvements to waterways, such as the building of Exeter canal. By embracing the spirit of the Renaissance, it also became an age of scholarship and curiosity. Antiquaries such as Richard Carew, John Hooker and John Norden compiled the first regional histories and mapped the cities and monuments of the South West. And this sense of curiosity spread across the oceans. As evidenced by Drake’s circumnavigation of the globe in 1577-80, represented in the exhibition by the exuberant Drake Cup, and Raleigh’s ‘Virginia’ plantation project on the east coast of America. West Country to World’s End features some of Cornishman John White’s watercolour views of indigenous Algonquians and their settlements in the New World – rare visual traces of an extraordinary encounter between two cultures. The leading South West Tudors played out their roles against the backdrop of national and international politics. Many took prominent parts in repulsing the Spanish Armadas that threatened England’s security from 1588: the book publishes a rarely seen large-scale oil painting of Elizabeth and the Spanish Armada that captures the drama of the battle. It also explores the art of the Tudor court from the impact of Holbein – shown through stunning examples from the Royal Collection – through to the jewel-like miniatures by Nicholas Hilliard. The Exeter man’s contribution to the visual arts is celebrated in the city of his birth with portraits including Walter Raleigh, Lord Howard of Effingham and James I. Essays by leading scholars in the field of South West arts and the Tudor period edited by Professor Sam Smiles. Susan Flavin discusses developments in the decorative arts of the 16th century based on archival research, Sam Smiles writes on education and learning, Stephanie Pratt on exploration and Karen Hearn on Nicholas Hilliard.

In honor of the fortieth anniversary of the Center for the Arts at Wesleyan University, The Alumni Show II looks back at four decades of Wesleyan artists. Building on the first Alumni Show held in November/December 2003 in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the CFA, this exhibition (September 6 - December 8, 2013) features an entirely new selection of seventeen alumni artists. Their work spans a broad range of contemporary practice and media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, installation art, video art, performance, and film. The artists featured in this exhibition are Ian H. Boyden '95, Stephanie Calvert '08, Rutherford Chang '02, Nicolas Collins '76 MA '79, Renée Green '81, Raphael Griswold '06, John N. Hatleberg '79, Gabriela Herman '03, Elsie Kagan '99, Liz Magic Laser '03, Danielle Mysliwiec '98, Ed Osborn '87, Juliana Romano '04, Aki Sasamoto '04, Arturo Vidich '03, Stephanie Washburn '03, and Ben Weiner '03. The full-color catalog includes a foreword by Michael S. Roth and an essay by John B. Ravenal. It was designed by Cathy Waters, and includes an exhibition checklist.

The Hamburg banker’s son Aby Warburg (1866–1929) was one of the most influential art historians and cultural theorists of the 20th century. His life’s work was devoted to tracing antique formulas of representation in the depiction of human passions in Renaissance art. For this epoch-spanning relationship, he developed the term ‘pathos formula’ (Pathosformel). In a lecture given in 1905 in the Konzerthaus in Hamburg, focusing on the young Albrecht Dürer’s Death of Orpheus, Warburg outlined his thoughts in front of the original drawing, which he had borrowed from the rich holdings of the Kunsthalle in order to better illustrate his idea. This drawing, pivotal in the young artist’s development as an ambitious response to classical antiquity, was displayed during the lecture alongside a group of engravings and woodcuts which included not only some of Dürer’s own seminal later prints, such as Melencolia I, but also engravings by Andrea Mantegna which Dürer copied in 1494, the same year he drew the Death of Orpheus. Warburg’s ‘pop-up exhibition’ of eleven works has here been reconstructed and analyzed, using his fascinating lecture notes, sketches and slide lists. First developed by the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 2011, subsequently on view in Cologne in the Wallraf-Richartz Museum and now at The Courtauld Gallery, each institution has interpreted the material slightly differently, while retaining the core Warburg group. Aby Warburg aimed at unlocking the meaning of an art work by excavating its roots in its cultural context. By restaging his legendary display of 1905 with Dürer’s Death of Orpheus at its heart, the exhibition and accompanying book present some of the most skillful and ambitious works on paper ever produced and also seek to introduce into Warburg’s rich intellectual universe to a broader public, hoping thereby to offer both sheer enjoyment and food for thought.

The transient nature of our place in the world has long been an abiding artistic concern of Andrew Beckham. Whether he stands firmly on the ground or star-gazes into the heavens, Beckham, through the frame of his camera, tries to answer questions that have accompanied human life over the millennia: How do we know where and when we fit in the scheme of Life? How do we find a meaningful place for ourselves within Nature? Is one place more or less important than another for contemplating the eternal questions of "Who am I?" and "What am I doing here?"In constructing "visual poems" that include single images as well as visual montages of sequenced photographs, Beckham tries to reconcile these questions by focusing on the synchronicity between the mundane and the infinite. By presenting these images as a new kind of "visual storytelling," Beckham juxtaposes the varying scales of photographic inquiry, from the private spaces near our homes to the expanding and unknowable universe.Firmament is a meditation on place unlike any other. In Portfolio I, Beckham discovers a unique stretch of land, one square-mile in Bear Creek Canyon near his home, where a curious sense of visual order is achieved amongst the chaos of impenetrable bramble and thick woods. For the artist, this is ground incarnate. In Portfolio II, Beckham explores a landscape so wide and vast that space can hardly be contained within the frame of his camera. Here, in the 20,000 square miles known as the Sand Hills, Beckham discovers a place where land and sky meet and often merge within a virtual sea of rolling prairie grassland. In Portfolio III, Beckham turns to the "incalculable distance" between the heavens and Earth, between grounded experience and infinite space. Here, Beckham's artistry is revealed in a visual assemblage of his own photographic work merged with the cosmologies of centuries-old star charts.In viewing Andrew Beckham's work, we see depth and beauty, serenity and enlightenment, and we gain a certain reassurance that there is something greater than ourselves when we contemplate the universe with a sense of reverence and even awe. We also come to realize that we have a sacred duty to understand and respect our individual place within the world, so that we may take better care of that which we have come to know, no matter how small or large the scale.

The transient nature of our place in the world has long been an abiding artistic concern of Andrew Beckham. Whether he stands firmly on the ground or star-gazes into the heavens, Beckham, through the frame of his camera, tries to answer questions that have accompanied human life over the millennia: How do we know where and when we fit in the scheme of Life? How do we find a meaningful place for ourselves within Nature? Is one place more or less important than another for contemplating the eternal questions of "Who am I?" and "What am I doing here?" In constructing "visual poems" that include single images as well as visual montages of sequenced photographs, Beckham tries to reconcile these questions by focusing on the synchronicity between the mundane and the infinite. By presenting these images as a new kind of "visual storytelling," Beckham juxtaposes the varying scales of photographic inquiry, from the private spaces near our homes to the expanding and unknowable universe. Firmament is a meditation on place unlike any other. In Portfolio I, Beckham discovers a unique stretch of land, one square-mile in Bear Creek Canyon near his home, where a curious sense of visual order is achieved amongst the chaos of impenetrable bramble and thick woods. For the artist, this is ground incarnate. In Portfolio II, Beckham explores a landscape so wide and vast that space can hardly be contained within the frame of his camera. Here, in the 20,000 square miles known as the Sand Hills, Beckham discovers a place where land and sky meet and often merge within a virtual sea of rolling prairie grassland. In Portfolio III, Beckham turns to the "incalculable distance" between the heavens and Earth, between grounded experience and infinite space. Here, Beckham's artistry is revealed in a visual assemblage of his own photographic work merged with the cosmologies of centuries-old star charts. In viewing Andrew Beckham's work, we see depth and beauty, serenity and enlightenment, and we gain a certain reassurance that there is something greater than ourselves when we contemplate the universe with a sense of reverence and even awe. We also come to realize that we have a sacred duty to understand and respect our individual place within the world, so that we may take better care of that which we have come to know, no matter how small or large the scale.

Against the commonly held opinion that ancient Judaism was an artless culture, this sumptuously illustrated book offers new ways of looking at art in Jewish antiquity. Leading experts, under the editorship of Sarah Pearce, skilfully explore different functions of images in relation to their prohibition by the Second of the Ten Commandments. The visual world of ancient Judaism often reflects a tense confrontation between Mediterranean, artful classical culture and the image-filled, yet law-inspired biblical literature. Readers will encounter a rich collection of objects and texts analysed in different contexts, from Solomon’s Temple to late antiquity. The imageless God of monotheistic Judaism combated the polytheistic cults of Israel’s neighbours with the use of symbols. Figurative, floral and geometrical embellishments of synagogues served as decoration and not for worship. Narrative biblical scenes in the Dura-Europos synagogue played an educational and political role in Jewish society on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. Antique Jewish art exercised a profound influence on medieval Islam and even on the modern Western visual world. This book is aimed at both the scholarly world and all readers interested in religion and art.

Romans attached nuanced implications to color-terms which went beyond their literal meaning, using these terms as a form of cultural assessment, defining their social values and order. By analyzing the use and color words in specific contexts, we can gain greater insight into the Roman mind.

This is the first study to investigate the sources of the creative processes in the painting of Kazimir Malevich, from Neo-Primitivism to Suprematism, 1911-1920. These sources are found in 19th century scientific investigations into optics, especially those of Hermann von Helmholtz, the artist adapting the laws of optical light and colour and the laws of optical structures of seeing in space and in depth to his painting. Malevich’s creative processes culminated in his non-objective canvases, Suprematism, between 1915 and 1920, the painting of pure seeing.