While Tolstoy may be best remembered as the talented Russian author of such monumentally great works as "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina", he also wrote prolifically in essay format on various subjects. In this volume Tolstoy turns his attention to the study of aesthetics and art in all its forms. Based on fifteen years of research, "What is Art?" is Tolstoy's intellectual exposition into answering the titular question. Rich with criticism for his...

"Legendary art restorer and spy Gabriel Allon joins forces with a brilliant and beautiful master-thief to track down the world's most valuable missing painting but soon finds himself in a desperate race to prevent an unthinkable conflict between Russia and the West."--

Reprint. Originally published: New York: H.N. Abrams 1975. Text and captioned illustrations present selections of the artist's work and a brief biographical sketch.

When some quirky art donated to a school fundraising effort to help a Pakistani American family, victims of a possible hate crime, is revealed to be an unknown work by a famous outsider artist, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, adults and teenagers alike debate who should get the money and begin to question each other's motivations.

"The Maine air is bitterly cold when Dr. Miranda Jones arrives at the family home after a busy lecture tour. But her blood turns to ice when she suddenly feels the knife against her throat."--BOOK JACKET. "The unseen assailant steals her bags, slashes her tires, and disappears. Deeply shaken, Miranda is determined to put the experience behind her. Distraction comes when she is summoned to Italy - to verify the authenticity of a Renaissance bronze...

Kim Lord is an avant-garde figure, feminist icon, and agent provocateur in the L.A. art scene. Her groundbreaking new exhibition Still Lives is composed of self-portraits depicting herself as famous, murdered women--the Black Dahlia, Chandra Levy, Nicole Brown Simpson, among many others--and the works are as compelling as they are disturbing, implicating a culture that is too accustomed to violence against women. As the city's richest art patrons...

"The true story of the world's most prolific art thief--a spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, from the bestselling author of The Stranger in the Woods. For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Sťphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly ten years--in museums and cathedrals all over Europe--Breitwieser,...

Vincent van Gogh's life and work are so intertwined that it is hardly possible to observe one without thinking of the other. Van Gogh has indeed become the incarnation of the suffering, misunderstood martyr of modern art, the emblem of the artist as an outsider. An article, published in 1890, gave details about van Gogh's illness. The author of the article saw the painter as "a terrible and demented genius, often sublime, sometimes grotesque, always...