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An Object Of Beauty
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Book Synopsis An Object of Beauty by : Steve Martin
Download or read book An Object of Beauty written by Steve Martin and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2010-11-23 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lacey Yeager is young, captivating, and ambitious enough to take the NYC art world by storm. Groomed at Sotheby's and hungry to keep climbing the social and career ladders put before her, Lacey charms men and women, old and young, rich and even richer with her magnetic charisma and liveliness. Her ascension to the highest tiers of the city parallel the soaring heights--and, at times, the dark lows--of the art world and the country from the late 1990s through today.
Book Synopsis The Metaphysics of Beauty by : Nick Zangwill
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Beauty written by Nick Zangwill and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-31 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In chapters ranging from "The Beautiful, the Dainty, and the Dumpy" to "Skin-deep or In the Eye of the Beholder?" Nick Zangwill investigates the nature of beauty as we conceive it, and as it is in itself. The notion of beauty is currently attracting increased interest, particularly in philosophical aesthetics and in discussions of our experiences and judgments about art. In The Metaphysics of Beauty, Zangwill argues that it is essential to beauty that it depends on the ordinary features of things. He uses this principle to defend the notion of the aesthetic, to call for a version of aesthetic formalism, and to reconsider the reality of beauty. The Metaphysics of Beauty brings beauty to the center of intellectual consciousness in a manner informed by contemporary metaphysics and engages with beauty as an enduring object of human thought and experience.
Book Synopsis Beauty: A Very Short Introduction by : Roger Scruton
Download or read book Beauty: A Very Short Introduction written by Roger Scruton and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2011-03-24 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that is itself beautifully written, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores this timeless concept, asking what makes an object--either in art, in nature, or the human form--beautiful.--From publisher description.
Book Synopsis Only a Promise of Happiness by : Alexander Nehamas
Download or read book Only a Promise of Happiness written by Alexander Nehamas and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neither art nor philosophy was kind to beauty during the twentieth century. Much modern art disdains beauty, and many philosophers deeply suspect that beauty merely paints over or distracts us from horrors. Intellectuals consigned the passions of beauty to the margins, replacing them with the anemic and rarefied alternative, "aesthetic pleasure." In Only a Promise of Happiness, Alexander Nehamas reclaims beauty from its critics. He seeks to restore its place in art, to reestablish the connections among art, beauty, and desire, and to show that the values of art, independently of their moral worth, are equally crucial to the rest of life. Nehamas makes his case with characteristic grace, sensitivity, and philosophical depth, supporting his arguments with searching studies of art and literature, high and low, from Thomas Mann's Death in Venice and Manet's Olympia to television. Throughout, the discussion of artworks is generously illustrated. Beauty, Nehamas concludes, may depend on appearance, but this does not make it superficial. The perception of beauty manifests a hope that life would be better if the object of beauty were part of it. This hope can shape and direct our lives for better or worse. We may discover misery in pursuit of beauty, or find that beauty offers no more than a tantalizing promise of happiness. But if beauty is always dangerous, it is also a pressing human concern that we must seek to understand, and not suppress.
Book Synopsis The Beauty of Everyday Things by : Soetsu Yanagi
Download or read book The Beauty of Everyday Things written by Soetsu Yanagi and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2019-01-31 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The daily lives of ordinary people are replete with objects, common things used in commonplace settings. These objects are our constant companions in life. As such, writes Soetsu Yanagi, they should be made with care and built to last, treated with respect and even affection. They should be natural and simple, sturdy and safe - the aesthetic result of wholeheartedly fulfilling utilitarian needs. They should, in short, be things of beauty. In an age of feeble and ugly machine-made things, these essays call for us to deepen and transform our relationship with the objects that surround us. Inspired by the work of the simple, humble craftsmen Yanagi encountered during his lifelong travels through Japan and Korea, they are an earnest defence of modest, honest, handcrafted things - from traditional teacups to jars to cloth and paper. Objects like these exemplify the enduring appeal of simplicity and function: the beauty of everyday things.
Book Synopsis Speaking of Beauty by : Denis Donoghue
Download or read book Speaking of Beauty written by Denis Donoghue and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A foremost critic of the English language here reflects on beauty and the language that it inspires in authors from Kant to Keats, Hawthorne to Housman. "An excellent and eloquent book.”--James Wood, New York Times Book Review "A beautiful book about beauty. Enormously learned, allusive, recuperative, and citational, it is a passionate meditation on what has been said about beauty in the West from the Greeks to the present day.”--J. Hillis Miller "Donoghue talks . . . with a delightful informality and absence of dogma. . . . One of the most charming features of Denis Donoghue’s book is his appendix of 'afterwords,’ brief quotations on beauty from sundry writers.”--John Bayley, New York Review of Books "Continuously fascinating, continuously readable, the book speaks of beauty, and of speakers of beauty, in its own calm, steady voice. You won’t want to lay it down.”--Hugh Kenner
Book Synopsis The Line of Beauty by : Alan Hollinghurst
Download or read book The Line of Beauty written by Alan Hollinghurst and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-12-17 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Man Booker Prize Named a Best Book of the Century by The New York Times Book Review International Bestseller From acclaimed author Alan Hollinghurst, a sweeping novel about class, sex, and money during four extraordinary years of change and tragedy. In the summer of 1983, twenty-year-old Nick Guest moves into an attic room in the Notting Hill home of the Feddens: conservative Member of Parliament Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel, and their two children, Toby-whom Nick had idolized at Oxford-and Catherine, who is highly critical of her family's assumptions and ambitions. As the boom years of the eighties unfold, Nick, an innocent in the world of politics and money, finds his life altered by the rising fortunes of this glamorous family. His two vividly contrasting love affairs, one with a young black man who works as a clerk and one with a Lebanese millionaire, dramatize the dangers and rewards of his own private pursuit of beauty, a pursuit as compelling to Nick as the desire for power and riches among his friends. Richly textured, emotionally charged, disarmingly comic, this is a major work by one of our finest writers.
Book Synopsis The Pleasure of My Company by : Steve Martin
Download or read book The Pleasure of My Company written by Steve Martin and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2003-10-01 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of Shopgirl comes the tender story of a troubled man who finds love, and life, in the most unexpected place. Daniel resides in his Santa Monica apartment, living much of his life as a bystander: He watches from his window as the world goes by, and his only relationships seem to be with people who barely know he exists. He passes the time idly filling out contest applications, counting ceiling tiles, and estimating the wattage of light bulbs. It is through Daniel's growing attachment to Clarissa, and to Teddy, that he finally gains the courage to begin to engage the world outside, and in doing so, he discovers love, and life, in the most surprising places. Filled with his trademark humor, tenderness, and out and out hilarious wordplay, The Pleasure of My Company is a tour de force sure to delight all of Steve Martin's fans.
Book Synopsis On Beauty and Being Just by : Elaine Scarry
Download or read book On Beauty and Being Just written by Elaine Scarry and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have we become beauty-blind? For two decades or more in the humanities, various political arguments have been put forward against beauty: that it distracts us from more important issues; that it is the handmaiden of privilege; and that it masks political interests. In On Beauty and Being Just Elaine Scarry not only defends beauty from the political arguments against it but also argues that beauty does indeed press us toward a greater concern for justice. Taking inspiration from writers and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Marcel Proust, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch as well as her own experiences, Scarry offers up an elegant, passionate manifesto for the revival of beauty in our intellectual work as well as our homes, museums, and classrooms. Scarry argues that our responses to beauty are perceptual events of profound significance for the individual and for society. Presenting us with a rare and exceptional opportunity to witness fairness, beauty assists us in our attention to justice. The beautiful object renders fairness, an abstract concept, concrete by making it directly available to our sensory perceptions. With its direct appeal to the senses, beauty stops us, transfixes us, fills us with a "surfeit of aliveness." In so doing, it takes the individual away from the center of his or her self-preoccupation and thus prompts a distribution of attention outward toward others and, ultimately, she contends, toward ethical fairness. Scarry, author of the landmark The Body in Pain and one of our bravest and most creative thinkers, offers us here philosophical critique written with clarity and conviction as well as a passionate plea that we change the way we think about beauty.
Book Synopsis The Sense of Beauty by : George Santayana
Download or read book The Sense of Beauty written by George Santayana and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the introduction to this new edition, John McCormick, reminds us that The Sense of Beauty is the first work in aesthetics written in the United States. Santayana was versed in the history of his subject, from Plato and Aristotle to Schopenhauer and Taine in the nineteenth century. Santayana took as his task a complete rethinking of the idea that beauty is embedded in objects. Rather, beauty is an emotion, a value, and a sense of the good. In this aesthetics was unlike ethics: not a correction of evil or pursuit of the virtuous. Rather it is a pleasure that residues in the sense of self. The work is divided into chapters on the materials of beauty, form, and expression. A good many of Santayana's later works are presaged by this early effort. And this volume also anticipates the development of art as a movement as well as a value apart from other aspects of life.
Download or read book Born Standing Up written by Steve Martin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Steve Martin has been an international star for over thirty years. Here, for the first time, he looks back to the beginning of his career and charmingly evokes the young man he once was. Born in Texas but raised in California, Steve was seduced early by the comedy shows that played on the radio when the family travelled back and forth to visit relatives. When Disneyland opened just a couple of miles away from home, an enchanted Steve was given his first chance to learn magic and entertain an audience. He describes how he noted the reaction to each joke in a ledger - 'big laugh' or 'quiet' - and assiduously studied the acts of colleagues, stealing jokes when needed. With superb detail, Steve recreates the world of small, dark clubs and the fear and exhilaration of standing in the spotlight. While a philosophy student at UCLA, he worked hard at local clubs honing his comedy and slowly attracting a following until he was picked up to write for TV. From here on, Steve Martin became an acclaimed comedian, packing out venues nationwide. One night, however, he noticed empty seats and realised he had 'reached the top of the rollercoaster'. BORN STANDING UP is a funny and riveting chronicle of how Steve Martin became the comedy genius we now know and is also a fascinating portrait of an era.
Download or read book What We Keep written by Bill Shapiro and published by Running Press Adult. This book was released on 2018-09-25 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With contributions from Cheryl Strayed, Mark Cuban, Ta-Nahesi Coates, Melinda Gates, Joss Whedon, James Patterson, and many more -- this fascinating collection gives us a peek into 150 personal treasures and the secret histories behind them. All of us have that one object that holds deep meaning--something that speaks to our past, that carries a remarkable story. Bestselling author Bill Shapiro collected this sweeping range of stories--he talked to everyone from renowned writers to Shark Tank hosts, from blackjack dealers to teachers, truckers, and nuns, even a reformed counterfeiter--to reveal the often hidden, always surprising lives of objects.
Book Synopsis On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by : Ocean Vuong
Download or read book On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous written by Ocean Vuong and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller • Nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction • Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, a first love, and the redemptive power of storytelling New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “A lyrical work of self-discovery that’s shockingly intimate and insistently universal…Not so much briefly gorgeous as permanently stunning.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post “This is one of the best novels I’ve ever read...Ocean Vuong is a master. This book a masterpiece.”—Tommy Orange, author of There There and Wandering Stars On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard. With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years. Named a Best Book of the Year by: GQ, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, Library Journal, TIME, Esquire, The Washington Post, Apple, Good Housekeeping, The New Yorker, The New York Public Library, Elle.com, The Guardian, The A.V. Club, NPR, Lithub, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Wall Street Journal Magazine, and more!
Download or read book Shopgirl written by Steve Martin and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2001-07-01 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most acclaimed and beloved entertainers, Steve Martin is quickly becoming recognized as a gorgeous writer capable of being at once melancholy and tart, achingly innocent and astonishingly ironic (Elle). A frequent contributor to both The New Yorker and the New York Times as well as the author of the New York Times bestseller Pure Drivel, Martin is once again poised to capture the attention of readers with his debut novella, a delightful depiction of life and love. The shopgirl is Mirabelle, a beautiful aspiring artist who pays the rent by selling gloves at the Beverly Hills Neiman Marcus. She captures the attention of Ray Porter, a wealthy, lonely businessman. As Ray and Mirabelle tentatively embark on a relationship, they both struggle to decipher the language of love--with consequences that are both comic and heartbreaking. Filled with the kind of witty, discerning observations that have brought Steve Martin incredible critical success, Shopgirl is a work of disarming tenderness.
Book Synopsis Symptom of Beauty by : Francette Pacteau
Download or read book Symptom of Beauty written by Francette Pacteau and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For a woman in the Western world, there is no escaping beauty. Either she possesses it, or she lacks it. If she lacks it, she may hope to gain it. If she already has it, she will certainly lose it. But what is "it"? Not an objective thing, Francette Pacteau tells us, but a generic term for an unspecifiable number of psychological experiences in the mind of the observer. What these experiences are, what causes them, and how they manifest themselves as a notion of beauty is the subject of this book. Less interested in the contingent object of desire than the fantasy that frames it, Pacteau considers the staging of the aesthetic emotion. Her analysis extends from the Classical ideals of beauty, through Renaissance poetry to the recent formulations of Hollywood. Her book is an ambitious attempt to describe the mise-en-scène of beauty within a particular field of representations – that of the beauty of a woman.
Book Synopsis The Thing The Book by : Jonn Herschend
Download or read book The Thing The Book written by Jonn Herschend and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2014-09-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What exactly is a book? This wildly inventive and thought-provoking volume asks that question of more than 30 of today's top creative visionaries, from Ed Ruscha to Miranda July, John Baldessari to Jonathan Lethem. Each traditional element of a book—from endpapers to footnotes—is assigned to a different artist or writer invited to use the space as a creative playground. The result is a collaborative group art project like no other. A ribbon bookmark by David Shrigley, page numbers by Tauba Auerbach, endnotes by Rick Moody—each contribution surprising and brilliant. This one-of-a-kind book will entrance anyone who appreciates art, literature, and the surprising possibilities that emerge when the two collide.
Book Synopsis A Wealth of Pigeons by : Steve Martin
Download or read book A Wealth of Pigeons written by Steve Martin and published by Celadon Books. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER • WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER • LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER “I've always looked upon cartooning as comedy’s last frontier. I have done stand-up, sketches, movies, monologues, awards show introductions, sound bites, blurbs, talk show appearances, and tweets, but the idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me. I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny. You can understand that I was deeply suspicious of these people who are actually funny.” So writes the multitalented comedian Steve Martin in his introduction to A Wealth of Pigeons: A Cartoon Collection. In order to venture into this lauded territory of cartooning, he partnered with the heralded New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss. Steve shared caption and cartoon ideas, Harry provided impeccable artwork, and together they created this collection of humorous cartoons and comic strips, with amusing commentary about their collaboration throughout. The result: this gorgeous, funny, singular book, perfect to give as a gift or to buy for yourself.
