BELLAS ARTES

The first book to explore the extraordinary musical life and remarkable paintings of one of America's greatest ever songwriters. Best known for having written and produced some of the seminal records of American popular culture--from 'Big Girls Don't Cry' for the Four Seasons to 'Silence is Golden' for the Tremeloes and 'Lady Marmalade' for LaBelle--Bob Crewe was a multifaceted artist for whom a passion for painting and the visual arts provided a lifelong counterbalance to music. Collected here are more than 80 of Bob Crewe's artworks, stretching from his first forays into abstract expressionism in the 1950s and 1960s to more complex, tactile compositions made on his full-time return to painting in the 1990s--accompanied by archival images and ephemera that reflect Crewe's simultaneous contribution to popular music. Essays by Jessica May and Peter Plagens explore the development of an artist whose influences ranged from Rauschenberg and Johns to Warhol and Bacon; legendary record producer Andrew Loog Oldham captures the period of radical experimentalism in which Crewe wrote many of the most memorable songs in the canon of modern pop; and Donald Albrecht's introduction ties together the many complementary aspects of Crewe's personal and creative lives.

The first book from Drake/Anderson illustrates the award-winning firm’s opulent modernist design with interiors that are as unique and expressive as they are inviting and livable.

Desde comienzos de la década de 1970, Bruce Springsteen canta a Estados Unidos, a su clase trabajadora, a los trotamundos y a los corazones rotos. Canta a las alegrías y frustraciones de su infancia en Nueva Jersey, al amor, a las mujeres hermosas y a los coches, a la velocidad, a los grandes espacios, a la libertad… Son los protagonistas de "Born to Run", "Thunder Road", "Born In The USA", "The River" o "Streets Of Philadelphia". Con cien millones de discos vendidos en todo el mundo, Springsteen ha entrado en el círculo de los mejores cantantes de todos los tiempos. Y nadie mejor que él merece ser considerado "el Boss" del rock.

The life and times of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1526/30–1569) were marked by stark cultural conflict. He witnessed religious wars, the Duke of Alba’s brutal rule as governor of the Netherlands, and the palpable effects of the Inquisition. To this day, the Flemish artist remains shrouded in mystery. We know neither where nor exactly when he was born. But while early scholarship emphasized the vernacular character of his painting and graphic work, modern research has attached greater importance to its humanistic content. Starting out as a print designer for publisher Hieronymus Cock, Bruegel produced numerous print series that were distributed throughout Europe. These depicted vices and virtues alongside jolly peasant festivals and sweeping landscape panoramas. He then increasingly turned to painting, working for the cultural elite of Antwerp and Brussels. Rather than idealizing reality, he bravely confronted the issues of his day, addressing the horrors of religious warfare and taking a critical stand against the institution of the Church. To this end, Bruegel developed his own pictorial language of dissidence, lacing innocuous everyday scenes with subliminal statements in order to escape repercussions.

New homes, featuring interiors, gardens, and furniture from London-based architect John Simpson, famed designer of the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace and one of the world’s leading practitioners of New Classicism. Inviting, perfect in proportion, exquisite in detail—such are a few of the ways to describe homes designed by John Simpson. Well known for his work with the British royal family at Buckingham and Kensington palaces and for his buildings at Eton College in the U.K. and at the University of Notre Dame in the U.S., he is perhaps most brilliant at the level of the house and home. Building Beautiful is an invitation to enter the work of this master designer, as one might visit with a treasured friend. From a dream made real within a Venetian palazzo—a former seventeenth-century near-ruin, brought back to glorious, fancifully detailed life—to an English countryside cottage with a thatched roof, the featured homes are expressions of Simpson’s unerring eye and extraordinary sense of beauty. Here we find drama in contrasts of scale and the seductive effects of light, where a cozy reading nook opens to an expansive living room with a double-height ceiling that nevertheless feels not overly large but rather just right. This is Simpson’s subtle art—a mastery of scale, balance, and a pervading sense of elegance.