?Most directors have one film for which they are known or possibly two,” said Francis Ford Coppola. ?Akira Kurosawa has eight or nine.” Through masterpieces such as Kagemusha, Seven Samurai, and High
?My idea of a writer: someone interested in ?everything.’” This declaration by Susan Sontag (1933?2004) seemed to reflect her own life as an essayist, diarist, filmmaker, playwright, and novelist writ
As an author, Henry Miller (1891?1980) was infamous for his explicit descriptions of sex, and many of his novels, from The Tropic of Cancer to Black Spring, were banned in the United States on grounds
In this cogent, accessible biography, Andy Stafford offers a new picture of the man and his work, one that helps us to understand him even as it acknowledges the complexity presented by his restless i
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) was perhaps the twentieth century’s most celebrated composer, a leading light of modernism and a restlessly creative artist. This new entry in the Critical Lives series tra
The most internationally acclaimed Japanese author of the twentieth century, Yukio Mishima (1925?70) was a prime candidate for the Nobel Prize. But the prolific author shocked the world in 1970 when h
Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), the most famous woman artist of American modernism in the 20th century and a pioneer in shaping abstract art, created a world without precedent. O’Keeffe expressed the gr
John Ruskin (1819-1900) was the most prominent art and architecture critic of his day. His books, pamphlets, and letters to the press had an influence on all classes of society, from road-menders to r
A playwright, poet, and activist, Bertolt Brecht (1898?1956) was known for his theory of the epic theater and his attempts to break down the division between high art and popular culture. He was also
