First published in 1971 and now available for a younger generation with a new introduction by the author, Living Well Is the Best Revenge is Calvin Tomkins' now-classic account of the lives of Gerald and Sara Murphy, two American expatriates who formed an extraordinary circle of friends in France during the 1920s. First in Paris and then in the seaside town of Antibes, they played host to a cast of some of the most memorable artists and writers of the era, including Cole Porter, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Ernest Hemingway and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. It was in Paris that Gerald Murphy first encountered Cubist painting, which prompted him to embark on an all-too-brief career as a painter--roughly from 1922 to 1929--during which he produced 15 works, seven of which survive, and every one of which is a unique American modernist masterpiece. This dazzling phase of work was brought to a close in 1929, when one of the Murphys' sons, Patrick, was diagnosed with tuberculosis and the family returned to New York. When their second son, Boath, succumbed to meningitis in 1935, and Patrick's death followed shortly thereafter in 1937, Murphy hung up his brush. Despite the brevity of Murphy's oeuvre, the intensity of its conception and its recently acknowledged status as a crucial precedent to Pop art have elevated Murphy's reputation considerably. In 1974, The Museum of Modern Art mounted the first Gerald Murphy retrospective. Illustrated with nearly 70 photographs from the Murphys' family album and with a special section on Murphy's paintings, Living Well presents a fascinating Lost Generation chronicle as charming and enticing as the couple themselves.

Living well is the best revenge

Biographies & Memoirs

Calvin Tomkins

Arts & Literature

Avon/Books

Calvin Tomkins first discovered the work of Robert Rauschenberg in the late 1950s, when he began to look seriously at contemporary art. While gazing at Rauschenberg's painting Double Feature, Tomkins felt compelled to make some kind of literal connection to the work, and it is in that sprit that "for the last forty years it's been [his] ambition to write about contemporary art not as a critic or a judge, but as a participant." Tomkins has spent many of those years writing about Robert Rauschenberg, whom he rapidly came to see as "one of the most inventive and influential artists of his generation." So it seemed natural to make Rauschenberg the focus of Off the Wall, which deals with the radical changes that have made advanced visual art such a powerful force in the world. Off the Wall chronicles the astonishingly creative period of the 1950s and 1960s, a high point in American art. In his in his collaborations with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and as a pivotal figure linking abstract expressionism and pop art, Rauschenberg was part of a revolution during which artists moved art off the walls of museums and galleries and into the center of the social scene. Rauschenberg's vitally important and productive career spans this revolution, reaching beyond it to the present day. Featuring the artists and the art world surrounding Rauschenberg--from Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning to Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol, together with dealers Betty Parsons, and Leo Castelli, and the patron Peggy Guggenheim--Tomkins's stylish and witty portrait of one of America's most original and inspiring artists is fascinating, enlightening, and very entertaining.

Off the wall: Robert Rauschenberg and the art world of our time

DOUBLEDAY

Eric Hoffer: An American Odyssey

Dutton

The Other Hampton

Penguin??Books

Duchamp: A Biography

Random House]

Roy Lichtenstein: Mural With Blue Brushstoke

Arts & Photography

Roy Lichtenstein

Bob Adelman

History & Criticism

Harry N.Abrams, Inc.

An Actual Man: Michael Murphy and the Human Potential Movement Edited by Jay Ogilvy (Berkeley: Minuteman Press, 2010; 315pp., $19.95) Michael Murphy is not only the cofounder of Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California; he is also the author of the best-selling novel, Golf in the Kingdom, soon to be a major motion picture. Further, he is the author of several non-fiction books: The Future of the Body, and The Life we are Given, among others. But perhaps most important, he is the origin and guiding light of the human potential movement. Since the 1960s, Michael and Esalen have spawned the holistic health movement, the extension of eastern mysticism into American culture, biodynamic gardening, and a welter of other culturally significant trends from somatics and massage to the revisioning of philosophy. This book of essays was put together by 40 authors to honor Michael s 80th birthday. Its authors include such luminaries as Amory Lovins, Robert Reich, Ken Wilber, Riane Eisler, Ken Dychtwald, Mary Catherine Bateson, Robert Bellah, and Sam Keen. As the introduction by editor, Jay Ogilvy, concludes: We would do a disservice to our subject if we took the following essays as a series of disconnected dots, or as so many thank you notes from forty grateful fans. Taken as a group, taken as a whole, taken holistically, they portray a magnificent vision. Behind the humor, beneath the love, beyond the fun stories of outlaw escapades, there is a philosophy of human existence, a new psychology of hope, and a politics that can carry us beyond enmity. Michael Murphy s vision of our human potential, when seen in full, is nothing short of inspiring. Read all of these essays, beginning to end, and you will be a better person. Convince your friends to read them and we will have a better world.

An Actual Man, Michael Murphy and the Human Potential Movement

John Cleese

Robert W. Fuller

ROBERT B. REICH

Jay Ogilvy

Minuteman Press Berkeley

hard cover in slip case. Time - Life Library series, 200 pages fully illustrated, color and black and white art reproductions and photographs of the artist.

The World of Marcel Duchamp, 1887 (Time-Life Library of Art)

Time, Inc.

The Bride and the Bachelors, published here in a revised and expanded edition, is one of the essential art books of the last half-century. Its witty and readable accounts of the lives and work of Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Jean Tinguely, Robert Rauschenberg, and Merce Cunningham reveal the ways in which they influenced one another, and opened the way to new perspectives on the nature and purpose of art. The addition of Tomkins's more recent profile of Jasper Johns, as he reflects on his six-decade career, completes the cycle and provides fresh insights on the ever-shifting relationships between art and contemporary life. This edition includes a new introduction by the author, and forty pages of color illustrations.

The Bride and the Bachelors

GAGOSIAN GALLERY

Duchamp Et Son Temps 1887-1968

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Books by Calvin Tomkins