Stories of Art & Artists

<p><i>Stories of Art and Artists </i>gathers two centuries of stories from around the world. From Nathaniel Hawthorne&#146;s &#147;The Artist of the Beautiful&#148; and Albert Camus&#146;s &#147;The Artist at Work&#148; to Bernard Malamud&#146;s &#147;Rembrandt&#146;s Hat&#148; and Aimee Bender&#146;s &#147;The Color Master&#148; the tales collected here range from haunting fables about the power of art to vivid portraits of those who create. <br>Featured art forms include sculpture pottery architecture miniatures landscapes portraits and abstract painting illumined in brilliant stories by such great writers as Honor&#233; de Balzac Hermann Hesse Franz Kafka Marguerite Yourcenar John Berger William Boyd Doris Lessing Valerie Martin Julian Barnes Orhan Pamuk and A. S. Byatt. Writers have long been fascinated by the idea of artistic genius the relationship between portraits and their subjects the inspirational role of muses and the effects on artists of ambition failure and success. Their dazzling literary evocations of the visual arts&#151;using one art form to reflect on another&#151;make <i>Stories of Art and Artists</i> an irresistible gift for lovers of art of all kinds.</p>