Taytana Grosman - On founding ULAE

"WHEN MY HUSBAND had his first heart attack in 1955, I knew I had to make a living. I remember one night, it was about two o’clock in the morning, and I was thinking, What shall I do? I hadn’t learned anything, I had no craft. So I said to myself, I have to start something. Probably it will be something I will do for the rest of my life, so it has to be worthwhile for me. I would like to contribute something. Whatever I start, I have to put in it everything, all my life experience, all that I love, and all that I am interested in. I decided I would like to publish. I would like to combine words and images and only words and images that I like." Tatyana Grosman -- Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped our Times, by Lynn Gilbert.

Enjoy this short and inspirational chapter from Particular Passions.

Louise Nevelson - Herstory.

"I dressed like a queen. Even then. I always dressed, and my family always saw that I could have very beautiful clothes. People thought if you looked like that and you already had expensive and gorgeous, expensive clothes and jewelry and everything, how could you use old woods in your work? There probably wasn’t one person on earth that understood what I was doing. At the time, you see, the work was different, old wood, nails, mirrors and glass, all the goddam things."

– Louise Nevelson, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', by Lynn Gilbert. The oral biography of Louise Nevelson, whose work and vision elevated sculpture to its current place of prominence in the arts.

Available at Apple and Amazon.

Louise Nevelson - Herstory.

"My family wanted me to be an artist, although there were no artists in the family. It was simply that they were interested in art, they liked the idea. I used to draw (horrible drawings they were) when I was a child, so they said, “Obviously she’s going to be an artist,” and I was pushed at it. My father was an architect and engineer, and he went to some trouble to find out which one of the women’s colleges in the East had the best art department, and he picked Smith. I think it did perhaps have the best, and its museum was already outstanding. It offered plenty of courses in drawing and painting and of course I took every one of those."

– Louise Nevelson, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times,' by Lynn Gilbert. The oral biography of Louise Nevelson, whose work and vision elevated sculpture to its current place of prominence in the arts.

Available at Apple and Amazon.

Dorothy Canning Miller – On Jasper Johns

"In the late 1950s, there was a group show at Castelli’s, and there was a little tiny painting of an American flag. I said to Leo, “Who did that?” He said, “Oh, he’s wonderful, that’s Jasper Johns.” Some time later Castelli gave Johns his first one-man show. I remember it was a Saturday morning, it was opening day but it was raining. Alfred Barr got there before I did because he lived uptown. He called me and said, “How fast can you get here?” I said, “Twenty minutes if I take a taxi.” When I got there he was alone in the gallery. The great variety of Jasper’s works was impressive. There were the numbers, the letters, the targets, all sorts of things. Leo Castelli was very considerate. He left us alone to discuss which ones the museum should buy. We knew we should buy several, the only way to get the range of the work. They were very inexpensive. After much discussion we decided on four that we should bring before our Collections Committee. We could not give any assurance that they would be bought, but we called Leo out and said, “These are the ones we’d like to have. Will you send them over?” He said, “Fine, would you like to meet the artist?” And poor Jasper had been sitting in a little inner room no bigger than a closet hearing everything we’d said for an hour."

— Dorothy Canning Miller, in Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped Our Times.

Louise Nevelson - Herstory.

"What I see about humanity makes me a pessimist. But in my work I’m an optimist. Look at humanity, look at what’s happening on this earth. I think anyone who takes the attitude that they can do something that will change the world is very naive. For instance, I’ve taught art. I’ll say to my students, “Well, what do you want?” “I want perfection,” they say. I say, “Well, who in the hell do you think you are that you can demand perfection?” It’s nonexistent anyway. Words like ruthless and sacrifice are kind of false judgments. You don’t do it that way. When you have labor pains, you don’t say, Could I have done it this way or that way? You go into labor. Those words belong to what we call three dimensions. I didn’t think like that. Living the way I did... see, I broke all the traditions. If I wanted a lover, I had a lover. I didn’t have to get married again. So I had courage to live as I understood it. I thought that art was more important than other things. I work for myself. It was only because I had so little confidence in the world that I wanted to build my own world, not the world, my world."

— Louise Nevelson, in Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped The World.

The oral biography of Louise Nevelson, whose work and vision elevated sculpture to its current place of prominence in the arts. Available at Apple and Amazon.

Dorothy Canning Miller – On New York

"I used to get offered directorships or other good jobs in other cities, but I never considered them because I knew the only place where I wanted to be was New York. Here’s where it’s cooking. There’s no other place like it. I wouldn’t live anywhere else. People say, “Don’t you want to retire to your little country house?” I say, “Oh, I’m not leaving New York, good God, no, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

- Dorothy Canning Miller, in 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times.'

The oral biography of Dorothy Canning Miller, who as a curator of seminal exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art championed cutting-edge artists, available at itunes and Amazon, for $0.99.

Dorothy Canning Miller – On Investing in Art

"I have done a good deal in helping private collectors to buy art and I have been fortunate in that they have all bought because they love art. Once in a while someone has called me on the telephone to say, ‘‘I’d like to buy something that’s going to be eight times as valuable.” I say, “Well, I’m not interested. I only buy things myself because I’m crazy about them and I advise other people to do the same. If it becomes more valuable, that’s just good luck.” I don’t help anybody who says he wants to buy for investment purposes, I don’t like that as a reason for buying."

Dorothy Canning Miller, from 'Particular Passions: Talks with Women Who Shaped Our Times', The oral biography of Dorothy Canning Miller, who as a curator of seminal exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art championed cutting-edge artists, available at itunes and Amazon, for $0.99.

Tatyana Grosman – On founding ULAE

"When my husband had his first heart attack in 1955, I knew I had to make a living. I remember one night, it was about two o’clock in the morning, and I was thinking, What shall I do? I hadn’t learned anything, I had no craft. So I said to myself, I have to start something. Probably it will be something I will do for the rest of my life, so it has to be worthwhile for me. I would like to contribute something. Whatever I start, I have to put in it everything, all my life experience, all that I love, and all that I am interested in. I decided I would like to publish. I would like to combine words and images and only words and images that I like."

Tatyana Grosman - Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Changed Our Times. The oral biography of Tatyana Grosman, who founded a unique publishing house that elevated print making to a fine art, and nurtured the careers of artists who became giants of twentieth-century art.

Enjoy this complimentary chapter from the book, 'Particular Passions: Talks With Women Who Shaped our Times.'

MOTHERHOOD - AN EVOLVING ROLE

"Parenthood remains the greatest single preserve of the amateur." — Alvin Toffler.

Madonna and Child by Ghirlandaio.  

The cult for Madonna and child, seen in illustrious altarpieces and frescoes, in every church throughout Europe, started in the early 13th century.  A thousand years later at Christmas time the cult is still preserved on holiday cards.   But the venerated images of the past no longer reflect life as we live it now.

Betty Friedan spoke about her focus, her work, her life…and also her children in Particular Passions: Talks with Women who Have Shaped our Times: “my public life…has been exciting…my frivolous life has been fun too...and my three kids..they may think I would have been a better mother if it hadn't been for the women's movement, but I don't think so.”

Read the chapter, an oral biography of Betty Friedan, who fueled the women’s liberation movement that continues today around the globe. For just $.99 be inspired. Learn from her challenges, accomplishments and mistakes.

As one review said: "One of those rare, rare books that pick your life up, turn it around and point it in the right direction." — K.T.Maclay

This chapter is available on Amazon and Apple.

ADA LOUISE HUXTABLE -1921-2013, AMERICA'S MOST INFLUENTIAL ARCHITECTURAL CRITIC

"We shape our buildings;  thereafter they shape us." — Winston Churchill.

“What I’m trying to do with criticism is not a simple, one-track thing. I am very concerned with my own feelings about the subjects I write about. I am concerned with the quality of the cities we’re building, with how they serve people and how they contribute to the arts that are involved in building them...

My first consideration is to meet a set of standards that is terribly important to me. My next consideration is to share those standards with people who should be concerned and who should care who are concerned and do care. As for criticism, analyzing and discussing how these various subjects or buildings or actions fit into those standards is apt to engender a sense of pleasure or a sense of outrage, all of which comes through in the writing.”

– Ada Louise Huxtable, in Particular Passions: Talks with Women who Have Shaped our Times.

Particular Passions profiles forty-six American women who forged successful careers in fields that had traditionally been open only to men. The women were pioneers in the arts and sciences, athletics and law, mathematics and politics, among other disciplines. They overcame countless obstacles to build fulfilling lives for themselves, and in so doing opened doors for new generations of women, not just in America, but around the world.

The collective power of these oral biographies will inspire women, and men, to forge meaningful lives and empower them to pursue dreams of their own.

From one of the many stellar reviews: “Every woman owes it to herself to look up Particular Passions — borrow the volume from your public library. Or, better still, buy it and put it with your favorite novel or poetry collection to sustain you. Every story in the book is an inspiration. This book is a joy and a tonic.” — Pioneer Press and Dispatch.

Ada Louise Huxtable's oral biography is included in "Particular Passions: Talks with Women who Shaped Our Times."  The complete book and 12 individual chapters: Amazon http://amzn.to/UH8KaH , Apple http://bit.ly/S7rMDr

For more information on Particular Passions: http://tinyurl.com/bge2lwd