Art / Memoir / Film & Theater
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Stars
in My Eyes
Created in the 1970s and 1980s, Bachardy's drawings and prose sketches capture many celebrities near the ends of their careers (Ruby Keeler, Vincente Minnelli, Laurence Olivier) and others at the height of their stardom (Jack Nicholson, Mia Farrow, Linda Ronstadt). Bette Davis offers to cook him lunch and haplessly overboils the beets, sits for three drawings, then renders her judgment: "Yup, that's the old bag." Barbara Stanwyck threatens that she might scandalize him with her swearing. Aaron Copland muses, "Well, it makes me look benign." Ellsworth Kelly admits to being a fan of The Road Warrior. Jerry Brown commissions an official portrait. "For more than thirty-five years I have obeyed my early, instinctive urge to complete each work I do in a single sitting. The departure of my sitter is like the breaking of a spell. I never alter any detail of the work I've done once the sitting has ended."—Don Bachardy "If Don Bachardy weren't such an insightful, witty raconteur, sitting for such a demanding artist (I've done it) would be just too difficult. And if he weren't one of the most elegant, probing draftsmen in captivity, Stars in My Eyes would be, well, just portraits of stars. But Bachardy is both a great conversationalist-in-print and a fine, fine artist. The combination is unbeatable."—Peter Plagens, art critic, Newsweek "Don Bachardy surely ranks among the great portrait artists of our time. This impressive collection captures the inner reality as well as the compelling physical detail of an important and varied gallery of celebrities. In his mastery of image and word, Bachardy has few equals. We are fortunate to have this important book."—Donald Spoto, author of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life; and The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock Don Bachardy
lives
in Santa Monica, California. His drawings and paintings are in
the collections of many major art museums, including the Metropolitan
in New York, the de Young in San Francisco, the Fogg in Cambridge,
the Smithsonian in Washington, and the National Portrait Gallery
in London. He has published six other books of his drawings,
including Christopher Isherwood: Last Drawings and Drawings
of the Male Nude, and he is the coeditor of Where Joy
Resides: A Christopher Isherwood Reader. |
September 2000 184 pp. 55 b/w drawings 8 x 10 ISBN 0-299-16730-5 Cloth $34.95 t To
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