Living for Art is the life story of the eminent Dutch collector, art dealer, researcher and author Frits Lugt (1884-1970). Between 1901 and 1915 he worked for an Amsterdam auction house, which flourished thanks in no small measure to his efforts. In 1915 he started to collect paintings, drawings, prints and antiquities on his own account. While he collected great masters like Rembrandt, Dürer, Rubens, Van Dyck and Watteau, he did not neglect other artists and acquired some outstanding works ...

"The journey of the painter Vincent van Gogh" is the sequel to "The story of Vincent in Drenthe". In that book you can read what happened to Vincent when he stayed in Drenthe for three months in the autumn of 1883. His highs and lows, but especially the conclusion that Vincent himself drew about that stay. In Drenthe, Vincent discovered the purpose of his life, his destiny: to be a skilled and successful painter and no longer dependent on Theo's money.

His journey to that goal begins with his...

Keep It Moving

Throughout his life, Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669) was considered an exceptional artist by contemporary art lovers. In this highly original book, Ernst van de Wetering investigates why Rembrandt, from a very early age, was praised by high-placed connoisseurs like Constantijn Huygens. It turns out that Rembrandt, from his first endeavours in painting on, had embarked on a journey past all the 'foundations of the art of painting' which were considered essential in the seventeenth century. In h...

Nonagenarian Japanese artist is simultaneously one of the most famous and most mysterious artists on the planet. A wild child of the 1950s and 1960s, she emerged out of the international Fluxus movement to launch naked happenings in New York and went on to become a doyenne of that city's counter-cultural scene. In the early 1970s, she returned to Japan and by 1977 had checked herself in to a psychiatric hospital which has remained her home to this day. But, though she was removed from the wor...

A stunning visual biography of one of Japan's most famous historical artists, this book beautifully illustrates the story of Katsushika Hokusai.

In 1988 Dutch journalist Bamber Delver, interviewed the artist Leigh Bowery. By then, Leigh wasn’t world-famous yet but a well-known clubber in Blitz-scene of London. Leigh’s fashion career was just as wild as it was short-lived: he died in 1994, 33 years old. Decades after his death, Leigh Bowery’s influence is omnipresent. From Alexander McQueen to Cirque du Soleil, from Lady Gaga and Björk to the drag queens of RuPaul. Young artists around the globe admire his guts, his looks and fa...

Listening to the Voice of the Heart is an invitation to revisit your self-image, values, and to recognize your hidden desires, your secret dreams. At the same time, it brings the romanticism of one who inhabits their own dream and recognizes their weaknesses without dwelling in them.

It is an appeal to sensitivity, whether in artistic creation and appreciation, or in attention to affection and the beauty of everyday life.

I hope that by diving into these thought pills each reader can revisit ...