Pilgrimage (inscribed to artist Chuck Close)
NY: Random House, 2011. First edition. Hardcover. A standout association copy, inscribed on the title page in the year of publication: "For Chuck [Close], love Annie, NY 2011." Chuck Close is the celebrated contemporary painter, one of the most famous of our times, known for his large-scale photorealist and pixilated portraits (his most expensive painting sold for $4.3 million at auction in 2005). Among numerous accolades, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Art by Bill Clinton. Leibovitz, too, is one of our most celebrated contemporary artists, also known for her portraits, but in Pilgrimage she travels the country without an agenda or an assignment, photographing places of pilgrimage that interest her, often the homes and belongings of famous figures (another kind of portrait). Notably, for us at Rural Hours, she photographs Walden Pond and many of the other Transcendentalists homes in Concord, including Emerson's and Louisa May Alcott's, and out West trains her lens on John Muir and Ansel Adams as well. Other figures documented include Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Eleanor Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Chester French, Georgia O'Keefe, Martha Graham, Elvis Presley, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, Annie Oakley, and Pete Seeger; other places include Niagra Falls, Gettysburg, Monticello, and Yellowstone. See photos for the full table of contents. With an introduction by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin (who lives in Concord). A fine quarto in cream cloth in a very good jacket with sunning to spine and wear to all edges, especially corners and the spine crown. Lacking the wraparound title band as originally issued, but acquirable. A fantastic association between major contemporary artists, arguably the most well-known American portraitists of the last century. Provenance: a bookseller in Massachusetts who acquired a substantial portion of Close's library. Fine / Very good. Item #1896
ISBN: 9780375505089
Price: $15,000.00 save 5% $14,250.00