Jack Swanson's autobiographical fast-paced book that powerfully captures the "art fever" that enthralled the American public over the past two decades. Swanson, a colorful entrepreneur & great storyteller, recalls his reckless youth in South Texas, Marine Corp days in the Far East, the opening of his own gallery chain at the age of twenty-eight, & his twenty-five years in the art gallery business. CONFESSIONS OF AN ART DEALER carefully reflects an insider's view into the art world combined with a firsthand account of the billion dollar Salvador Dali art fraud. Swanson's style is funny, provocative & uplifting as he tells of his romantic exploits laced with revealing tales about the changing stable of artists he worked with over the years. CONFESSIONS OF AN ART DEALER includes all the elements of great drama from sex, drugs, conspiracies, fame to courtroom face-offs. As we learn how Swanson turned his retail art gallery business into a multimillion dollar enterprise, we also discover how hundreds of gallery owners successfully conspired to sell bogus prints to an unsuspecting public--secrets the gallery industry would prefer to have swept under the rug. (Swanson is quick to point out that he never sold any of the bogus prints mentioned in his expose). This art scam went on for twenty years before the federal indictments were finally issued. As informative as it is entertaining, CONFESSIONS is an almost impossible autobiography to put down. This book has it all--the quest for love, the backdrop of San Francisco & Northern California, told by an art dealer who lives life to the fullest with his "Midas touch." Order from: Vitality Publications, 111 Maiden Lane, San Francisco, CA 94108. Telephone: (415) 433-9091; FAX (415) 433-1030.

What's really happening behind the scenes in the high-stakes art world? Steven Maier shares his hair-raising and often hilarious stories from his 40] years as an art dealer to the stars and to the not-so-starry. From Janet Jackson to Anthony Quinn, from Dali to Picasso, he's seen it all and shares his true-life encounters and rollicking adventures in a no-holds-barred expose. "Like One Thousand and One Nights, Maier's 100 stories of the art world are part audacious expose, part memoir, and part history of four crazy decades filled with Hollywood stars, scoundrels, artistic geniuses, and hustlers. For a thrilling, sometimes sad, and always entertaining inside look at the art world, read Gallery Confidential." -Charles Levin, Amazon Bestselling Author of the NOT SO DEAD Trilogy How does a creative young man go from being a decorative house painter to becoming a successful art dealer traveling the world and then finding a third career as the artist Sonny Pops, Hawaii's Ambassador of Nu'u Pop? As Maier says, Gallery Confidential is a dog-eared survival manual. A must-read for anyone that buys, sells, or looks at art or just wants to hop on an irreverent roller-coaster ride of a new age story. What does it mean to be an artist and sell your work? What do you do when you face adversity, like opening your dream art gallery a week before 9/11, and fail? How do you pick yourself back up? How do you carry $200,000 in cash on an airplane? The answer to these questions and more resonate in the lively anecdotes that make up the life of a man well-lived. Pick up your copy of Gallery Confidential today. Pour yourself a drink, sit back, and explore the art world most of us have never seen.

One of the most important German artists of the twentieth century, Max Beckmann was labeled a "degenerate artist" by the Nazis and chose exile. His artistic production encompassed the realism and figural themes of his early works to the provocatively blunt portraiture, critical urban views, and richly layered symbolic works for which he is now universally recognized. Although he was a prolific writer, his written work has never before been collected and translated into English. Beckmann is known for the depth, pungency, and tremendous sensuous force of his works; only in the last twenty years have we come to learn more about his personal life. Self-Portrait in Words maps out Beckmann's life and draws attention to the occasions on or for which he produced his writings, to the importance writing had for him as a form of expression, and to both the contemporary and personal references of his ideas and images.

Sacred and Stolen is the memoir of an art museum director with the courage to reveal what goes on behind the scenes. Gary Vikan lays bare the messy underbelly of museum life: looted antiquities, crooked dealers, deluded collectors, duplicitous public officials, fakes, inside thefts, bribery, and failed exhibitions. These backstories, at once shocking and comical, reveal a man with a taste for adventure, an eagerness to fan the flames of excitement, and comfort with the chaos that often ensued. A Minnesota kid who started out as a printer’s devil in his father’s small-town newspaper, Vikan ended up as the director of The Walters Art Museum, a gem of a museum in Baltimore. Sacred and Stolen reveals his quest to bring the “holy” into the museum experience as he struggles to reconcile his passion for acquiring sacred works of art with his suspicion that they were stolen. The cast of characters in his many adventures include the elegant French oil heiress, Dominique de Menil, the notorious Turkish smuggler, Aydin Dikmen, his slippery Dutch dealer, Michel van Rijn, the inscrutable and implacable Patriarchs of Ethiopia and Georgia, and the charismatic President of Georgia, Eduard Shevardnadze—along with a mysterious thief of a gorgeous Renoir painting missing from a museum for over sixty years. When the painting suddenly shows up, it’s Vikan who tracks down the culprit. In his afterword Vikan explains his coming to grips with the realities of art dealing in our present dangerous world that includes the fanatical iconoclasm of the Islamic State. We know of the violent destruction and looting of precious treasures of antiquity and unscrupulous black market art dealers who take advantage of international conflicts to possess them. Sacred and Stolen is a truly eye-opening account of art dealing in the modern world.