Stars in My Eyes Book

Stars in My Eyes is a revealing and entertaining collection of celebrity portraits, rendered both in acute drawings and in finely observed prose. Internationally known artist Don Bachardy made portraits from life, depicting the actors, writers, artists, composers, directors, and Hollywood elite that he and his partner Christopher Isherwood knew. He then made detailed notes about these portrait sittings in the journal he has kept for more than forty years. The result is a unique document: we enter the mind of the artist as he records the images and behavior of his celebrity subjects during their often intense collaboration with him. 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 "I was immediately drawn in and charmed by Bachardy's wit, style, and acuteness of observation. His attention to details renders these 'stars' as both heroic and all too human."-Michael Lowenthal "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 Barchardy is both a great conversationalist-in-print and a fine, fine artist. The combination is unbeatable."-Peter Plagens, art critic, Newsweek magazine "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 "Ginger Rogers returned grasping a round hand-mirror about the size of her palm and, matching in its reflection the angle of her head in my drawing, she studied her mouth intently. Without a trace of self-consciousness she then reproduced the same fixed smile she'd given me and openly compared its undeniable reality in her mirror with the highly suspect invention on my drawing paper. . . ."Read More