Workmanlike story of a mighty work of art and its adventures in the world. (8-page color insert and b&w illustrations...
Art writer van Hensbergen (Gaudí, 2001, etc.) concentrates not on the inner meanings of Picasso’s iconic painting, but on its fraught journey though troubled times.
The author stresses the interplay of art and politics in his examination of the history of Guernica, the masterpiece commemorating a Basque village’s destruction. On the afternoon of April 26, 1937, the small town of Gernika (as the inhabitants spelled it) was ravaged and more than 1,600 people were killed by German and Italian dive-bombers supporting Franco’s Nationalist troops. Within six weeks, Picasso covered 30 square meters of canvas with paint in a prescient depiction of wartime horrors soon to become commonplace. It was more than propaganda, more than art. Just as the Spanish Civil War was a rehearsal for WWII, Guernica graphically forecast the distinctive brutality of 20th-century conflicts, with their wholesale slaughter of civilians. First displayed at the Paris Exposition of 1937, the young painting soon became well-traveled, often rolled and stretched and rolled again. Like Picasso, a refugee from Franco’s Spain, Guernica found asylum in America in the welcoming arms of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Its creator remained in Nazi-occupied Paris; the author repeats the emblematic tale of a German officer who pointed to a reproduction of Guernica and asked whether Picasso did that. “No,” the artist is said to have replied, “you did.” Ultimately, after the deaths of Picasso and Franco, as well as much-affronted negotiation, the painting came “home” to Spain—where it had never been before. Van Hensbergen transmits the familiar stories of rampant minotaur Picasso, his coterie, his ménage, his women, and his influence on other artists, relating them to one of the most documented paintings in history. The result is a text with scant analysis of the work itself but much on its political and polemical background.
Workmanlike story of a mighty work of art and its adventures in the world. (8-page color insert and b&w illustrations throughout, not seen)Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-58234-124-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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