Colossal, but a greater focus on artworks and artist summaries would have proved much more valuable.
More Yellow Pages than pocket guide, this book lists the locations of many of the world’s greatest visual art.
Traverso’s (New Directions in Scheduling the Secondary School, 1983) first foray into art history is a vast index of many of the world’s great artists, primarily focusing on where intrepid travelers can view their works. The format is simple: Each entry, listed alphabetically by the artist’s last name, begins with a brief (typically less than half a page) summary of the artist’s style, media and achievements; then, galleries that hold work by the artist are listed—American galleries by state, followed by international galleries by country. Traverso claims that his criterion for inclusion is not based on judgments about the artist’s greatness but rather the artworks’ “accessibility to the general public,” which allows him to include a huge variety of artists. However, this gauge results in a few notable omissions; for instance, Traverso includes neither Matthias Grünewald nor Jan van Eyck, whose few attributable paintings include several indisputable masterpieces. The criterion becomes even more slippery around more contemporary artists; Jeff Koons has no entry, but Richard Serra does. Still, for anyone looking to fully explore an individual artist’s oeuvre, this work could provide a useful tool for trip planning. If Traverso had included lists of titles under each museum, the book might have provided a fount of information for the aware but selective art lover. For novices, some of the descriptions offer great summations of an artist’s concerns, while others are vague and short. Warhol’s entry, for instance, is only three brief sentences. Despite the enormous, impressive amount of labor this work demanded, its usefulness seems limited, since many readers who wish to see specific works might look to the Internet for answers; however, the locations of some hard-to-find works are provided here.
Colossal, but a greater focus on artworks and artist summaries would have proved much more valuable.Pub Date: July 23, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4759-9310-3
Page Count: 900
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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