Moving reflections rendered in precise, radiant prose.
A tender homage to art.
Scottish art critic Cumming, the author of The Vanishing Velázquez, melds memoir, art history, and biography in an elegant, beautifully illustrated meditation on art, desire, imagination, and memory. Central to her narrative are two artists: her beloved father, James Cumming (1922-1991), self-described as a painter of “semi-figurative art,” and Carel Fabritius (1622-1654), one of some 600 to 700 painters working in Holland during what has been called the Golden Age of Dutch art. A contemporary of Rembrandt, with whom he studied, and Vermeer, Fabritius was killed in a devastating explosion of gunpowder stores—a great thunderclap—that leveled his studio and nearly killed his neighbor Vermeer as well. Unlike his more famous contemporaries, Fabritius is survived by scant biographical information and barely a dozen paintings, of which two—A View of Delft and The Goldfinch—are the most well known. From shards of evidence, Cumming has created a nuanced portrait of an enigmatic artist whose works have profoundly affected her. A View of Delft, she writes, “is like a seer’s dream, a vision materialising as if through an adder stone, floating in mind and memory.” The Goldfinch, a single bird held captive by a chain, speaks to her of the “isolation and withdrawal” that she imagines characterized Fabritius himself, a man who had buried his wife and children and who faced indebtedness and loneliness. “This bird,” she writes, “has a specific force of personality, an air of solitude and sorrow, a living being looking out at another living being from its prison against the wall.” Cumming recalls the paintings she saw as a child growing up in Edinburgh, the richness of the works that she saw on a family visit to the Netherlands, and her careful observations of her father, engrossed in the work that, for her, keeps him alive. “The painter dies,” she writes, “though I still cannot believe it. He dies, but his painting survives.”
Moving reflections rendered in precise, radiant prose.Pub Date: July 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181741
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics,...
A provocative analysis of the parallels between Donald Trump’s ascent and the fall of other democracies.
Following the last presidential election, Levitsky (Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America, 2003, etc.) and Ziblatt (Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy, 2017, etc.), both professors of government at Harvard, wrote an op-ed column titled, “Is Donald Trump a Threat to Democracy?” The answer here is a resounding yes, though, as in that column, the authors underscore their belief that the crisis extends well beyond the power won by an outsider whom they consider a demagogue and a liar. “Donald Trump may have accelerated the process, but he didn’t cause it,” they write of the politics-as-warfare mentality. “The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture.” The authors fault the Republican establishment for failing to stand up to Trump, even if that meant electing his opponent, and they seem almost wistfully nostalgic for the days when power brokers in smoke-filled rooms kept candidacies restricted to a club whose members knew how to play by the rules. Those supporting the candidacy of Bernie Sanders might take as much issue with their prescriptions as Trump followers will. However, the comparisons they draw to how democratic populism paved the way toward tyranny in Peru, Venezuela, Chile, and elsewhere are chilling. Among the warning signs they highlight are the Republican Senate’s refusal to consider Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee as well as Trump’s demonization of political opponents, minorities, and the media. As disturbing as they find the dismantling of Democratic safeguards, Levitsky and Ziblatt suggest that “a broad opposition coalition would have important benefits,” though such a coalition would strike some as a move to the center, a return to politics as usual, and even a pragmatic betrayal of principles.
The value of this book is the context it provides, in a style aimed at a concerned citizenry rather than fellow academics, rather than in the consensus it is not likely to build.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6293-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
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