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LUCIANO FABRO

REINVENTING SCULPTURE

An excellent introduction to a 20th-century sculptor who deserves to be better known.

An art historian chronicles the career of a celebrated sculptor.

Two decades ago, Italian sculptor Fabro (1936-2007) asked curator Rowell if she “would edit an anthology in English of his lectures and writings.” Rowell agreed to participate but felt it would have been better “to write an illustrated book that prioritized his sculpture, at the same time shedding light on the thinking behind it.” Before the project got going, Fabro died. To honor his achievement, Rowell has produced this volume, in which she draws from the many interviews Fabro granted to her and others to “clarify the mysterious beauties and infinite complexities of Fabro’s art.” In this amply illustrated coffee-table book, Rowell charts Fabro’s career, from formative influences such as the writings of Locke and Rousseau to his two-year 1960s “moment” as an adherent of Arte Povera, characterized by “a drive to oppose the currents of consumerism and industrialization.” Subsequent decades included a period in which he incorporated Wittgenstein’s definition of tautology into works involving “commonplace things that engage the senses directly”; his series of Piedi (Feet) 1968-73, “among his best-known sculptures, singled out for their unclassifiable grotesquery” and intended “to reinvent the traditional premises of sculpture by attacking its own conventions”; and later experiments such as “hanging stone sculptures in the air, setting them on a pitched diagonal suggesting imminent fall, or even sliding down stairways, accentuating a precariousness and the loss of sculpture’s generic stability.” Rowell, a passionate guide, provides relatively little analysis but describes Fabro’s works and influences in considerable detail. She writes that Fabro’s work demonstrated “a range of diversity and complexity rarely seen in a single artist.” Readers of this handsome volume will understand why.

An excellent introduction to a 20th-century sculptor who deserves to be better known.

Pub Date: today

ISBN: 9781580936118

Page Count: 248

Publisher: The Monacelli Press

Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024

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A WEALTH OF PIGEONS

A CARTOON COLLECTION

A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.

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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

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ORDINARY NOTES

An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.

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A potent series of “notes” paints a multidimensional picture of Blackness in America.

Throughout the book, which mixes memoir, history, literary theory, and art, Sharpe—the chair of Black studies at York University in Toronto and author of the acclaimed book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being—writes about everything from her family history to the everyday trauma of American racism. Although most of the notes feature the author’s original writing, she also includes materials like photographs, copies of letters she received, responses to a Twitter-based crowdsourcing request, and definitions of terms collected from colleagues and friends (“preliminary entries toward a dictionary of untranslatable blackness”). These diverse pieces coalesce into a multifaceted examination of the ways in which the White gaze distorts Blackness and perpetuates racist violence. Sharpe’s critique is not limited to White individuals, however. She includes, for example, a disappointing encounter with a fellow Black female scholar as well as critical analysis of Barack Obama’s choice to sing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a hate crime at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. With distinct lyricism and a firm but tender tone, Sharpe executes every element of this book flawlessly. Most impressive is the collagelike structure, which seamlessly moves among an extraordinary variety of forms and topics. For example, a photograph of the author’s mother in a Halloween costume transitions easily into an introduction to Roland Barthes’ work Camera Lucida, which then connects just as smoothly to a memory of watching a White visitor struggle with the reality presented by the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. “Something about this encounter, something about seeing her struggle…feels appropriate to the weight of this history,” writes the author. It is a testament to Sharpe’s artistry that this incredibly complex text flows so naturally.

An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.

Pub Date: April 25, 2023

ISBN: 9780374604486

Page Count: 392

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023

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