An exhausting deluge of information about a man many remember as a “natural-born hustler.”
A tormented artist’s life and death.
An interlock search, explains reporter Goldstone (Aaronsohn's Maps: The Untold Story of the Man Who Might Have Created Peace in the Middle East, 2007, etc.), is “a type of flowchart used in anti-trust litigation and accounting that involves graphing the relationships between interlocking boards of directors.” That construction formed the basis of works by conceptual artist Mark Lombardi (1951-2000), a paranoid, opinionated conspiracy theorist whose mission in life and art was “to connect all the scandals of his generation into one huge interlock,” from the Kennedy assassination to the bombing of the World Trade Center. Described by his family as “a hellion and a chronic envelope-pusher,” Lombardi earned the nickname “Mighty Mouth” because of his endless harangues. “He not only grabbed your ear, he bent and twisted it,” a friend said. The author speculates that Lombardi’s obsession with interlocks of banking, politics, the CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and foreign potentates stemmed from his being fired from his first job at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. “Forbidden knowledge of the clandestine alliances between master class and underworld gave him a giddy rush of power,” writes the author, and “a weapon against the fraternity that had disadvantaged him.” Despite his difficult personality, Lombardi found champions: for example, the Texas lawyer and legislator Sissy Farenthold, a “glamorously melancholy society rebel” who pitted herself against Gov. John Connally and his “Gorgon’s nest of allied business interests.” With Farenthold’s help, Lombardi became a fixture of the Houston art scene, and his work came to the attention of the prestigious Drawing Center in New York, which invited him to participate in a group show. Interest from other galleries and museums soon followed. Goldstone has impressively mined the artist’s archives and interviewed many who knew him, dutifully recording all their contradictory gossip, but readers may have a difficult time finding sympathy for the author’s subject.
An exhausting deluge of information about a man many remember as a “natural-born hustler.”Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61902-565-3
Page Count: 408
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
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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