Gefter draws on interviews and considerable research to create a richly detailed portrait of a connoisseur who defied...
The life of an influential champion of photography as an art form.
Educated at Yale and the NYU Institute of Fine Arts, Sam Wagstaff (1922-1987) was a prominent art collector and promoter from the 1960s, when he was hired as curator of painting, prints and drawings at the Wadsworth Atheneum, until his death from complications due to AIDS. Coming of age in the 1950s, he became an expert, former New York Times staff writer Gefter (Photography After Frank, 2009) writes, “at leading the double life of a homosexual, relying on his impeccable etiquette to shield his activities in the closet.” In his circles of artists, writers, dancers and musicians, the closet included Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Allen Ginsberg and John Cage. Although these gay men socialized easily among themselves, some, like Wagstaff, lived behind a “veil of fear about being discovered.” Not until 1973, when the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a pathology, did many gay men begin to feel some freedom. By that time, Wagstaff had become the highly visible lover, and generous patron, of the young Robert Mapplethorpe. Wagstaff was fascinated both by Mapplethorpe’s art and his sexual allure. Mapplethorpe had been involved with wealthy men before, but no one as charming, handsome and appealing as Wagstaff. Besides, the writer Edmund White noted, “he was also very rich, and…very powerful in the art world.” Although others saw Mapplethorpe as a bit of a hustler, Wagstaff was smitten, and he bought him a Hasselblad camera and a loft. The relationship pushed Wagstaff into the world of photography, where he stood out as a collector and opinion maker. In 1978, the eminent Corcoran Gallery mounted a photography show drawn from his collection; by the 1980s, he had become internationally famous.
Gefter draws on interviews and considerable research to create a richly detailed portrait of a connoisseur who defied convention in the art world and in his own life.Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-87140-437-4
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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