Although Roe has created an informed and graceful narrative, fresh sources or insights would have greatly enriched the book.
The history of a revolutionary decade in modern art.
Art historian Roe (The Private Lives of the Impressionists, 2006, etc.) investigates the intersection of lives and cross-fertilization of the arts in Montmartre, beginning in 1900, when Picasso first arrived, and ending in 1911, when radical reconstruction began in the storied neighborhood of shacks and cafes. Her colorful narrative includes scores of painters and the gallery owners who promoted them; dancers, such as the Duncan siblings, Nijinsky and Serge Lifar; fashion designers Paul Poiret and Charles Worth; and a host of writers, notably Gertrude Stein, Apollinaire and Max Jacob. Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Derain and Vlaminck take center stage, but as in Roger Shattuck’s classic The Banquet Years (1955), many others populate the scene. Because Roe draws on histories of the period and biographies of the major figures, much information may be familiar to readers: Picasso’s painting of Stein’s portrait, for example; his rivalry with Matisse; Matisse’s marital problems; and artists’ discovery of African art. Roe contends that Picasso first found ethnic sculpture “disgusting; they reminded him of the fusty old bits of bric-a-brac for sale at the flea market.” African art came to influence him intensely, but Roe hardly explains why other than to suggest that the artifacts “made him think about—perhaps even identify with—the people who had made them and their motives for doing so.” The author is strongest in conveying social history: the gritty reality of the Bateau-Lavoir, with its “creaking floorboards beaten by winter storms and splintered by summer heat,” where many artists made their homes; the intricate ballet of their friendships and romantic liaisons; their frustrations in exhibiting and selling their work.
Although Roe has created an informed and graceful narrative, fresh sources or insights would have greatly enriched the book.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59420-495-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 4, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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