Alan Moore at his Mooriest: inscrutable yet compelling.
A comic-book legend and an acclaimed photographer team up to present a visceral biographical sketch of author and occultist Steve Moore.
Alan Moore (Voice of the Fire, 2009, etc.), whose brilliant oeuvre includes Watchmen, From Hell, and V for Vendetta, has always had a penchant for using the visual medium of graphic literature in unique and innovative ways, a tradition he continues with the aid of esteemed photographer Jenkins in this bizarre but oddly engrossing biography/historical vignette, which originally appeared as solely text in Iain Sinclair’s anthology London: City of Disappearances (2008). A longtime friend (and sometimes mentor) of Alan Moore’s, Steve Moore (no relation) has lived his entire life in the same London house in which he was born, and it is through the lens of his life that Alan Moore presents the history of the neighborhood, Shooter’s Hill. From a Julius Caesar sortie in 55 B.C. to the bandit hordes of the 17th century to the cascade of Nazi bombs during World War II, Alan Moore juxtaposes the area’s history with Steve Moore’s development, from his awkward youth to his discovery of the I Ching to his various scholarly and authorial endeavors, which included forays into the U.K. comic-book scene and a fascination with the occult. Accompanying the narrative, which traverses freely between factual reality and bursts of mystical rhetoric and trippy dreamscapes, is a series of images that range from poignant (the grim, sepia-toned picture of Luftwaffe planes in the London sky) to bizarre (the bloody, severed head of a pig). Alan Moore has always walked a fine line between creating brilliant stories that expand the boundaries of his chosen medium to draw in an audience far larger than comic-book aficionados and presenting head-scratching mind screws that might be better appreciated in an altered state of reality. This is more an example of the latter.
Alan Moore at his Mooriest: inscrutable yet compelling.Pub Date: Dec. 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-60309-150-3
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Top Shelf Productions
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
A fascinating, major work that will spark endless debates.
An epic cradle-to-grave biography of the king of pop art from Gopnik (co-author: Warhol Women, 2019), who served as chief art critic for the Washington Post and the art and design critic for Newsweek.
With a hoarder’s zeal, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) collected objects he liked until shopping bags filled entire rooms of his New York town house. Rising to equal that, Gopnik’s dictionary-sized biography has more than 7,000 endnotes in its e-book edition and drew on some 100,000 documents, including datebooks, tax returns, and letters to lovers and dealers. With the cooperation of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the author serves up fresh details about almost every aspect of Warhol’s life in an immensely enjoyable book that blends snappy writing with careful exegeses of the artist’s influences and techniques. Warhol exploded into view in his mid-40s with his pop art paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans and silkscreens of Elvis and Marilyn. However, fame didn’t banish lifelong anxieties heightened by an assassination attempt that left him so fearful he bought bulletproof eyeglasses. After the pop successes, Gopnik writes, Warhol’s life was shaped by a consuming desire “to climb back onto that cutting edge,” which led him to make experimental films, launch Interview magazine, and promote the Velvet Underground. At the same time, Warhol yearned “for fine, old-fashioned love and coupledom,” a desire thwarted by his shyness and his awkward stance toward his sexuality—“almost but never quite out,” as Gopnik puts it. Although insightful in its interpretations of Warhol’s art, this biography is sure to make waves with its easily challenged claims that Warhol revealed himself early on “as a true rival of all the greats who had come before” and that he and Picasso may now occupy “the top peak of Parnassus, beside Michelangelo and Rembrandt and their fellow geniuses.” Any controversy will certainly befit a lodestar of 20th-century art who believed that “you weren’t doing much of anything as an artist if you weren’t questioning the most fundamental tenets of what art is and what artists can do.”
A fascinating, major work that will spark endless debates.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-229839-3
Page Count: 976
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
A dazzling visual homage to a music icon gone too soon.
A Los Angeles–based photographer pays tribute to a legendary musician with anecdotes and previously unseen images collected from their 25-year collaboration.
St. Nicholas (co-author: Whitney: Tribute to an Icon, 2012, etc.) first met Prince in 1991 at a prearranged photo shoot. “The dance between photographer and subject carried us away into hours of inspired photographs…and the beginning of a friendship that would last a lifetime.” In this book, the author fondly remembers their many professional encounters in the 25 years that followed. Many would be portrait sessions but done on impulse, like those in a burned-out Los Angeles building in 1994 and on the Charles Bridge in Prague in 2007. Both times, the author and Prince came together through serendipity to create playfully expressive images that came to represent the singer’s “unorthodox ability to truly live life in the moment.” Other encounters took place while Prince was performing at Paisley Park, his Minneapolis studio, or at venues in LA, New York, Tokyo, and London. One in particular came about after the 1991 release of Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls album and led to the start of St. Nicholas’ career as a video director. Prince, who nurtured young artists throughout his career, pushed the author to “trust my instincts…expand myself creatively.” What is most striking about even the most intimate of these photographs—even those shot with Mayte Garcia, the fan-turned–backup dancer who became Prince’s wife in 1996—is the brilliantly theatrical quality of the images. As the author observes, the singer was never not the self-conscious artist: “Prince was Prince 24/7.” Nostalgic and reverential, this book—the second St. Nicholas produced with/for Prince—is a celebration of friendship and artistry. Prince fans are sure to appreciate the book, and those interested in art photography will also find the collection highly appealing.
A dazzling visual homage to a music icon gone too soon.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-293923-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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