Whether or not this is a “new, revolutionary way of looking at [Michelangelo],” this revelatory book is a must for art...
What it must have felt like to be Michelangelo.
In this remarkable inquiry into artistic creation, historian, painter, and sculptor Pascuzzi offers two books in one: an illustrated history about how Michelangelo the man became “Il Divino” and an analysis of how a dedicated graduate art history student who had been fascinated with Michelangelo since he was a child “learned to make works of art like him as if he were my master.” Pascuzzi gave himself a daunting task: make copies of all of Michelangelo’s 135 surviving drawings. Unlike finished works, he writes, “drawings offer a much more intimate view of an artist.” Inspired by Irving Stone’s The Agony and the Ecstasy, he then studied Cennini’s 14th-century art treatise, The Craftsman’s Handbook, and the less-esteemed but useful The Art Forger’s Handbook. Pascuzzi traveled to museums in the United States and Europe to copy them from the originals or exact photographic facsimiles using the “same materials, tools, and techniques as apprentices used in Michelangelo’s day.” Stepping back in time, Pascuzzi copied a drawing of animals Michelangelo completed as a 13-year-old apprentice in Ghirlandaio’s prestigious Florence workshop. With Michelangelo’s studies as his model book, “I let my eye and hand be guided by the master.” Copying drawings Michelangelo made for his David sculpture, he noticed they “reflect a new level of pen-and-ink technique.” Next up was a massive fresco, Michelangelo’s first, for the Battle of Cascina. There was evidence of a “new fluidity in Michelangelo’s drawing style,” and Pascuzzi had a “myth-busting idea,” that Michelangelo had himself copied from Leonardo da Vinci’s drawings. The author’s apprenticeship concludes with the drawings for the Sistine Chapel, a “true indication of his artistic maturity.”
Whether or not this is a “new, revolutionary way of looking at [Michelangelo],” this revelatory book is a must for art students and those seeking new insights into his art.Pub Date: May 7, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62872-915-3
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2019
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
