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
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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