Scholars are unlikely to agree that Braque’s reputation will come to rest as high as Danchev insists.
An enthusiastic appraisal of the French painter’s work, but a less compelling account of his life.
Early in his career, Braque (1882–1963) followed Matisse, the undisputed leader of the Fauves. Shortly after, he formed with Picasso perhaps the most fruitful and intense partnership in the history of art: Together, they invented Cubism, a revolutionary pictorial assault on time and space. His reputation certainly benefits from his link to the two greatest artists of the 20th century, but Danchev (International Relations/Univ. of Nottingham), whose style and presentation occasionally evoke the manner of the artist he so clearly loves, insists that Braque is “the third man of modern art.” His establishment of Cubist motifs and his other innovations, notably paper sculptures and papier collés (pasted paper or collages), entitle Braque to a larger place in art history than generally acknowledged, argues his biographer. Rarely swayed by political or aesthetic fashion, intensely private, unusually silent and always disciplined, Braque went his own way, a path surely more narrow than Danchev appears willing to concede. His struggle was not so much with the times or with other artists, but rather with himself, to “bring painting within my gifts.” Conscious of his own limitations (he assiduously avoided portraiture), Braque applied his talent to still-lifes and landscapes. Danchev cannot persuade us, though he tries mightily, that the second half of the artist’s career measured up to the first. Still, if he was a lesser artist than Picasso or Matisse, Braque was surely a better man: faithfully married for more than 50 years, severely wounded as an officer during WWI and, though not a member of la résistance, at least a non-cooperator with the German occupation during WWII. By the time he died, in 1963, Braque’s achievements merited a state funeral presided over by André Malraux.
Scholars are unlikely to agree that Braque’s reputation will come to rest as high as Danchev insists.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-55970-743-7
Page Count: 456
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2005
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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