A richly detailed cultural history.
A confluence of artistic rebels.
Art and architecture historian Friedman creates a vibrant portrait of queer bohemia in New York and Paris in the 1920s and 1930s, drawing extensively from the correspondence of musician, writer, and photographer Max Ewing (1904-34). Born into a wealthy family in Pioneer, Ohio, Ewing was doted on by his parents, who encouraged his interests in the arts and accepted his sexuality. When he moved to New York in 1923, they supported him with an allowance of $3,000 a year, ample funds for an apartment, piano lessons with an eminent teacher, and an energetic social life. His circle of friends grew to include a host of well-known writers and artists, many of whom he met through Carl Van Vechten, whose works Ewing had long admired and who became his mentor, and writer, activist, and arts doyenne Muriel Draper, for whom Ewing became escort, confidant, and constant companion. At her salons and parties, he met luminaries such as Lincoln Kirstein and Walker Evans, George Gershwin and Noel Coward. Van Vechten, who championed avant-garde and African American arts, was especially significant in Ewing’s involvement in queer culture; after Ewing drowned himself in 1934, Van Vechten gathered and donated his papers to Yale’s Beinecke Library. Friedman charts Ewing’s career as he morphed from performer and pianist to sculptor and photographer; she reports on his friends, lovers, and artistic collaborators in the U.S. and abroad and recounts his lonely, troubled last years. Profusely illustrated with artwork, memorabilia, and photographs—many from the Gallery of Extraordinary Portraits that Ewing created in his walk-in closet and his Carnival of Venice photography project—Friedman’s appreciative biography vividly conveys the spirited ambience of the interracial, international community of queer outsiders and intellectuals among whom, for his short life, Ewing thrived.
A richly detailed cultural history.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9780691267340
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Princeton Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
PERSPECTIVES
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.
A potent series of “notes” paints a multidimensional picture of Blackness in America.
Throughout the book, which mixes memoir, history, literary theory, and art, Sharpe—the chair of Black studies at York University in Toronto and author of the acclaimed book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being—writes about everything from her family history to the everyday trauma of American racism. Although most of the notes feature the author’s original writing, she also includes materials like photographs, copies of letters she received, responses to a Twitter-based crowdsourcing request, and definitions of terms collected from colleagues and friends (“preliminary entries toward a dictionary of untranslatable blackness”). These diverse pieces coalesce into a multifaceted examination of the ways in which the White gaze distorts Blackness and perpetuates racist violence. Sharpe’s critique is not limited to White individuals, however. She includes, for example, a disappointing encounter with a fellow Black female scholar as well as critical analysis of Barack Obama’s choice to sing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a hate crime at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. With distinct lyricism and a firm but tender tone, Sharpe executes every element of this book flawlessly. Most impressive is the collagelike structure, which seamlessly moves among an extraordinary variety of forms and topics. For example, a photograph of the author’s mother in a Halloween costume transitions easily into an introduction to Roland Barthes’ work Camera Lucida, which then connects just as smoothly to a memory of watching a White visitor struggle with the reality presented by the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. “Something about this encounter, something about seeing her struggle…feels appropriate to the weight of this history,” writes the author. It is a testament to Sharpe’s artistry that this incredibly complex text flows so naturally.
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780374604486
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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