A bright, graceful, close-up view of nature.
In this debut inspirational art book, a painter combines thought-provoking quotes with opulent depictions of the beauty of plants and animals.
Although Linden describes herself in a preface as “a painter, not a writer,” she introduces this work with a series of mini-essays that are engagingly personal as they reveal her process. In “On early inspiration,” she recalls a summer camp experience in which counselors “would line all us little folk up in a row, on top of a small hill overlooking the lake” to recite the Sufi poem “Look to This Day.” The inspiration she gained from intoning the “ancient exhortation” exerted a lifelong influence on her art, she says. “My studio” and “Painting process” describe the artist’s work space (“Canvasses…piled high, some on walls, some littering the floor…a profusion of color, enough to brighten the dullest day”) and how she approaches her art, which she defines as a holistic, healing practice through which “Painting becomes meditation.” In other sections, Linden examines the roles of flowers in lore, medicine, and cuisine. It’s a welcome introduction that makes this collection of carefully chosen quotes and meticulous artwork feel vivid and warm. Linden’s paintings depict oversized flowers and some animals, expressively drawn and vibrantly colored. Some owe a debt to Georgia O’Keeffe’s work, which Linden indirectly acknowledges by including an O’Keefe quote about her own artistic philosophy. The author’s work does not, however, seem derivative. From the achingly sensuous “Cattleya Orchids” to the stylized angularity of “Garden of Earthly Delights,” she approaches her floral subjects with keen observation and affection, and the results bear repeated examination. The quotes interspersed among the pictures, at irregular intervals, come from widely varied sources, including Pablo Picasso, Lewis Carroll, and the Bible, and generally promote optimism and courage. All in all, Linden’s so-called “little book” is an affirming and satisfying meditation.
A bright, graceful, close-up view of nature.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5043-9374-4
Page Count: 72
Publisher: BalboaPress
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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