This long-awaited ``insider's'' version of the contemporary art world may bring a blush to the cheeks of the ``curators, collectors, academics'' and critics who, Haden-Guest gleeflully demonstrates, ``often spend as much energy sniping at each other as at art's vigorous and well-armed enemies.'' Haden-Guest (Bad Dreams, 1981, etc.), a journalist and art critic, offers an anecdotal portrait of the American art world and, more specifically the frantic, hothouse art world of Manhattan from the 1970s to the present. He draws on the kind of stories one gleans at antic openings, art fairs, cocktail parties, and bibulous lunches rather than from a dimly lit carrel at the library. As a result, it's much more interesting to read than a sober, scholarly study. The book kicks off with an account of the glittery 1973 auction at Sotheby's of 50 works of contemporary art (by Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Rauschenberg, among others) from the noted collection of Ethel and Robert Scull. Raking in over $2 million, the auction set off the frenzied pursuit of contemporary art by dealers, collectors, and museums, and also set the pattern for the edgy, often hostile relations between artists, dealers, and collectors that seemed so much a part of the art scene in the 1970s and '80s. Rumor had it that Rauschenberg (who later tried to pass legislation entitling the artist to a share of resale profits) socked Mr. Scull in the stomach after the auction. Haden- Guest blends accounts of the artists and their hangers-on (including some particularly outrageous stunts by artists desperate to make their mark) with a sly portrait of the evolution of the downtown art scene, nailing down the internal power plays lubricating the machine that SoHo became, emphasizing the temperamental nature of the art world's enthusiasm and the cruelty of the pack (collectors, critics, dealers) when novelty wears away. Sexier than Artforum but brainier than Vanity Fair, this should appeal to insiders and outsiders alike.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-87113-660-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
Jinxed perhaps by the old bromide that you can't judge a book by its cover and by row after row of books shelved spine out in the stores, book-jacket art has become the unglamorous and unglorified stepsister of the world of commercial art. But everyone who reads has undoubtedly come across the cover art of Wendell Minor. For 25 years, his distinctive paintings, with their paradoxically mysterious clarity have graced the books of a wide range of writers. The grim Hopper-esque realism he produced for Mary Higgins Clark's Where Are the Children, the fusion of reality and fantasy for W.P. Kinsella's Shoeless Joeboth illustrate perfectly his philosophy: ``A good cover has to have a sense of time and place, a sense of the atmosphere of the book . . . I think of it as a picture puzzle with one or two pieces missing. Only by reading the book will they be found.'' This celebration of his art includes scores of Minor's book covers as well as an appreciation by David MuCullough and interviews by Minor with his mentor, Paul Bacon, and Simon & Schuster's longtime art director, Frank Metz.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-15-195614-6
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
A hyperbolic retelling of lurid and lecherous gossip about famous artists. Here, Connor, a British novelist, has rewritten much of European art history with an eye for the scatological: ``Then, there is the drawing Rembrandt did of the woman urinating (and worse, if you look very closely)....'' She writes of eroticism, crime, deformity, ghosts, and the occult from the Renaissance onward, focusing on debauchery, depravity, homosexuality, and insanity, all of which she seems to find amusing. Taking this route, she confuses cause and effect: Goya's soaring descriptions of war are reduced to a fascination with cannibalism and attributed to a ``dark nature.'' The 20-century German George Grosz, who so convincingly and movingly painted the torment and confusion caused by WW I, becomes a man whose ``real problem was that he could not look at the war dispassionately but used it as an excuse to loathe mankind in general.'' Meanwhile, Connor draws illogical conclusions and calls them facts. Out of nowhere, she writes: ``It would seem almost certain that [Delacroix's] real father was the French statesman Talleyrand, because M. Charles Delacroix was, at the time of the painter's conception, recovering from an operation to remove a tumor that precluded any sexual activity for some time.'' She also makes points that often seem pointless and relays stories that are incomprehensible: ``During the sack of Rome, [Florentine artist Giovan Battista] was captured by the Germans, who stripped him and forced him to lift huge weights and empty a shopful of cheese.'' There are numerous stories of women done their artists wrong, and sniggering tales of sexual preference: ``[Caravaggio's] picture of St. John the Baptist is blatantly sexually inviting, and the Lute Player resounds with all the homosexual leanings of both the artist and his patron, Cardinal del Monte.'' Connor may be correct when she says that the writing of art history can be pompous and overbearing, but surely there's a better way to poke lighthearted fun than this.
Pub Date: Aug. 28, 1991
ISBN: 0-312-06004-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991
© Copyright 2025 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.
