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DUCHAMP

Name: DUCHAMP
Author: Calvin Tomkins
ISBN: 0-8050-0823-3

A BIOGRAPHY

by Calvin Tomkins ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1996

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A spirited, thoroughgoing deconstruction—responsible, if extravagantly partisan—of Marcel Duchamp's bohemian life and bizarre oeuvre, which formalist critics dismiss as monumental hype and postmodernists (``worshippers at the shrine of St. Marcel'') revere. New Yorker art columnist Tomkins (Post to Neo: The Art World of the 80's, 1988, etc.), argues (persuasively) that the artist's serial rejections—of the eye, the hand, the traditional, the subjective—changed the language of 20th-century art; he also argues (reductively) that they made Duchamp (not Matisse, not Picasso) its dominant influence. Tomkins traces the progress of Duchamp's idea of art-making from an ``anti-retinal'' activity of the mind (as with Nude Descending a Staircase, in which he contrived to paint motion), to an actualization of ``the beauty of indifference,'' the essence of Duchamp's aesthetic (per his Readymades, or signed found-objects). In the culture of Paris avant-garde that spawned Duchamp's conceptual metamorphoses, playwrights and poets figure as prominently as fellow visual artists: Tomkins singles out Jarry for his anarchism, LaForgue for his ironies, and Raymond Roussel for his exaltation of chance. Confident that Duchamp ``opened more doors than he closed,'' Tomkins has no disbelief to suspend. And so he welcomes Duchamp's cavalier self-contradictions as evidence of his ``affirmative irony.'' At the outset Tomkins calls his subject ``the ultimate escape artist''—and for all the subsequent accretion of biographical detail, Duchamp remains elusive. Which is in keeping, in a way, with the cultivated detachment that governed his multiple incarnations (debauchee on the run from WW I, chess pro in retreat from the art scene, accomplished parasite reluctant to profit directly from his art, eventual husband in spite of himself). Duchamp is certainly sui generis, for better and also for worse. Tomkins, determined to make the very best of him, rises to an audacious challenge. (130 illustrations, not seen)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996

ISBN: 0-8050-0823-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
ALEX
by Dodie Kazanjian & Calvin Tomkins

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NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

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This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

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TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

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An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.