A free-wheeling and eclectic discussion of creativity.
Moore interviews 24 artists in 24 hours in this conceptual art book.
For this book, art historian and curator Moore staged two dozen interviews with various artists over the course of as many hours, all conducted from Miami’s Betsy Hotel. (If that seems like a marathon-level feat, know that Moore is, in his off-hours, a marathon runner.) “Like a puppeteer of dialogues, I had meticulously orchestrated the schedule, balancing time zones, language barriers, and artistic sensibilities,” writes the author in his introduction. It’s an international affair, with artists and curators calling in from London, Beijing, Kyoto, Dubai, Tbilisi, Rio de Janeiro, Milan, Capetown, Bogotà, Berlin, and elsewhere to answer Moore’s questions about inspiration, practice, art-world trends, geopolitics, migration, and what it’s like to care about art in the 2020s. Ceramicist En Iwamura describes what he learned about installations from working with a gardener. Sculptor Miler Lagos discusses the experience of constructing clothes out of paper made from natural plant fibers. Nadya Tolokonnikova, a multidisciplinary artist and member of the performance art group Pussy Riot, muses on the limited, stark color palette she’s used in her work since leaving Russia: “I live in exile. I’m a geographically anonymous person, practically living on the moon, with no home. I think it translates into art and into colors.” The tone of the interviews gets slightly silly toward the end of the 24-hour period—the sleep-deprived Moore spends part of his interview with the Berlin-based artist Ana Prvački practicing his German—but the questions always lead to intriguing responses by the interview subjects. The time constraint, which necessitates keeping the interviews brief, makes a fun game of the project. Readers will feel as though they are gallery-hopping with Moore across a cosmopolitan city as the conversations build upon one another to create a panoramic portrait of contemporary art.
A free-wheeling and eclectic discussion of creativity.Pub Date: Aug. 19, 2025
ISBN: 9788867496730
Page Count: 320
Publisher: SmallPub
Review Posted Online: May 28, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
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
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