A thrilling history of one of the world’s most famous urban parks.
A stunning collection of architectural drawings that detail the original vision of New York City’s Central Park and offer a history of its evolution.
Central Park is more than just a “pastoral oasis” amid the din and clamor of urban life; it’s also an iconic landmark that’s been immortalized in popular literature and film. Debut author Brenwall, an art historian and conservator for the New York City Municipal Archives, expertly highlights the extraordinary cultural significance of the park, which, she writes, was first imagined by two “visionaries”: landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing and poet and newspaper editor William Cullen Bryant, the latter of whom argued in 1844 that the densely populated and commercial city needed an “extensive pleasure ground for shade and recreation.” The formal plan for the park—a remarkably innovative design collaboratively created by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1858—called for a bucolic alternative to the “confinement, bustle, and monotonous street-division of the city.” The author rigorously conveys how this idea unfolded and changed as it became a politically bedraggled project that remained incomplete well into the 1930s; at one point, it was nearly abandoned for budgetary reasons, as it was considered an “unnecessary extravagance in a time of crisis.” Brenwall had access to more than 1,500 archival architectural drawings and plans related to the park, and she beautifully reproduces many here as well as gorgeous black-and-white and color photos. Her thoroughness alone is impressive, as she highlights many design projects, including such famous park features as the Great Lawn and more quotidian ones, like its drainage system. The author relates the park’s development as a grand drama, showing how its successful conclusion was hardly foregone and how it required extraordinary creative genius and civic commitment. Also, her book astutely illustrates the park’s deeper significance—more than a “sylvan vision,” it also represented the democratization of space and stands as our “finest civic architectural tribute to the foundational American principles of equality and opportunity for all,” as architecture critic Martin Filler writes in a foreword. In addition, the book makes for a very handsome coffee-table tome.
A thrilling history of one of the world’s most famous urban parks.Pub Date: April 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3232-4
Page Count: 236
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ambitious, glossy, consumer-friendly package that has a wide range of people commenting on photographs that have affected their lives. Heiferman and Kismaric run Lookout Books, a producer of popular photography titles (notably, William Wegman's children's series). Here, they interview some 69 individuals—celebrities, artists, laypeople—after having asked each to choose an image he or she finds powerful. Works of photojournalism, from the old Life magazine in particular, awoke feelings in many. G. Gordon Liddy tells of having a gut reaction at age 11 to a stark WW II image of dead Marines washed up on a New Guinea beach. Benjamin Spock speaks of being shocked to pacifist activism by Nick Ut's 1972 shot of children fleeing a napalm strike in Vietnam. From the other side of the camera, lensman Eddie Adams walks readers through a graphic account of how he happened upon his Vietnam-era picture of the execution of a Vietcong lieutenant. Elsewhere, art photographers such as Bruce Weber, Duane Michals, and Mary Ellen Mark weigh in, personalizing aspects of their craft. Celebrities contribute also, and strive not to sound vapid. These include: Ginger Rogers, Joan Rivers, Tony Bennett, Dennis Hopper, and Naomi Campbell. More lively are the views of everyday folks. Rock fan Gina Greco nimbly explains the ``wild monster'' appeal she finds in a portrait of Guns N' Roses lead singer Axl Rose. For some, family snapshots are the most emotionally loaded, as with convict Aida Rivera, whose HIV-positive sister Yvette poses proudly with her children, presaging her death. Other inclusions run the gamut—high-tech scientific studies, snapshots, advertising imagery, film stills, pornography. The book will accompany a traveling exhibition, which opens at New York's International Center of Photography this fall. Its contents are also being issued on CD-ROM. A slick and calculated crowd-pleaser of a project that ably pits fine art against popular culture.
Pub Date: Oct. 3, 1994
ISBN: 0-8118-0382-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
Meticulous research by an international team of scholars, complemented by magnificently reproduced illustrations, creates an impressive portrait of the fin-de-siäcle French artist Odilon Redon (18401916). Although Redon was once ranked with artists like Seurat and Gauguin, he has lately received less attention than his peers—a situation that the current retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago, which this volume explicates, should help redress. Redon is best remembered today for his visionary monochromatic prints and drawings. Among his most frequently exhibited pictures are such fantastic dream images as an eye set within an ascending balloon and a giant smiling spider poised at a jaunty angle. Many public collections also display colorful pastel drawings of flower bouquets from the latter part of his career. It has proven difficult to explain his work according to the grand narratives of art history. Redon was neither an impressionist nor a modernist; even the label of symbolist threatens to assimilate his works to literature and philosophy rather than grant them the independence that their singularity demands. The authors, led by the Art Institute's Druick, recontextualize Redon by carefully unraveling his relationship to the romantic esthetics, spiritualist theologies, and art-market imperatives of his time, while offering a convincing psychoanalytic account of how his art reflects his unhappy childhood, his difficult apprenticeship, and his struggle to emerge from the shadow of his talented elder brother. Dark clouds and landscapes from his early life mark his noirs, they argue, but dissolve to reveal the no less mysterious, but finally joyous, light and color of his last decades. Many heretofore unknown full-color images brought to light by their investigations give a fuller sense of the development of themes in this late period. A superb art book for aficionados of occult ideas, of the graphic arts, or simply of striking images and effusive colors.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8109-3769-7
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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