Energetic and authoritative.
Mesmerizing account of an amateur artist who made millions selling forged paintings to art-obsessed Nazis and business tycoons.
Veteran science journalist Dolnick (The Rescue Artist: The True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece, 2005, etc.) brings his expertise in art theft, criminal psychology and military history to a scintillating portrait of Dutch painter Han van Meegeren (1889–1947). Humiliated by critics who dismissed his work as lackluster, Van Meegeren turned to cunningly crafting paintings that he peddled during the 1930s and ’40s as the work of revered 17th-century master Johannes Vermeer. The polished, fast-paced narrative captures the surreal mood in Nazi-occupied Holland. As German forces killed more than 70 percent of the Jewish population, the highest toll in Europe, Hitler and his leading aide, Hermann Goering, pillaged museums and private homes for paintings, sculpture and jewelry. In a rivalry Dolnick likens to a perverse schoolyard competition, the men also vied for treasures from art dealers enticed by the Nazis’ looted cash. Enter Van Meegeren, a disaffected artist who watched with glee as the same critics who had ridiculed his original work swooned over the technically competent but off-kilter compositions he sold for princely sums as “lost Vermeers.” In compelling prose, Dolnick details the doctored canvases, phony paint and fake bills of sale Van Meegeren painstakingly created to achieve his grand deceit. In addition to Nazis and wealthy Europeans, the author notes, he also duped affluent Americans such as Andrew Mellon. After a high-profile 1947 trial during which the con artist demonstrated his techniques, the Dutch government found Van Meegeren guilty of forgery and fraud. He died less than two months later, before serving his one-year prison sentence.
Energetic and authoritative.Pub Date: June 24, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-082541-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Village Voice critic Giddins (Rhythm-a-ning, 1985, etc.) shows his versatility in this large, varied collection of reviews and essays—but the jazz pieces remain far more impressive than the author's writing on literature and show-biz. Although Giddins can get a bit gushy about his enthusiasm for the vocal and instrumental jazz greats (e.g., a self-indulgent tribute to Sarah Vaughan), he's usually persuasive in his mix of extensive knowledge and eloquent appreciation. He uses lesser-known recordings to fashion a balanced assessment of Ella Fitzgerald's uneven yet awesome career; he makes a convincing case for the undervalued Kay Starr (whose ``serpentine portamentos...resemble tailgate glides''). As for Louis Armstrong, Giddins stresses a ``renegade'' quality that was able to transmute racist material. And, combining live-concert reviews with surveys of recorded work (plus a few interviews), he does justice to the distinctive contributions of harmonica-virtuoso Larry Adler, the erratic Miles Davis, sax-man Sonny Rollins (``the most commanding musician alive''), and Dizzy Gillespie—whose Afro-Cuban innovations are highlighted in a close analysis of the landmark composition, ``Manteca.'' Giddins's book reviews—on Vonnegut, Roth, Welty, James M. Cain (``no one squats more imposingly'' in the trashy dominion of ``foul dreams'') and others—are solid but mostly unremarkable. Overviews of the careers of Jack Benny and Irving Berlin are surprisingly bland; Giddins does better with Hoagy Carmichael and Myrna Loy. Least effective of all is an effusive defense of Clint Eastwood's Bird film-bio of Charlie Parker. Not Giddins at his consistent, authoritative best, then, but sturdy, accessible work from a valuable critic.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-19-505488-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Following Roxana Robinson's Georgia O'Keeffe (1989) and Benita Eisler's O'Keeffe and Stieglitz (1991) comes another lengthy biography of America's most persistently scrutinized woman artist. What Hogrefe (Wholly Unacceptable, 1986) has to add to the O'Keeffe file is his access to Juan Hamilton, the artist's controversial, decades-younger, opportunistic companion who inherited a fortune after fighting with O'Keeffe's relatives over her estate. While insisting that ``this is not...Hamilton's book,'' Hogrefe starts with Hamilton, who ``arrived in New Mexico's high desert'' with a ``premonition'' that the elderly O'Keeffe, by then ``successful beyond the dreams of most women and men,'' needed him. At this point, the author, who later rips into O'Keeffe's carefully constructed persona, seems to be weaving more myth. (Is this perhaps because Hogrefe met O'Keeffe at a party in New Jersey in the early 80's and was dazzled by her ``obvious and occult'' smile?) Hogrefe's report on O'Keeffe's final years amounts to accumulated detail rather than enlightenment: You won't find out if or how Hamilton influenced the blind artist to change her will. In covering the rest of the now-familiar O'Keeffe story—from Wisconsin (born in 1887) to teaching in Texas to her notorious alliance with Alfred Stieglitz and her move to the Southwest- -Hogrefe hypes certain aspects of the artist's sometimes troubled inner self beyond what the evidence suggests: ``Rumbling beneath the surface are the weightier issues of repressed homosexuality, incest-induced rage, madness, coercion and deceit.'' For a more balanced and convincing O'Keeffe portrait, go to Robinson; for a microscopic look at the artist's relationship with Stieglitz, see Eisler; and for a sense of O'Keeffe's explosive creativity, read her letters to Anita Pollitzer (Lovingly, Georgia, 1990). (Sixteen pages of photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 1992
ISBN: 0-553-08116-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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