This ambitious and expansive oversize volume makes a strong case for CÇzanne as a singular genius, a grand curmudgeon, an artist's artist. Adriani (CÇzanne Watercolors, not reviewed) is director of Kunsthalle TÅbingen, site of the 1993 retrospective that this catalogue documents. His concise and thoughtful introduction charts CÇzanne's solitary life from 1839 to 1906. Outcast from the public salons and rarely exhibited, the painter depended on friendships with fellow artists such as Camille Pissarro and the writer Emile Zola, as well as the benefits of a regular stipend from his father. More earnest than his Impressionist forebears, CÇzanne is described as grappling with traditional subjects: landscape, portrait, still life, and figure. Often working outdoors from direct observation, he pursued painting's fundamentals with a scientific fervor. In particular, he investigated the role of color as a plastic and structural compositional element, often applying it to his canvases with a palette knife or thick brush. Of the 149 illustrations included here, some 97 are magnificently reproduced in color, each accompanied by an extensive art historical notation by Adriani, by its reference number in the existing catalogue raisonnÇ, and by a description of the painting's provenance and exhibition history. Especially noteworthy are a number of self-portraits as well as extensive studies for the famous series depicting varieties of bathers. Illustrative material includes period photographs, which give a sense of CÇzanne's desolate state; in a 1906 sepia print, the formally dressed and pigment-besmirched artist struggles with palette and easel in a barren outdoor setting. Rounding out the volume is an essay by art historian Walter Feilchenfeldt on the early reception of CÇzanne's work in Germany. A decidedly Germanic undertaking—hefty, authoritative, accessible, ordered in its presentation, giving credence to CÇzanne's canonical role in painting's history.
Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8109-4026-4
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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