A rich, beautifully illustrated historical account for art lovers and prairie deco devotees.
An art history book focuses on the man who shaped the prairie deco architectural style.
This fourth edition of Harm’s homage to Lee Lawrie, who sculpted the renowned Atlas statue at Rockefeller Center in Manhattan and others notable pieces, explores additional works by the artist. The book covers a lot of ground, opening with Lawrie’s ancestry and the significant events in his youth that led to his fascination with sculpture and his early development as an artist. He immigrated to the United States from Germany as a child and began studying sculpture at the age of 14, when Henry Richard Park, a “prominent Chicago sculptor,” hired him as an errand boy. Lawrie worked his way up, eventually getting assignments to create minor sculptures. The author, who has been researching Lawrie for 20 years, zeroes in on the artist’s works at the Nebraska State Capitol. Harm laments that the Capitol sits in relative obscurity despite ranking among the five most significant buildings of the art deco era. Lawrie and a collaborator “crafted the scheme of the building to be a sort of giant textbook.” The volume traces the development of the prairie deco style, inspired by Lawrie’s marriage of art deco and prairie architecture, which was intended to reflect and honor the Midwest’s environs and history. Chapter 17 concentrates entirely on the Sower, his statue that symbolizes the relationship between farmers and agriculture in Nebraska. It depicts a man casting seeds in hopes of growing crops to feed his family. Several of Lawrie’s other striking sculptures at the Capitol honor Native Americans, the state’s first settlers. Written in easily understandable and flowing language, the text will especially appeal to historians and academics interested in art deco, architecture, Great Plains history, Native American culture, and the United States government, law, and politics. Stunning photographs of Lawrie’s designs and period images of the artist, many of them occupying full pages, make the book pop. Heavily illustrated (more than 50 photos in the first 50 pages, a balance that continues throughout the work), the volume will engage casual readers who may get bogged down in the long, scholarly passages. The book goes a step beyond most art histories, deftly bringing readers into Lawrie’s creative process and philosophy through his articles, speeches, letters, and never-completed autobiography.
A rich, beautifully illustrated historical account for art lovers and prairie deco devotees.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9839030-9-3
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Leelawriedotcom
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
A marvelously tender memoir on suicide and loss.
An essayist and novelist turns her attention to the heartache of a friend’s suicide.
Crosley’s memoir is not only a joy to read, but also a respectful and philosophical work about a colleague’s recent suicide. “All burglaries are alike, but every burglary is uninsured in its own way,” she begins, in reference to the thief who stole the jewelry from her New York apartment in 2019. Among the stolen items was her grandmother’s “green dome cocktail ring with tiers of tourmaline (think kryptonite, think dish soap).” She wrote those words two months after the burglary and “one month since the violent death of my dearest friend.” That friend was Russell Perreault, referred to only by his first name, her boss when she was a publicist at Vintage Books. Russell, who loved “cheap trinkets” from flea markets, had “the timeless charm of a movie star, the competitive edge of a Spartan,” and—one of many marvelous details—a “thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, seemingly scalped from the roof of an English country house.” Over the years, the two became more than boss and subordinate, teasing one another at work, sharing dinners, enjoying “idyllic scenes” at his Connecticut country home, “a modest farmhouse with peeling paint and fragile plumbing…the house that Windex forgot.” It was in the barn at that house that Russell took his own life. Despite the obvious difference in the severity of robbery and suicide, Crosley fashions a sharp narrative that finds commonality in the dislocation brought on by these events. The book is no hagiography—she notes harassment complaints against Russell for thoughtlessly tossed-off comments, plus critiques of the “deeply antiquated and often backward” publishing industry—but the result is a warm remembrance sure to resonate with anyone who has experienced loss.
A marvelously tender memoir on suicide and loss.Pub Date: Feb. 27, 2024
ISBN: 9780374609849
Page Count: 208
Publisher: MCD/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
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