A detailed, somewhat contrarian collection of essays on the interpretation of art and artists. James Fenton, professor of poetry at Oxford, wrote these essays for The New York Review of Books. They reveal an academic’s sensibility in their thoroughness and depth, but Fenton has the advantage of not being an art historian by trade. He is, rather, a prize intellectual thorn who delights in skewering accepted interpretations of art when they defy common sense. Perhaps his best-known effort in this collection—which includes essays on Bernini, Verrochio, Degas, and Seurat—is his piece on funerary portraiture, called “The Mummy’s Secret.” In it, Fenton suggests that the portraits attached to the swathed bodies might have been commissioned well before death, citing the torsion of the sitter’s body—a pose “elemental to portrait photography——as evidence. He mocks the experts at the British Museum who think otherwise and makes a terrific argument for the act of observation, pure and simple. It’s a refreshing perspective, even when couched in his densely-packed, oddly rambling style—for some reason, Fenton seems driven to include everything that has any possible bearing on the subject at hand. But his philosophy of interpretation is quite simple: “It is good to ask of a work of art three questions,” he writes. “What is it? Where does it come from? And why is it here?” And, one could add, why has it lasted? One of Fenton’s strengths comes from his ability to delve into the history of an object, to trace the influence of politics on a particular piece of work—from its critical interpretation and assigned value to its very survival. In making the reader aware of what has lasted—and why—Fenton also conjures all the art that has been lost, scoured, painted over, misattributed, and misread. A subversive academic, Fenton uses his intellect and vast knowledge to question the ways in which certain artworks—as well as their creators—have been framed by history. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-18505-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
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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