Not only an essential record of the first 40 years of Calder’s life, but an exceptional chronicle of the genesis of...
A meticulously researched biography of one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century.
New York Review of Books contributor and former New Republic art critic Perl (Art History/New School for Social Research; Magicians and Charlatans: Essays on Art and Culture, 2012, etc.) chronicles how Alexander Calder (1898-1976) grew from a crafty boy into a master sculptor who, along with Picasso and Miró, pushed the world of art toward the frontiers of modernism. Calder wrote of “trying to get at ‘evolution’ [from] toys to sculpture,” and Perl divines exactly this thread amid a tremendous amount of source material and shows the progression from Calder’s tinkering childhood to the celebrated, clowning Cirque Calder of the 1920s, all the way to Calder’s inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art’s epochal exhibitions “Cubism and Abstract Art” and “Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism” of the mid-1930s. The author unveils a network of Calder’s influences. “Artistic inspiration,” he writes, “involves instincts, apprehensions, and revelations ranging from the subliminal to the nearly spiritual, and the zigzagging, even ricocheting connections need to be mapped in ways that defy strict rules of evidence.” Calder’s parents were both artists, and although they encouraged him to pursue a degree in engineering, they also exposed him to art that would later shape his career. Duchamp’s 1912 painting Nude Descending a Staircase, for example, possessed a kineticism that would eventually contribute to Calder’s understanding of the vast conceptual capabilities of art. With wire fashioned into spirals and mobiles gently spinning through the air, Calder’s lines would later adopt a sense of movement over time, a fourth-dimensional change through a three-dimensional space. Most triumphant is the way in which Perl explains how to read Calder’s challenging forms; he clearly discusses the “difference between a volume and a void” and “the disparity that exists between form, masses and movement.” “Sculpture could be a matter of lines,” he explains, capable of synthesizing “science with sensibility, the engineered with the empathetic.”
Not only an essential record of the first 40 years of Calder’s life, but an exceptional chronicle of the genesis of modernism.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-307-27272-0
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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