A small, disturbing snapshot of a book about Georgia O’Keeffe, written by a man who worked as her studio assistant for two summers and helped her complete several paintings. Poling (who now teaches philosophy and theology at St. Olaf’s College) first met the elderly O’Keeffe when her driver stopped to give him a lift to the grocery store in Abiquiu, N.M. Months later, O’Keeffe’s personal secretary hired him to house-sit for her and repaint her window trim. Both the chance meeting and the job at O’Keeffe’s compound seemed wildly fortuitous: that summer of 1976, Poling gradually stopped painting trim on the artist’s house and began painting her canvases. The two of them spent some months working together: O’Keeffe directing and instructing, Poling immersing himself in her art. The association, however, was to be short-lived, since O’Keeffe’s assistant, Juan Hamilton, became extremely jealous of their association. Poling left, but he could not walk away; nor, it seems, could he forgive the fact that O’Keeffe chose not to divulge the extent of their collaboration. “I felt with despair that my attempts to have the facts acknowledged had never had a chance,” he writes. For her part, O’Keeffe staunchly defended her right to ignore him: “Mr. Poling was the equivalent of a palette knife,” she told a reporter at the time. “He was nothing but a tool.” Her proud dismissal so hurt Poling he became somewhat obsessed with documenting and proving his participation in her work. This book could itself be seen as a final, wistful effort to assert his involvement. And as much as it may be appropriate to clarify their work collaboration, Poling’s vehemence—after all these years—verges on the bizarre. O’Keeffe certainly could be cruel, but it would take much more objectivity and detachment than Poling musters here to understand why the artist spurned him so thoroughly. Although Poling provides an unusually intimate glimpse of O’Keeffe at work, his book is less about her than it is about him and how betrayed he felt when she refused to acknowledge his assistance. (11 b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-89672-381-X
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Texas Tech Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
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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