As a painter, abstract expressionist Schueler fought to translate his vision to canvas; as a writer, he struggled just as hard to describe the difficulty of leading a creative life. A newcomer who quickly found his way into the center of the prevailing art scene in the 1950s, Schueler began his career in the shadow of such artists as Clyfford Still, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. Years younger than those first-generation abstract expressionists, however, he had to fight to assert his place in the pantheon. It was a fight that drained him, and as much as he longed to be in the midst of “the glory,” he also longed to escape it. This volume, a collection of the artist’s letters and journal entries, begins with his decision to leave New York in search of a landscape that would inform his work; under the quick-changing skies of Mallaig, Scotland, he found it. The wild, stormy weather of Scotland’s West Coast mirrored his own emotional struggle: insecure and ambitious, driven and desiring, Schueler ricocheted between countries, dealers, and women. Judging by this book, the greatest constant in his life was his devotion to his art, and his book reflects his dedication to it with a loose, engaging fluency. He was a fearless documentarian, and The Sound of Sleat fascinates—not only for its studio-eye view of the epochal New York art scene of the ’50s and ’60s, but also for its archetypal quality. Schueler was nothing if not self-aware, and in spite of occasional self-aggrandizing, he had a very clear understanding of the cost of leading a creative life. Although he suffered greatly for his art—and put the women who loved him though hell—his story remains oddly uplifting; he chose to live as close to his dream as possible. An insider’s outsider, Schueler had a unique perspective on the raging art world of the ’50s and ’60s; his book is both a personal testament and a riveting account of American painting at that time. (16 pages color, 32 b&w photos)
Pub Date: March 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-20015-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
In this entertaining and informative book, Rose (Modigliani: The Pure Bohemian, 1991) chronicles the tumultuous life of a French woman whose exceptional talent and determination earned her the admiration of her more famous contemporaries. Born in 1865 to an unmarried seamstress, Suzanne Valadon used her formidable beauty to enter Montmartre’s bohemian circles as a painter’s model. She joined the cohort of Toulouse-Lautrec and other great artists, and her vibrant, unsentimental drawings of women and children led them to accept her as one of their own. (Degas in particular became a lifelong supporter of her work, buying many of her “wicked and supple drawings” for his own collection.) Nonetheless, Valadon’s accomplishments were often overshadowed by the scandal surrounding her fiery, unconventional life—which included many lovers, an illegitimate son, a stint as a bourgeois wife, and a passionate affair with a man half her age, who later became her second husband. Despite violent alcoholism, Valadon’s neglected son, Maurice Utrillo, became an artist in his own right, and the commercial success of his simple, melancholy cityscapes eventually came to support his mother’s critically acclaimed work. Her womanizing second husband became business manager for both. The “unholy trio” lived together, providing much gossip for artists and critics alike, until their financial ties were broken up by Utrillo’s late marriage. Valadon died three years later, in 1938. The mourners at her funeral included Picasso, Derain, and the director of Paris’s Fine Art Museum, though none of the daily papers reported the event. Rose does a fine job of tracing the development of the “pitiless . . . precise and firm” lines and vivid color that characterize Valadon’s best work. The book is filled with lively anecdotes about the famous artists, dealers, and performers of Valadon’s milieu. However, her tendency to simplify the complexities of Valadon’s relationship with her famous son (can we really consider her a devoted mother when she seems to have largely ignored Utrillo until the budding of his success?) can sometimes be disturbing. (8 pages color, 73 b&w illustrations)
Pub Date: Feb. 25, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-19921-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
William Least Heat-Moon (Prairyerth, 1991, etc.) crisscrossed America by land and conveyed his impressions in words; Bridges travels by air and records her vision in photographs. Writing of her work here, Heat-Moon notes, ``For her, the face of the earth is one glyph after another shrouded in shadows to be exposed and interpreted.'' Indeed, the stark contrast of her black-and-white photos gives free range to shadow play, adding a mysterious, if not slightly sinister, aura to even the most innocuous image, such as a church emerging from the darkness, surrounded by pine trees that seem to glow in the shadows. Other images create delicate ironies about humankind's impact on the land and air: Evoking the grandeur of Egypt, the pyramid-shaped convention center of Memphis, Tenn., rises calmly on the shore of the Mississippi; on the next page, a power plant rises more menacingly, belching a huge cloud of smoke. Weblike human mazes, in the form of a golf course, contrast with the more spidery maze of cattle tracks. This is a probing record of what Bridges calls the calligraphy of the land.
Pub Date: June 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-89381-604-3
Page Count: 108
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
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