A shadowy figure of the 1960s art world is gloriously revealed.
An in-depth biography of influential art gallery dealer Richard Bellamy (1927-1998).
Journalist, curator, and former NPR arts reviewer Stein has been working on this book since the mid-1990s. Her extensive research and numerous interviews provide a scintillating, detailed portrait of one of the “most influential and enigmatic American art dealers of the sixties.” The author calls her subject “legendary” and says “the remarkable talent he unearthed was jaw-dropping.” The Cincinnati native inherited his Chinese mother’s “epicanthic eyelids,” which gave him a tired look. An odd, aloof, enigmatic man who made little money, he was frequently homeless or lived in his galleries, where he would “artfully dodge posterity.” After one semester at the University of Ohio in 1948, he went to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where he lived a bohemian life surrounded by artists. Bellamy now knew what he wanted to do: live fully in the art world, show art, and talk about it. The small Hansa Gallery in New York City hired him as their director; it gave him the opportunity to provide little-known artists with a place to show their works, maybe even sell some—not one of Bellamy’s best skills. He was pure in the belief that it was the art for the art’s sake, not the money, which often disappointed his clients. With the financial help of collector Bob Scull, he opened his Green Gallery in 1960. It quickly became an “extraordinary forum for any young artist.” Besides popular “happenings,” Bellamy featured the works of Marco Polo di Suvero, George Segal, Claes Oldenburg, Larry Poons, Donald Judd, and a then-unknown Andy Warhol. A few years later, at his Oil & Steel Gallery, he championed the work of Yoko Ono. Heavy drinking, drugs, and three packs of unfiltered cigarettes per day did him in. A man of shrewd and impeccable taste, Bellamy’s role in promoting the often misunderstood art of abstract expressionism, pop, and minimalism was profound. This is an endearing and illuminating work of biography.
A shadowy figure of the 1960s art world is gloriously revealed.Pub Date: July 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-374-15132-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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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