A full-throated attack on the —new British art,— a movement obsessed with commerce and cults of the personal, that manages to be smarter and more far-reaching than its hyped, hopped-up subject. Stallabrass (Art/Oxford Univ.; Gargantua: Manufactured Mass Culture, not reviewed, etc.) considers how, under —transgressive— veneers, this movement represents a furtherance of Warhol’s beliefs in the primacy of commerce and the creator’s carefully tended persona. Artists like Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, and Chris Ofili have presented provocative and sometimes moving work whose larger effect is inevitably subordinated to whatever catchall —controversial— components have been integrated (e.g., animal decay, promiscuity, elephant dung). Dismissing the theory driving this art as —facile postmodernism,— Stallabrass reveals the concealed privilege and elite education of the artists involved. He finds the external responses to the —movement— reflected in both the crude, glossy tactics and the subjects of the young artists—who see this ultraconceptual art as highly marketable even when it requires little technical prowess—and the egregiously inflationary effect of Charles Saatchi, the movement’s primary purchaser. The ’scene’s— media-savvy harnessing of promotion, positive or otherwise, becomes an artistic component incorporating even the movement’s disparagers, from conservative art commentator Brian Sewell to New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, the former prosecutor whose shameless grandstanding against the Brooklyn Art Museum’s —Sensation— exhibit could have been choreographed by Saatchi’s admen. Stallabrass, fortunately, is no Giuliani: His critique is sensitive in both its artistic interpretation and its exposure of the political calculation of the artists— endeavors. Although Stallabrass appreciates the light their work intermittently throws on modern beliefs about art and culture, he cannot forgive them their aggressive solipsism or their childlike insistence that raunchy cleverness merits reward all on its own. Nimbly written and bolstered by a constellation of critical and cultural referents: a balanced, engrossing, historically framed examination of this latest avant-garde, so startling yet so oddly familiar. (50 color and b&w illustrations)
Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2000
ISBN: 1-85984-721-8
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Verso
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
Village Voice critic Giddins (Rhythm-a-ning, 1985, etc.) shows his versatility in this large, varied collection of reviews and essays—but the jazz pieces remain far more impressive than the author's writing on literature and show-biz. Although Giddins can get a bit gushy about his enthusiasm for the vocal and instrumental jazz greats (e.g., a self-indulgent tribute to Sarah Vaughan), he's usually persuasive in his mix of extensive knowledge and eloquent appreciation. He uses lesser-known recordings to fashion a balanced assessment of Ella Fitzgerald's uneven yet awesome career; he makes a convincing case for the undervalued Kay Starr (whose ``serpentine portamentos...resemble tailgate glides''). As for Louis Armstrong, Giddins stresses a ``renegade'' quality that was able to transmute racist material. And, combining live-concert reviews with surveys of recorded work (plus a few interviews), he does justice to the distinctive contributions of harmonica-virtuoso Larry Adler, the erratic Miles Davis, sax-man Sonny Rollins (``the most commanding musician alive''), and Dizzy Gillespie—whose Afro-Cuban innovations are highlighted in a close analysis of the landmark composition, ``Manteca.'' Giddins's book reviews—on Vonnegut, Roth, Welty, James M. Cain (``no one squats more imposingly'' in the trashy dominion of ``foul dreams'') and others—are solid but mostly unremarkable. Overviews of the careers of Jack Benny and Irving Berlin are surprisingly bland; Giddins does better with Hoagy Carmichael and Myrna Loy. Least effective of all is an effusive defense of Clint Eastwood's Bird film-bio of Charlie Parker. Not Giddins at his consistent, authoritative best, then, but sturdy, accessible work from a valuable critic.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-19-505488-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Following Roxana Robinson's Georgia O'Keeffe (1989) and Benita Eisler's O'Keeffe and Stieglitz (1991) comes another lengthy biography of America's most persistently scrutinized woman artist. What Hogrefe (Wholly Unacceptable, 1986) has to add to the O'Keeffe file is his access to Juan Hamilton, the artist's controversial, decades-younger, opportunistic companion who inherited a fortune after fighting with O'Keeffe's relatives over her estate. While insisting that ``this is not...Hamilton's book,'' Hogrefe starts with Hamilton, who ``arrived in New Mexico's high desert'' with a ``premonition'' that the elderly O'Keeffe, by then ``successful beyond the dreams of most women and men,'' needed him. At this point, the author, who later rips into O'Keeffe's carefully constructed persona, seems to be weaving more myth. (Is this perhaps because Hogrefe met O'Keeffe at a party in New Jersey in the early 80's and was dazzled by her ``obvious and occult'' smile?) Hogrefe's report on O'Keeffe's final years amounts to accumulated detail rather than enlightenment: You won't find out if or how Hamilton influenced the blind artist to change her will. In covering the rest of the now-familiar O'Keeffe story—from Wisconsin (born in 1887) to teaching in Texas to her notorious alliance with Alfred Stieglitz and her move to the Southwest- -Hogrefe hypes certain aspects of the artist's sometimes troubled inner self beyond what the evidence suggests: ``Rumbling beneath the surface are the weightier issues of repressed homosexuality, incest-induced rage, madness, coercion and deceit.'' For a more balanced and convincing O'Keeffe portrait, go to Robinson; for a microscopic look at the artist's relationship with Stieglitz, see Eisler; and for a sense of O'Keeffe's explosive creativity, read her letters to Anita Pollitzer (Lovingly, Georgia, 1990). (Sixteen pages of photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Aug. 17, 1992
ISBN: 0-553-08116-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
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