Thought-provoking images and insightful text delve into the humor and resonance of Banksy’s work.
Hypermodern alt-art works best when fully aware of its lineage, says this study.
The artist Banksy has always been an oddity. His works appear in public spaces but he is determined to remain anonymous. He is applauded as a creative entrepreneur but he disdains the established art world. Cultural critic Grovier sets out to unravel Banksy's work and to understand how and why he has risen out of the morass of underground art. The key, Grovier says, is Banksy’s deep understanding of the history of European art, coupled with his willingness to reference and parody some of its most famous pieces. Grovier employs a simple technique to make his point, placing an image of the original work alongside Banksy’s derivation of it, with a short explanatory essay. A prehistoric cave painting becomes a quasi-graffiti piece, except that the caveman is pushing a shopping cart. Michelangelo’s David wears a flak jacket, and Degas’ petite ballerina is now equipped with a gas mask. The pathetic survivors in Gericualt’s The Raft of the Medusa are transformed into desperate asylum seekers trying to hail a passing luxury yacht. In one of the most ironic pieces, Warhol’s Campbell's soup can emerges (with a strange inside-out drollness) as an economy Brand X soup can. Some of these are satirical fun, while others have a tragic undertone hidden by the apparent roughness of the execution. Grovier does a good job of providing context, and readers who are familiar with Banksy’s work will become aware of an extra dimension. Those who have only heard of Banksy’s name may be pleasantly surprised to find that there is more to him than meets the eye.
Thought-provoking images and insightful text delve into the humor and resonance of Banksy’s work.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9780500027059
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.
A coffee-table book celebrates Michelle Obama’s sense of fashion.
Illustrated with hundreds of full-color photographs, Obama’s chatty latest book begins with some school portraits from the author’s childhood in Chicago and fond memories of back-to-school shopping at Sears, then jumps into the intricacies of clothing oneself as the spouse of a presidential candidate and as the first lady. “People looked forward to the outfits, and once I got their attention, they listened to what I had to say. This is the soft power of fashion,” she says. Obama is grateful and frank about all the help she got along the way, and the volume includes a long section written by her primary wardrobe stylist, Koop—28 years old when she first took the job—and shorter sections by makeup artists and several hair stylists, who worked with wigs and hair extensions as Obama transitioned back to her natural hair, and grew out her bangs, at the end of her husband’s second term. Many of the designers of the author’s gowns, notably Jason Wu, who designed several of her more striking outfits, also contribute appreciative memories. Besides candid and more formal photographs, the volume features many sketches of her gowns by their designers, closeups on details of those gowns, and magazine covers from Better Homes & Gardens to Vogue. The author writes that as a Black woman, “I was under a particularly white-hot glare, constantly appraised for whether my outfits were ‘acceptable’ and ‘appropriate,’ the color of my skin somehow inviting even more judgment than the color of my dresses.” Overall, though, this is generally a canny, upbeat volume, with little in the way of surprising revelations.
Not so deep, but a delightful tip of the hat to the pleasures—and power—of glamour.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2025
ISBN: 9780593800706
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
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