bookshelf

SELF-PORTRAIT IN WORDS

Name: SELF-PORTRAIT IN WORDS
Author: Max Beckmann
ISBN: 0-226-04135-2

COLLECTED WRITINGS AND STATEMENTS, 1903-1950

by Max Beckmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1997

bookshelf

This first English edition of Beckmann's writings offers a selection of documents illuminating the life and work of the German painter and graphic artist. Beckmann (18841950) belonged to the revolutionary generation of German Expressionist artists who achieved prominence around the time of the First World War. His paintings and drawings frequently take the brutality and cruelty of that war as a principal theme, to which Beckmann brings his signature sense of flattened space, grotesque form, and coarse vitality. Editor Copeland Buenger (Art History/Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison) includes excerpts from Beckmann's diaries and letters as well as some complete exhibition statements, brief essays and speeches, and two short dramas. The word, however, was not this master's native element. Even so, the editor and her co-translator make the most of what they have found in the German archives. Certainly anyone interested in Beckmann will want to refer to such documents as his statement ``On My Painting.'' It dates from 1938, not long after the Nazis had staged their notorious exhibition against ``degenerate art'' in Munich. Beckmann was included among the ``degenerates.'' Curiously, though, he has nothing to say about it. The artist thought of himself as unpolitical. He was more interested in what he regarded as the spiritual and the eternal in art. ``Color, as the strange and magnificent expression of the inscrutable spectrum of Eternity, is beautiful and important to me as a painter; I use it to enrich the canvas and to probe more deeply into the object.'' This kind of nebulous blather is characteristic of Beckmann, who—as the editor notes in her extensive (and quite helpful) annotations—read the arcane ramblings of Madame Blavatsky as avidly as he read serious philosophers. Surprisingly, and regrettably, this book has only a few illustrations. Still, it should prove to be a useful resource for aficionados and students of modernist art. (10 halftones, 8 maps, not seen)

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-226-04135-2

Page Count: 406

Publisher: Univ. of Chicago

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

bookshelf

NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

bookshelf

This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

bookshelf

TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

bookshelf

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.