A brisk tale of true-life heroism, villainy, artistry and passion.
Charney (Art History/American Univ. of Rome; The Art Thief, 2007, etc.) unsnarls the tangled history of Jan van Eyck’s 15th-century The Ghent Altarpiece (aka The Mystic Lamb), “the most desired and victimized object of all time.”
With a novelist’s sense of structure and tension, the author adds an easy familiarity with the techniques of oil painting and with the intertwining vines of art and political and religious history. He begins near the end of World War II. As the Reich’s military fortunes crumbled, the Allies scrambled to find where the Nazis concealed their tens of thousands of stolen artworks, many slated for Hitler’s proposed “super museum.” Among them was the Altarpiece. Charney pauses to describe the large work, which comprises 20 individual painted panels, hinged together. Art historians admire it not just for its supreme craftsmanship—described clearly by the author—but also for its historical significance as the world’s first major oil painting. Charney also lists a number of “firsts” that the work represents (e.g., the first to use directed spotlighting) and sketches the biography of van Eyck, which makes Shakespeare’s seem richly detailed by comparison. Commissioned to create the altarpiece for the Saint Bavo Cathedral in Ghent, Belgium, van Eyck took some six years to complete it. As religious and political strife waxed and waned, the painting was always in danger. The Calvinists didn’t like it (the Catholics promptly hid it); Napoleon, perhaps history’s greatest art thief, craved it; a cathedral fire threatened it; the Germans came for it in WWI and again in WWII. Even now, one panel remains at large, though some argue that the replacement copy is actually the original.
A brisk tale of true-life heroism, villainy, artistry and passion.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58648-800-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Less concerned with ethics than with narrative, novelist Vrettos (Lord Elgin's Lady, 1982, etc.) chronicles the odyssey of the so-called Elgin Marbles from Athens to London against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. Vrettos undermines his story's colorful firsthand material, such as diplomatic correspondence and Lady Elgin's letters, by awkwardly adding some novelistic touches with dialogue and scene- setting—superfluous in any case, for the material is colorful enough. Having survived Roman and Gothic invasions of Greece, the works of the ancient sculptor Phidias had fared badly under the Byzantines, Venetians, and Turks before Elgin, a Scottish diplomat obsessed with classical art, absconded with them in 1802. Justifying his right to their removal as negotiated with the Ottoman Porte, Lord Elgin contemptuously observed that ``modern Greeks have looked upon the superb works of Pheidias with ingratitude and indifference. They do not deserve them!'' In many ways, Elgin had more difficulty returning to England than did his loot. Caught at the outbreak of war, he was held hostage in Paris and the Pyrenees, in part because Napoleon wanted the celebrated sculptures for the Louvre. Before Elgin could arrange his return, Byron, who was to die fighting for Greek independence, castigated him as ``the last, the worst, dull spoiler'' of the Parthenon. Elgin came back to England only to find Parliament unenthusiastic about purchasing the treasures for the British Museum. He had to marshall support from the English art community while fending off bankruptcy and divorcing his long-suffering wife for adultery. But while Vrettos has a remarkable story to tell, he does not entirely unearth its characters' odd lives and complex motives. (16 pages b&w illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-55970-386-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
The lively subject of activist art gets deadening treatment in 12 long, tedious, and repetitive academic essays. Independent curator Felshin characterizes activist art as a ``hybrid'' cultural practice. Beginning in the late 1960s and early '70s, it drew on happenings, conceptual art, and performance art, which it synthesized with the political activism of counterculture groups. Later, in the 1980s and early '90s, it was informed by feminist art and postmodernism. The postmodernist breakdown of traditional art categories and fascination with the media have supplied a particularly relevant strategy for activist artists, whose ambition literally has been to merge art and life in works with a political message. Much (though not all) activist art is collaborative and de-emphasizes the role of the individual artist. Each essay in this volume profiles, in endless detail, a particular artist or collaborative group. While individual articles have merit, as a whole they are problematic. Aside from being either celebratory or polemical, they often overlap, documenting what soon becomes repetitive information on artistic agendas, social context, and historical sources. Jan Avgikos, writing on Group Material, and Eleanor Heartney on Helen and Newton Harrison's ecology-oriented art are among the few who actually tackle head on the question ``But is it art?'' Other noteworthy essays include Elizabeth Hess on the Guerrilla Girls, Tracy Ann Essoglou with an insider's view of WAC (Women's Action Coalition), and Jeff Kelley on Suzanne Lacy. It gradually becomes evident that collaborative groups (including the Guerrilla Girls, WAC, Gran Fury, Group Material) tend to fizzle out, while individual artists (Lacy, Peggy Diggs, Mierle Laderman Ukeles) and team players (the Harrisons, Carole CondÇ and Karl Beveridge) seem to endure. Although it contains valuable historical material on a significant art practice, this book will probably only be read by the small, insular art audience that many of the activist artists have tried to move beyond.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-941920-29-1
Page Count: 417
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1994
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