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
Lighthearted, glib treatment of a momentously crucial subject. Marquis (Alfred H. Barr, Jr., 1989, etc.) sets out to chart the course of public arts funding in the United States from the end of WW II to the present day, but her well-intentioned study is stunted by its lack of a discernable central thesis. To set the stage, she touches upon postwar flourishing of official art patronage. One factor was a need to overcome the sense of cultural inferiority that Americans had long suffered. Equally crucial was the government's recognition that the arts could be a vital instrument in the waging of a cultural Cold War with the Soviet Union. Marquis then turns helter-skelter to specific projects such as the building of New York's City Center and other performing arts centers. While jumping around, Marquis highlights the role of the Ford Foundation as arts-funding pioneer and role model for the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA's turbulent 30-year history (and apparently imminent demise) reflects, of course, the changing economic and political tide of the United States. After flourishing in the '60s and '70s, the NEA's influence (and budget) peaked in 1980. Fraught with controversy from the outset, the organization's existence has continually forced the age-old philosophical battle concerning government intervention in the arts; more recently, with the help of Jesse Helms, it has generated debates concerning artistic freedom. Marquis, in this behind-the- scenes account, reveals the NEA as a victim of serious mismanagement and generally poor leadership (she also makes an embarrassing exposure of former NEA chair Nancy Hanks's personal life). To her credit, the author is unabashedly subjective in her role has as arts advocate—acknowledging the probable fall of the NEA, Marquis offers her own intriguing plan for a more democratic distribution of arts funds. Disorienting cultural history, further wounded by bizarre digressions. .
Pub Date: May 24, 1995
ISBN: 0-465-00437-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
The doctoring of photographs didn't begin with the advent of computers in magazine production departments. ``So much falsification took place during the Stalin years that it is possible to tell the story of the Soviet era through retouched photographs,'' writes King. For Joseph Stalin, photo retouching was a technique for controlling public perception and memory. People who vanished in real life—whether banished to the farthest reaches of the Soviet Union or eliminated by the secret police—vanished as well from photos, and even paintings. In many cases they were airbrushed out completely, in others their faces were clumsily blacked out with ink. This creepy visual rewriting of history is documented here by King, who has been collecting such revised images since 1970, when he found Leon Trotsky completely expunged from official Soviet archives. Placing original photos alongside the altered ones, King also explains in lengthy captions who has vanished and why. A disturbing testament to the destruction wrought when a megalomaniac becomes a dictator. (History Book Club selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 30, 1997
ISBN: 0-8050-5294-1
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
