art's most distinctive figures. (16 color and 31 b&w illus., not seen)
Eloquently and movingly, music critic and biographer Matossian (Xenakis, not reviewed) plumbs the mystery surrounding
painter Arshile Gorky, born Manoug Adoian (1902–1948). Matossian lyrically sketches Manoug's troubled childhood in Khorkum near picturesque Lake Van, Armenia, in which the boy, though late in speaking and often silent, early showed a proclivity for drawing and painting. Tragedy, later reflected in his paintings, pervaded the artist's childhood: He endured the Turkish anti-Armenian pogrom of 1908 and the attempted genocide of 1915–20; his father fled to America when he was six; and as refugees in 1919, he and his sister Vartoosh witnessed the death from privation of their beloved mother Shushan, whom the artist would obsessively paint for the rest of his life. In 1920, Manoug and Vartoosh fled for America, where he eventually drifted into New York art circles, assumed the name Gorky, and quickly established himself as an important artist in the tradition of Cezanne and Picasso: later, he was influenced by Surrealist painter Roberto Matta. While not neglecting Gorky's art—some important works are analyzed in depth, and Gorky's often inventive techniques are described in detail—Matossian is also interested in the painter’s complex psychology, his usually easygoing but sometimes turbulent personality, his delight in line and color, his tumultuous relationships with women. Basing her narrative on interviews with surviving members of the artist's family, Matossian recounts the tragedies that continued to punctuate his life: Between 1946 and 1948, most of his paintings were destroyed in a fire; he suffered first cancer and then paralysis in a car accident; and he was abandoned by his wife, who betrayed him with Matta. Deprived of his work and his family, he committed suicide. A powerfully researched, thoughtful, and sensitive biography of a tragic hero of American painting, and one of 20th-century
art's most distinctive figures. (16 color and 31 b&w illus., not seen)Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000
ISBN: 1-58567-006-5
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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