A dense, sometimes revelatory read, best appreciated by advanced students of art or psychology.
In a scholarly debut, Paxson explores the origins and outlets of intuition and its relation to the creative process.
Since Freud “discovered” the unconscious mind, its processes have been the subject of science, art, psychoanalytic study and countless theories. To illuminate “the broader idea of intuition” and what she calls “the unthought stage of image making,” Paxson consults the works of several major thinkers: Jacques Lacan, J.F. Lyotard, Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and Anton Ehrenzweig, among others. Paxson, a working painter, acknowledges Bataille’s paradox of a rational mind trying to plumb the unconscious, yet she feels compelled to investigate the roots of creativity, especially within her own studio. The book’s revelations escape a succinct summary, but notable among Paxson’s efforts are her hybridization of theories, combining Lacan’s “signifiers” and his concept of the “gaze” with Lyotard’s “libidinal energy,” the flow of which, Paxson agrees, is “the basis of the unconscious.” She also sees validity in Ehrenzweig’s contention that death overrides sex in the overall human equation. Paxson puts much weight in the work of Deleuze and Guattari and their theory of “schizoanalysis,” in which “breaks and flows” affect libidinal energy—what they called “a basic force of life”—and “a synthesis of ‘machines’ that ‘produce.’ ” Additionally, Ehrenzweig’s three stages of creativity connect the author’s collected theories, “specifically in the arena of making art.” However, although Paxson raises a few interesting ideas and has clearly put a great deal of thought into the unthought stage, the book tends to read like an intensely focused master’s thesis. Without some background in psychoanalysis, philosophy, semantics and art history, readers may find the text overwhelmingly pedantic. In hazy black-and-white reproductions, Paxson includes some of her own artwork as examples of the various intuition-based concepts she cites. Unfortunately, they aren’t especially helpful in furthering the discussion or simplifying the reading experience.
A dense, sometimes revelatory read, best appreciated by advanced students of art or psychology.Pub Date: April 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-1462862108
Page Count: 158
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: May 31, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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