An imperfect but noble effort.
Art historian and curator Archer-Shaw investigates the degree to which black culture influenced Parisian artists in the 1920s.
The author is not primarily concerned with this subject’s more sensational or glamorized aspects, such as the sojourns in Paris during the 1920s of famous African-Americans like boxer Jack Johnson, entertainer Josephine Baker, or musician Sidney Bechet. Rather, her objective is to scrutinize the motives of some of the artists who exploited the new trend to promote their own ideas of modernity. She examines, for example, the move toward primitivism in the fine arts, making some not-unfamiliar observations about the degree to which African art and African-American culture in general worked its magic on figures as diverse as Brancusi, Man Ray, and Picasso. The vogue for primitivism, of course, reflected in large degree the weakening of the traditional philosophical bases of Western culture (particularly Christianity) in the wake of WWI, but Archer-Shaw is sensitive to the contradictions inherent in this movement. During the course of her explorations, for example, Archer-Shaw looks at the many ways in which Christianity’s metaphorical juxtaposition of black and white as visual representations of good and evil helped indirectly to shape European thinking on questions of race and ethnicity. In addition, she traces the development of stereotypical 19th-century images of blacks in the popular arts as they were passed down to 20th-century Europeans (largely as comic archetypes in the mode of Stepinfetchit). These are not necessarily new or startling observations at this stage in the history of African-American cultural studies, but Archer-Shaw does have her moments (particularly when she sticks with her specialty, which is art). Her forays into sociology are less impressive.
An imperfect but noble effort.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2000
ISBN: 0-500-28135-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
An occasionally brilliant, hit-or-miss grab bag of pop-culture criticism.
Essayist, novelist and pop-culture guru Gay (An Untamed State, 2014, etc.) sounds off on the frustrating complexities of gender and race in pop culture and society as a whole.
In this diverse collection of short essays, the author launches her critical salvos at seemingly countless waves of pop-cultural cannon fodder. Although the title can be somewhat misleading—she’s more of an inconsistent or conflicted feminist—the author does her best to make up for any feminist flaws by addressing, for instance, the disturbing language bandied about carelessly in what she calls “rape culture” in society—and by Gay’s measure, this is a culture in which even the stately New York Times is complicit. However, she makes weak attempts at coming to terms with her ambivalence toward the sort of violent female empowerment depicted in such movies as The Hunger Games. Gay explores the reasons for her uneasiness with the term “women’s fiction” and delivers some not-very-convincing attempts to sort out what drives her to both respect and loathe a femalecentric TV show like Lena Dunham’s Girls. Although generally well-written, some of these gender-studies essays come off as preachy and dull as a public service announcement—especially the piece about her endless self-questioning of her love-hate relationship with the tacky female-submission fantasies in Fifty Shades of Grey. Yet when it comes to race-related matters (in the section "Race and Entertainment"), Gay’s writing is much more impassioned and persuasive. Whether critiquing problematic pandering tropes in Tyler Perry’s movies or the heavy-handed and often irresponsible way race is dealt with in movies like The Help, 12 Years a Slave or Django Unchained, Gay relentlessly picks apart mainstream depictions of the black experience on-screen and rightfully laments that “all too often critical acclaim for black films is built upon the altar of black suffering or subjugation.”
An occasionally brilliant, hit-or-miss grab bag of pop-culture criticism.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-228271-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A dazzling visual homage to a music icon gone too soon.
A Los Angeles–based photographer pays tribute to a legendary musician with anecdotes and previously unseen images collected from their 25-year collaboration.
St. Nicholas (co-author: Whitney: Tribute to an Icon, 2012, etc.) first met Prince in 1991 at a prearranged photo shoot. “The dance between photographer and subject carried us away into hours of inspired photographs…and the beginning of a friendship that would last a lifetime.” In this book, the author fondly remembers their many professional encounters in the 25 years that followed. Many would be portrait sessions but done on impulse, like those in a burned-out Los Angeles building in 1994 and on the Charles Bridge in Prague in 2007. Both times, the author and Prince came together through serendipity to create playfully expressive images that came to represent the singer’s “unorthodox ability to truly live life in the moment.” Other encounters took place while Prince was performing at Paisley Park, his Minneapolis studio, or at venues in LA, New York, Tokyo, and London. One in particular came about after the 1991 release of Prince’s Diamonds and Pearls album and led to the start of St. Nicholas’ career as a video director. Prince, who nurtured young artists throughout his career, pushed the author to “trust my instincts…expand myself creatively.” What is most striking about even the most intimate of these photographs—even those shot with Mayte Garcia, the fan-turned–backup dancer who became Prince’s wife in 1996—is the brilliantly theatrical quality of the images. As the author observes, the singer was never not the self-conscious artist: “Prince was Prince 24/7.” Nostalgic and reverential, this book—the second St. Nicholas produced with/for Prince—is a celebration of friendship and artistry. Prince fans are sure to appreciate the book, and those interested in art photography will also find the collection highly appealing.
A dazzling visual homage to a music icon gone too soon.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-293923-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
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