bookshelf

MAKING AND EFFACING ART

Name: MAKING AND EFFACING ART
Author: Philip Fisher
ISBN: 0-19-506046-6

MODERN AMERICAN ART IN A CULTURE OF MUSEUMS

by Philip Fisher ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1991

bookshelf

A brilliant, intricate interpretation of modern art's progress as it reflects the dictates of the museum, by a Harvard professor of English. Fisher casts the art museum as the major interpreter of industrialized culture, countering the pull of mass production by designating what is unique and ``irreplaceable''—what counts as art. Indeed, the museum has changed the way we look at objects- -crucifix and Greek vase alike—by extricating them from their cultural context, ``effacing'' their intended meaning, and rearranging them in a time-line of art history. In Fisher's provocative view, the ``natural art'' for ``museum culture'' is abstract art, its ``essential subject matter'' the ``linear ordering and the cancellation of content,'' each museum functions. Jasper Johns and Frank Stella aim their art at the museum, their ambition to make it ``the future's past.'' Johns's paintings go so far as to mimic the museum, effacing our own cultural symbols- -numbers, letters, and the American flag—of their meaning and reworking them as shards and as art. The ``knowing and sophisticated'' Stella paints in ``series'' ``ready to be swallowed whole by art history.'' Fisher grounds what is complicated and narrowly focused but exceptionally accessible academic theory in Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, and Meyer Shapiro, animating it with observations that stick: that all modern painting is about ``the stranger''; that ``it is memory rather than realism that photography drained from painting and sculpture''; that Degas conceals his shocking industrialization of the body by seeming to seize a bather's momentary pose; that our perception of the Parthenon frieze changes forever when fragments are brought down from their original elevated location to eye-level in a gallery. A ringing affirmation, in the company of Arthur Danto's Encounters and Reflections and Robert Hughes's Nothing if Not Critical (both 1990), that today art criticism is often contemporary art's most interesting aspect. (Forty-four illustrations—some seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-19-506046-6

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1991

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

bookshelf

NUTCRACKER

by E.T.A. Hoffmann ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 28, 1996

bookshelf

This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)

Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996

ISBN: 0-15-100227-4

Page Count: 136

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER AND THE MOUSE KING
by E.T.A. Hoffmann ; adapted by Natalie Andrewson ; illustrated by Natalie Andrewson

- BOOK REVIEW
THE NUTCRACKER
by E.T.A. Hoffmann & illustrated by Julie Paschkis

bookshelf

TO THE ONE I LOVE THE BEST

EPISODES FROM THE LIFE OF LADY MENDL (ELSIE DE WOLFE)

by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955

bookshelf

An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.