A solid, straightforward biography of one of the pioneering forces of early 20th century American art and photography. Whelan's (Robert Capa, 1985) account anchors Alfred Stieglitz's (18641946) place in the changing artistic, social, and political context of his time. Stieglitz emerges first as an indefatigable champion of photography as a fine art; as a promoter of Photo-Secessionist photographers like Edward Steichen, Clarence White, and Gertrude KÑsebier, as well as himself, he also played a vital role in establishing the preeminence of straight photography. As if that was not enough, in the years before the famous Armory Show of 1913, Stieglitz's small gallery at 291 Fifth Avenue was essentially the only place in America where the art of Picasso, Matisse, and other European modernists could be viewed. But Stieglitz's commitment was always to the American photographer and artist. At ``291'' and his subsequent galleries, Stieglitz promoted the work of young American modernists like John Marin, Marsden Hartley, and, of course, Georgia O'Keeffe. In Whelan's account, Stieglitz comes across as a passionate but difficult autocrat whose single-mindedness and stubbornness in large part accounted for his great achievements but, at the same time, alienated him from some of his closest friends and followers, like Steichen and Paul Strand. The book's only serious flaw results from Whelan's (blessedly infrequent) forays into psychoanalysisStieglitz's photographs of attractive women are used as a barometer of his mental state and, particularly, his libido. Nevertheless, we are led through Stieglitz's romantic frustrations and flirtations: his long loveless marriage to his conventional wife Emmy, his well- known relationships with O'Keeffe and Dorothy Norman, and numerous crushes on his friends' wives and, in his later years, adolescent girls. Apart from being a first-rate biography, Whelan's study provides a lively cultural history of Stieglitz's day. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Aug. 21, 1995
ISBN: 0-316-93404-6
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995
This lifeless account of Edgar Degas's 1872 visit to New Orleans unsuccessfully tries to link his artistic breakthrough with the city's Reconstruction-era social turmoil. Benfey (American Literature/Mt. Holyoke Coll.; The Double Life of Stephen Crane, 1992) claims the French painter's five-month sojourn with his mother's family ``is something of a legend in New Orleans.'' There's nothing legendary in Benfey's workaday account. A private man bent on being ``famous but unknown,'' Degas stayed indoors because his eyesight (which he fancied was failing) couldn't stand the intense southern light; he pined for black models but painted family members instead. Admitting the challenge posed by his ``notoriously secret'' subject, Benfey expands his critical field of vision to encompass New Orleans writers George Washington Cable and Kate Chopin—even though there's no evidence they crossed paths with Degas. Their work, obsessed with the enormous changes transforming New Orleans society in the Civil War's aftermath, is supposed to help us ``decipher the underlying meanings in Degas paintings and letters.'' Chopin gets top billing, but the largely forgotten Cable gets more ink, including a provocative but unsubstantiated suggestion that this creator of the archetypal ``tragic mulatto'' is the granddaddy of southern literature. Benfey, the first biographer to focus on Degas's American roots, adds valuable insight to the artist's work with his analysis of the effects American technology, architecture, and commerce had on his paintings. But Benfey's glosses of Chopin and Cable don't bring Degas into sharper focus; they push the enigmatic Frenchman further to the edges of an already sprawling, speculative biography. Conjecture about the psychological root of Degas's racial ambivalence—namely the possibility of black blood in the American side of the family—is overstated and underdocumented. Ambitious, perhaps, but Benfey's wide net nevertheless allows his primary subject to slip away, lost in a fog of lit-crit theory and psychobabble. (illustrations, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 12, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-43562-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Selections from Kramer's superb ``Letter from Europe'' series in the New Yorker—challenging, informative models of intellectual journalism for the general reader—have been collected in several books (Europeans, 1988, etc.). This single-article reprint launches Public Planet Books, a series edited by Kramer, Dilip Gaonkar (Rhetoric/Univ. of Illinois), and Michael Warner (English/Rutgers) that aims to ``combine reportage and critical reflection on unfolding issues and events.'' This short volume is Kramer's account of the furor provoked by white artist John Ahearn's sculptures of residents of the South Bronx—one of New York City's urban ruins. Kramer's article (originally published in the New Yorker), which prompted charges of racism and stereotyping, touches on the hyper-charged subjects of multiculturalism and political correctness. The author addresses these questions with her customary sensitivity to nuance and the human dimensions of social issues. Rutgers University dean Catharine R. Stimpson (Where the Meanings Are: Feminism and Cultural Spaces, not reviewed) provides an introduction that, while not as elegantly written as Kramer's text, usefully puts the debate into historical context.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8223-1535-1
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Duke Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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