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PICASSO’S WAR

THE DESTRUCTION OF GUERNICA, AND THE MASTERPIECE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

An engrossing story of a landmark work of art and the struggle “to fashion meaning out of unimaginable evil, once more to...

Imaginative cultural historian Martin (Beethoven’s Hair, 2000, etc.) crafts a well-integrated and fascinating account of Picasso’s famous painting and the horrible events that inspired it.

The author’s signature approach to seemingly offbeat subjects is careful research filtered through a novelistic sensibility to grasp the inherent story, which he unfolds in the engaging, almost offhand manner of a fictional amateur sleuth. Martin is, first and foremost, a consummate storyteller who deftly weaves such multiple disciplines as politics, history, art, science, and even current events into a narrative forming a coherent whole. A case in point is his handling here of the motivation behind Picasso’s change of heart regarding his previous, adamantly apolitical stance on the Spanish Civil War, then only a few months old. Commissioned by a Republican delegation to devise a prominent work for the courtyard of the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris, Picasso, who disdained “poster” (i.e., political) art, originally contemplated a mural whose subject would be the artist in his studio. But the brutal attack on the civilian population of the Basque town Gernika, intended by Franco and his Nazi allies to inspire terror and capitulation, had an energizing effect on the artist. Within two weeks of Gernika’s bombardment and strafing by Goering’s Luftwaffe, Picasso was hard at work on the monumental canvas that was to become the most political artwork of the 20th century. Martin goes beyond the obvious, however, in providing additional, less well-known motives for Picasso’s sudden engagement. Having agreed to become the titular director of the Museo del Prado in September of the previous year, the artist was outraged by Franco’s barbaric disregard for the safety of the nation’s treasures and quietly agreed to their removal to safety in Valencia.

An engrossing story of a landmark work of art and the struggle “to fashion meaning out of unimaginable evil, once more to offer hope.”

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2002

ISBN: 0-525-94680-2

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002

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WARHOL

A fascinating, major work that will spark endless debates.

An epic cradle-to-grave biography of the king of pop art from Gopnik (co-author: Warhol Women, 2019), who served as chief art critic for the Washington Post and the art and design critic for Newsweek.

With a hoarder’s zeal, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) collected objects he liked until shopping bags filled entire rooms of his New York town house. Rising to equal that, Gopnik’s dictionary-sized biography has more than 7,000 endnotes in its e-book edition and drew on some 100,000 documents, including datebooks, tax returns, and letters to lovers and dealers. With the cooperation of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the author serves up fresh details about almost every aspect of Warhol’s life in an immensely enjoyable book that blends snappy writing with careful exegeses of the artist’s influences and techniques. Warhol exploded into view in his mid-40s with his pop art paintings of Campbell’s Soup cans and silkscreens of Elvis and Marilyn. However, fame didn’t banish lifelong anxieties heightened by an assassination attempt that left him so fearful he bought bulletproof eyeglasses. After the pop successes, Gopnik writes, Warhol’s life was shaped by a consuming desire “to climb back onto that cutting edge,” which led him to make experimental films, launch Interview magazine, and promote the Velvet Underground. At the same time, Warhol yearned “for fine, old-fashioned love and coupledom,” a desire thwarted by his shyness and his awkward stance toward his sexuality—“almost but never quite out,” as Gopnik puts it. Although insightful in its interpretations of Warhol’s art, this biography is sure to make waves with its easily challenged claims that Warhol revealed himself early on “as a true rival of all the greats who had come before” and that he and Picasso may now occupy “the top peak of Parnassus, beside Michelangelo and Rembrandt and their fellow geniuses.” Any controversy will certainly befit a lodestar of 20th-century art who believed that “you weren’t doing much of anything as an artist if you weren’t questioning the most fundamental tenets of what art is and what artists can do.”

A fascinating, major work that will spark endless debates.

Pub Date: April 21, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-06-229839-3

Page Count: 976

Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 1, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020

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MY NAME IS PRINCE

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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