Intelligent and well-crafted portraits of some of history’s most intriguing geniuses.
Group portrait of the French artists linked by shifting alliances who emerged in the 1860s, endured parody and ridicule before triumphing at their first New York City exhibition in 1886 and enjoy towering reputations (and prices) today.
In his late 70s, near death but still painting, Renoir reportedly said of his profession, “I think I am beginning to understand something about it.” His words could serve as an epigraph for this fine synthesis of a remarkable movement and its principals. It took decades for professional art critics and the public to accept the work of Manet, Monet, Degas, Cézanne and the other astonishingly talented artists who, for survival’s sake, first formed a loose coalition, then actually wrote and signed a (short-lived) charter. Poet and novelist Roe has written about the art world before (Gwen John: A Painter’s Life, 2001) and here shows evidence of having read the significant biographies of both major and minor players (many quotations are tertiary) and of walking the ground the notables once trod. The title suggests titillation and does not disappoint, with its frank account of the subjects’ financial and personal struggles, loves and losses. But she also deals with the era’s political, economic and military developments. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 had a particularly powerful impact on the artists; a number of them ran toward the fray, and one of their number, Bazille, died in battle. Roe has plucked from her subjects’ lives many engaging and poignant stories: Renoir’s escape from a firing squad, Manet’s fascination with feet (and his death from syphilis), the savage reviews the group endured from critic Albert Wolff, Degas’s struggles with his sculpture of a young dancer. The author properly emphasizes the pivotal role played by art-dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who believed in the Impressionists from the start and dedicated his life to their cause—and financial solvency.
Intelligent and well-crafted portraits of some of history’s most intriguing geniuses.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-054558-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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