paper 0-500-28049-5 Insofar as art historical inquiry in the second half of the 20th century increasingly has come to rely on psychological methodologies of one form or another, it has perhaps been more receptive than other academic fields to the advent of cultural studies; this adaptability is on ample display in Bodies of Modernity. In this bracing series of related essays, Garb (The Jew in the Text, not reviewed, etc.) examines t.he representation of gender in the works of late-19th-century French artists: Gustave Caillebotte, James Tissot, Georges Seurat, Auguste Renoir, and Paul CÇzanne—and photographers, including a fascinating study of the larger cultural response to the bodybuilding movement pioneered by Edmond Desbonnet. Garb is particularly good in dissecting the societal imperatives that struck down such works as Caillebotte’s seemingly innocuous Interior, Woman Reading (1880) and illuminating the subdued radicalism implicit in his paintings of urban artisans at work, as is her analysis of the trope of the female bather from Boucher and Fragonard through Renoir. There is, nonetheless, an occasional bit of mindlessness, as when Garb notes at one moment that Renoir, in his Nude in the Sunlight, is merely rendering a familiar—read clichÇd—artistic trope, but states thereafter that the work indicates that the artist obviously yearned for the “fecund, free femininity” the painting purportedly represents: No one can have it both ways, a scholar least of all. Such lapses are few, however, and well outnumbered by the sort of acute pronouncement——Nature was always the product of culture,” from the same chapter, is one—that jars as much for the manner in which it distills a truth as for the economy with which it is presented. While neither her subject nor her approach is strikingly new, Garb’s gaze is formidable, attenuated to precisely those nuances upon which a proper understanding of these works would seem to depend.
Pub Date: June 29, 1998
ISBN: 0-500-01842-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1998
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.
A revealing biography of the fabled Manhattan hotel, in which generations of artists and writers found a haven.
Turn-of-the century New York did not lack either hotels or apartment buildings, writes Tippins (February House: The Story of W. H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Jane and Paul Bowles, Benjamin Britten, and Gypsy Rose Lee, Under One Roof In Wartime America, 2005). But the Chelsea Hotel, from its very inception, was different. Architect Philip Hubert intended the elegantly designed Chelsea Association Building to reflect the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier, offering every amenity conducive to cooperative living: public spaces and gardens, a dining room, artists’ studios, and 80 apartments suitable for an economically diverse population of single workers, young couples, small families and wealthy residents who otherwise might choose to live in a private brownstone. Hubert especially wanted to attract creative types and made sure the building’s walls were extra thick so that each apartment was quiet enough for concentration. William Dean Howells, Edgar Lee Masters and artist John Sloan were early residents. Their friends (Mark Twain, for one) greeted one another in eight-foot-wide hallways intended for conversations. In its early years, the Chelsea quickly became legendary. By the 1930s, though, financial straits resulted in a “down-at-heel, bohemian atmosphere.” Later, with hard-drinking residents like Dylan Thomas and Brendan Behan, the ambience could be raucous. Arthur Miller scorned his free-wheeling, drug-taking, boozy neighbors, admitting, though, that the “great advantage” to living there “was that no one gave a damn what anyone else chose to do sexually.” No one passed judgment on creativity, either. But the art was not what made the Chelsea famous; its residents did. Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Robert Mapplethorpe, Phil Ochs and Sid Vicious are only a few of the figures populating this entertaining book.
A zesty, energetic history, not only of a building, but of more than a century of American culture.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-618-72634-9
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.
Photographer and author Stanton returns with a companion volume to Humans of New York (2013), this one with similarly affecting photographs of New Yorkers but also with some tales from his subjects’ mouths.
Readers of the first volume—and followers of the related site on Facebook and elsewhere—will feel immediately at home. The author has continued to photograph the human zoo: folks out in the streets and in the parks, in moods ranging from parade-happy to deep despair. He includes one running feature—“Today in Microfashion,” which shows images of little children dressed up in various arresting ways. He also provides some juxtapositions, images and/or stories that are related somehow. These range from surprising to forced to barely tolerable. One shows a man with a cat on his head and a woman with a large flowered headpiece, another a construction worker proud of his body and, on the facing page, a man in a wheelchair. The emotions course along the entire continuum of human passion: love, broken love, elation, depression, playfulness, argumentativeness, madness, arrogance, humility, pride, frustration, and confusion. We see varieties of the human costume, as well, from formalwear to homeless-wear. A few celebrities appear, President Barack Obama among them. The “stories” range from single-sentence comments and quips and complaints to more lengthy tales (none longer than a couple of pages). People talk about abusive parents, exes, struggles to succeed, addiction and recovery, dramatic failures, and lifelong happiness. Some deliver minirants (a neuroscientist is especially curmudgeonly), and the children often provide the most (often unintended) humor. One little boy with a fishing pole talks about a monster fish. Toward the end, the images seem to lead us toward hope. But then…a final photograph turns the light out once again.
A wondrous mix of races, ages, genders, and social classes, and on virtually every page is a surprise.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-05890-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2015
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