ART IS MY LIFE

Zorach, the great sculptor, is no writer. But it makes very little difference, for his autobiography has intrinsic interest. The son of Lithuanian parents, Zorach came to the U.S. as a small boy in the late 1800's. He grew up in Cleveland. He received only a grade-school education, and in his early teens entered a lithography shop. Later, as he became passionate about art, he began a long fight to support himself, then his family as he went to art school in New York and Paris, sculpted (learning sculpture alone) in Greenwich Village, Brooklyn. The account of Zorach's and his wife Marguerite's shared hardships and their total devotion to art is engrossing. The book itself is a loosely organized chronicle of remembrances, encompassing tales of friends, Zorach's thoughts about art and art buyers, his simple assertions about life. He is a little too simple sometimes--too tolerant in retrospect, even somewhat pious. As a man ""summing up"" his life he is transparently aware of his personal public. But again no matter--Zorach is undoubtedly a gentle man, and the ramblings about his hard and rewarding life are pertinent as personal chronicle and as the experience of many of his artist contemporaries.