Book Description

Book Description

R. Crumb's illustrations have appeared on the covers of albums by Big Brother and the Holding Company, on bootlegged T-shirts, and in several underground newspapers. He is, however, first and foremost, known as the father of underground comics and for work that paved the way for both satirical comics and autobiographical work in the comics medium.

He has been compared favorably to Brueghel, demonized as a misogynist, defended by feminists, and lionized as the subject of Crumb, an award-winning documentary film. Having created such iconic characters as Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat, and even himself as part of his cartoon universe, R. Crumb (b. 1943) is firmly established as one of the most significant, controversial, and technically gifted cartoonists of the second half of the twentieth century.

R. Crumb: Conversations collects interviews that span the late 1960s to the beginning of the twenty-first century. In these Crumb proves to be iconoclastic, opinionated, and---despite his celebrity---impervious to the commercial moods of the public.

Crumb appears alternately as neurotic, witty, acerbic, gentlemanly, cruel, verbose, and reticent. His persona in comics form (as an unattractive, continually nervous, lecherous, obsessive man) is both confirmed and challenged by the person who emerges from these interviews.

Gathered here are interviews and profiles that span the various periods and events in his life and work, including his early days as a countercultural figure in San Francisco, his verging on a nervous breakdown after the release of the X-rated Fritz the Cat, his editing the groundbreaking comics anthology Weirdo, his move to France in the 1990s, and the resurgence of his popularity when Crumb was released. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

An excellent gathering of interviews and profiles
Fans of underground comix art who wish for insights into the counterculture artist and innovator R. Crumb, whose illustrations have received wide distribution both in his own collections and on the faces of records, newspapers, and t-shirts, will find R. Crumb Conversations an excellent gathering of interviews and profiles covering various periods of Crumb's life and works. Comic art jokes, interactions with publishers and the public, and Crumb's influence on the underground comic art world are all revealed in the course of some excellent surveys.

Explains comix with old blues
Freudians should read this book.Crumb has a very modern set of aversions.Instead of doing a pamphlet for Planned Parenthood, he says, "But it's political.I don't know how I feel about all that.It's all so complicated."(p. 68).The topics discussed in this book cover the psychic interior, and the corporate entities have subtle names, as in, "Nevertheless, Last Gasp has gone on to become the second largest underground publisher in the country."[back in 1974, when eight hundred dollars covered printing costs for an underground title] (p. 93).R. CRUMB CONVERSATIONS (2004) has an index (which only has boldface listings for 6 pages showing cartoon characters, and it should've had boldface for Lenore Goldberg on p. 193 and Crumb as character on p. 198) on pages 233-244, and the Chronology on pages xiii-xxii includes such great years as 1993:

"Crumb illustrates INTRODUCING KAFKA.Summer:The last issue of WEIRDO (No. 28) is edited by Aline.June:THE COMPLETE DIRTY LAUNDRY COMICS is published.R. CRUMB SKETCHBOOK, May 1987 to April 1991 is published.Fall:A Crumb wall calendar for 1994 is published.November:R. Crumb Retrospective is shown at Alexander Gallery, New York City.Kitchen Sink issues a Mr. Natural squeeze doll."

Four pages in the index are devoted to Crumb's views and works.For example, on page 235 you can find:

on Fritz the Cat, 120, 212-13; on Fritz the Cat (movie), 12-13, 28, 57-61, 174;

But anyone who is in the part of the index devoted to Crumb's works will notice that Works on page 236 begins with THE ADVENTURES OF FRITZ THE CAT (Cavalier), xvi; and includes eight lines of listings of other Fritz the Cat characters in the second column on page 237, up to "Fritz the Cat Superstar," 174, 213.

Crumb has problems he feels because of his being a celebrity as a result of the documentary movie that was made about his life.`When people asked me if I liked it, I said, "It's a good movie.It completely ruined my life, but it's a good movie!"(Laughs).'(p. 218).I usually feel that Crumb is being most honest when he says things that correspond to my feelings, but my situation has more concerns about sexual harassment in the workplace.Comics is work that takes a tremendous amount of time and energy.I used to subscribe to "Funny Times Magazine" (if you get a subscription and die laughing, it might be my fault, but it's not likely) and see what the more politically observant cartoonists were producing, but I was usually too tired to read each issue.R. CRUMB CONVERSATIONS is more like reading a book.With 18 major selections, mostly interviews, originally published in 1968, 1972, 1974, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1998, 1999, and 2003 (with an illustration from 1971 on page 11, from 1970 on p. 19, from 1967 "I wish somebody would tell me what `Diddy-Wah-Diddy' means..." on p. 22, from 1968 on p. 25, from 1959 on p. 30, from 1961 on p. 31, from 1972 on p. 32, from 1965 on p. 43, from 1963 on p. 45, a greeting card "I got a German shepherd" from 1967 on p. 46, "Keep on Truckin'..." from 1967 (the hit song "Truckin" by the Grateful Dead was years later, but the idea came from an old blues song) on p. 70, from 1967 on p.86, Whiteman on p. 89, from 1970 on p. 110, from 1985 on p. 124 and p. 139, from 1987 on p. 145, from 1971 on p. 153, from 1967 on p. 173, from 1970 on p. 192, from 1969 on p. 193, from 1982 on p. 198, from 1981 "Excerpts from Boswell's London Journal, 1762-1763," on p. 207, and from 2002 on p. 228), the book does not explain that "Diddie Wah Diddie" was an old song until the final interview conducted by mail in April, 2002.

`I don't spend nearly as much time dwelling on items that I "must have" for my collection as I used to.That said, I recently found an old collector willing to sell me an old bunch of fabulous and rare old 1920s blues records, stuff I've been trying to find for decades, such as Blind Blake's "Diddie Wah Diddie" and Memphis Minnie's "Cherry Ball Blues."They're not cheap, but not top dollar either.'(p. 226).

It is easy to find Academy Awards twice in the index, but only because of the Chronology for 1991"April:Crumb's account of his attendance at the previous year's Oscar ceremony is published in `Premiere' magazine."And for 1994"September:CRUMB, Terry Zwigoff's documentary about his longtime friend, premieres at the Toronto Film Festival and goes on to become a hit.Controversially, it is not nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary."About his participation in the movie starring his character, Fritz the Cat, he said, "Me and him [Ralph Bakshi] and my wife went out to lunch.After that I said:I'm going to do something, I'll see you later.And I just skipped and didn't come back for a week.I left him with my wife--it was really a bad mistake.He talked her into signing the contract.I never signed anything.I can't blame her, she had my power of attorney."(pp. 105-06).Crumb is not as rich as he deserves to be.

Robert:They gave me ten thousand dollars.
Al:You haven't got any royalty checks or anything?
Robert:Nah.Ten thousand dollars is what I've gotten from them.You know, I ain't poor.I'm probably upper middle class compared to most people I know.
Al:All these products that have been coming out with Mr. Natural on them and Keep on Truckin', that's really pirate stuff.
Robert:Most of it is. (pp. 69-71).

Back in 1972, it was the most famous cartoonist who was getting the most money."Charles Schulz has the highest salary of anybody in the world."(p. 71). ... Read more

Book Description

The greatest of all Venetian painters, Titian achieved a worldly success and artistic influence unsurpassed in his own lifetime and later equalled only by Rubens. His matchless technique brought him imperial patronage and led to a revolutionary change in the role of the painter. In liberating painting from its traditional subservience to drawing he emphasised the importance of colour and brushwork, establishing a tradition that can be traced through the work of countless artists, from Velásquez to the Impressionists and beyond. In this major study, Charles Hope draws on previously unpublished sources to present an authoritative new account of Titian's remarkable rise to fame and sustained pre-eminence and succeeds in convincingly challenging many long held ideas about the painter's career and development. Thirty-two colour plates and over eighty black and white illustrations show every aspect of Titian's work as the last great painter of the High Renaissance, in! cluding portraits epitomising the aristocratic ideals of the period, erotic depictions of pagan gods, and religious compositions that laid the foundations of Catholic baroque art. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

superb intro to titian
for its size, this is probably the best overview of titian available in english. the color reproductions are beautifully done, the sampling of titian's works is comprehensive yet compact. the historical essays on the epochs of titian's output and the commentaries to each painting are well written and highly informative. a few major works, such as the venus d'urbino, are reproduced in smaller format and discussed only in passing, as they could not be included in the exhibition. even so, only rona geffen's study of titian's women goes farther and deeper into titian's originality, humanity and genius. highly recommended. ... Read more

Book Description

A vibrant series of prose poems celebrating the life of artist Frida Kahlo.

Beauty Is Convulsive is a biographical meditation on one of the twentieth century's most compelling and famous artists, Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). At the age of nineteen, Kahlo's life was transformed when the bus in which she was riding was hit by a trolley car. Pierced by a steel handrail and broken in many places, she entered a long period of convalescence during which she began to paint self-portraits. In 1928, at twenty-one, she joined the Communist Party and came to know Diego Rivera. The forty-one-year-old Rivera, Mexico's most famous painter, was impressed by the force of Kahlo's personality and by the authenticity of her art, and the two soon married. Though they were devoted to each other, intermittent affairs on both sides, Frida's grief over her inability to bear a child, and her frequent illnesses made the marriage tumultuous. This prose poem is typical Maso --vigorous, daring, always original. She brings together parts of Kahlo's biography, her letters, medical documents, and her diaries with language that is often as erotic and colorful as Kahlo's paintings. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Dancing with Frida
After having read Kahlo's diary she kept in her final days, Maso became inspired by not only Kahlo's art, but by her vision of the world, and has created in "Beauty Is Convulsive" a marvelous series of prose poems. Incorporating aspects of Kahlo's life into meditations on suffering and pain as art, these poems weave a tapestry of Kahlo's artistic mind, which was deeply affected by her physical ailments that persisted throughout her life. This is not a biography, but rather a side dish for readers enthralled by Kahlo's (or Maso's, for that matter) powerful art. Reaching back to the styles used in her previous book "Aureole", Carole Maso has written a fascinating, complex, and unique book celebrating a passionate artist.

Maso, Kahlo, and a cigarette
This work adds to Maso's reputation as one of the most significant writers today. As Maso has suggested in the past, why are less known artists ignored in media, at the expense of well-known writers. Hopefully, this smart, beautifully engaging, and funny text will introduce a new audience to two influential and important artists. ... Read more

Book Description

In this extraordinary story the author digs and digs until she finds the whole story. Along the way she discovers that not only was her great-grandfather murdered by the husband of Evelyn Nesbitt, a showgirl at the time, who was enraged with jealously, only to be acquitted on the grounds of insanity, but that the repercussions of this event and of her great-grandfather's behaviour on the rest of the family and its subsequent generations was devastating. Throughout the gripping narrative snippets of information about Stanford are woven into the incredible tale of the author's own upbringing and the whole family. By the end the story of the murder and its sordid circumstances are revealed. A beautifully written and extraordinary powerful book. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

Compelling story of a mixed legacy
What would it be like to be descended from one of America's most celebrated architects? For that matter, what would it be like to be descended from a man whose lurid, predatory sexual practices were once front-page news?

Members of the Stanford White family have had to deal with those issues for almost 100 years now, since White was gunned down at Madison Square Garden in 1906. For the most part, the White family did not discuss their illustrious pater familias, but Stanford White is ever-present, in all respects, in their collective lives. How the family did (or did not) deal with this mixed legacy would manifest itself over the next four generations.

Suzannah Lessard, a great-granddaughter of Stanford White, addresses this legacy squarely. She does not attempt to suger-coat White's personality, which combines breath-taking artistic genius with a self-indulgent predatory streak that ultimately led to his destruction. Through the book, she weaves multiple tales about her family, which includes stories of mental illness, sexual abuse, and emotional repression. She does this with remarkable candor.

This is a Social Register family. They are related to the Astors, the Winthrops, the Chanlers, the Roosevelts, the Rockefellers, etc. They own a magnificent property, designed by Stanford White, on Long Island. On the surface, it would appear that this family has the world as its oyster. Suzannah Lessard shows that no amount of social prominence and privelage can protect a family from the problems that can face us all.

Fascinating story by a lyrical writer
Powerful, lyrical writing builds the story of Stanford White one layer at a time. The writer, his granddaughter, is uniquely qualified to tell the tale of genius gone awry. You'll remember this story long after you finish it -- a sure sign that you've experienced not just a book, but true art.

American History, Angst, Sex, Scandal
This book defies a brief explanation. I sensed deep passion in the author as I read her words, a passion for her family's weaknesses and strengths, a passion for knowing herself, a passion for the power of architecture, and a passion for her great-grandfather, the infuriatingly complex architect, Stanford White.

Stanford was generous and careless, creative and self-destructive, maniacally disciplined and utterly irresponsible. While he selflessly gave his heart and soul to his massive stone buildings, he thoughtlessly shattered the hearts and lives of the people around him. Even while he was racked by ill health, he drove himself in his work life AND his recreational life as if he were immortal. He either believed he could never die, or knew he surely must and so didn't care.

The sexual portrait of Stanford can be rather harrowing: The countless love nests he set up around New York; his systematic debauchery of young women (many of whom fell in love with him); the attorneys he hired to hush things up; the endless supply of cronies he found to join him in his nocturnal plundering--his appetites--and his ability to feed his appetites--knew no limits. As for Evelyn Nesbit, the celebrated beauty who arguably played a role in Stanford's murder, I'll just say she wasn't the first girl to ride in his red velvet swing.

Finally, two notes. This author presents architecture, and its impact on the human psyche, in a beautiful, moving way; she breathes life into the bricks of Stanford's buildings. And her depiction of the Gilded Age is superb. It's the stuff of a great trashy Summer novel. Except it's real. And probably still goes on today.

I should also warn future readers that there's a fair amount of incest in this book.

A book worth every penny and every minute!
I initially read this book on a library loan as a small part of research for a project I was doing. Now I'm back at Amazon to purchase it. It's one I want to read again in leisure time, to savor, not only for the wealth of history it provides, and the painfully honest look into family self-deceptions, but for the absolutely beautiful writing it offers. The courage she shows in telling this story, and the honest treatment of her family (which I expected her to protect and make excuses for) and painstaking fairness to other characters, sometimes at the expense of her own history, is breath taking. Many of Ms. Lessard's descriptive passages are almost musical in quality, without ever falling to sappiness, and they bleed a depth of insight that one sometimes grasps only at a second glance. Her metaphorical passages are the most beautiful - I will never forget many of them. A joy and a privilege to read. Again.

A beautiful blend of history and story
If you have a closet fascination for New York and Long Island society as I do this may be the book for you. I was intrigued by the rakish stories Lessard had unearthed about her ancestors. They were told with the right combination of objectivity and affection, devoid of any syrupy family loyalty. The portrait she paints of turn-of-the-century New York is beautifully vivid and frightenly debauch. Interspersed throughout the book are depictions of Stanford White's architectural contributions to the area. Despite the man's flaws, of which there were many, Lessard is able to demonstrate that the artist is separate from his work. Whatever his personal derelictions he was still a consummate artisan. ... Read more

Book Description

The untold story of an icon of twentieth-century art.

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was one of the most successful American artists of the twentieth century: her arresting paintings of enormous, intimately rendered flowers, desert landscapes, and stark white cow skulls are seminal works of modern art. But behind O'Keeffe's bold work and celebrity was a woman misunderstood by even her most ardent admirers. This large, finely balanced biography offers an astonishingly honest portrayal of a life shrouded in myth.

When she was still unknown as an artist, O'Keeffe married Alfred Stieglitz, twenty-three years her senior and well established as a pioneer in art photography. The relationship was physically and intellectually passionate, but Stieglitz was a man of the world. Through the author's access to previously unavailable materials—including interviews with Dorothy Norman, Alfred Stieglitz's longtime paramour—we are offered new knowledge about O'Keeffe's defining relationships and the effect of her husband's infidelity. Driven to a nervous breakdown by the Norman affair, O'Keeffe relocated and redefined herself in New Mexico, where she created her unforgettable signature paintings. 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations, 32 color plates. ... Read more

Book Description

Lisa Germany's biography of Harwell Hamilton Harris (1903-1990) details the work of an architect who successfully merged the ideals of modern and California regionalist architecture. Harris was a sculptor who changed careers when he saw Wright's Hollyhock House and realized that an architect could make sculpture on a monumental scale that both functioned as a home and moved in and out of nature. Germany traces the development of Harris's life and career, assessing his place in American modernism, in the development of regionalist architecture, and in the interpretation of a modern California lifestyle that would gain admirers throughout the world. Her discussion opens a window into the complexities of modernism in America during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. ... Read more

Book Description

Isamu Noguchi, born in Los Angeles as the illegitimate son of an American mother and a Japanese poet father, was one of the most prolific yet enigmatic figures in the history of twentieth-century American art. Throughout his life, Noguchi (1904-1988) grappled with the ambiguity of his identity as an artist caught up in two cultures.

His personal struggles--as well as his many personal triumphs--are vividly chronicled in The Life of Isamu Noguchi, the first full-length biography of Noguchi. Published in connection with the centennial of the artist's birth, the book draws on Noguchi's letters, his reminiscences, and interviews with his friends and colleagues to cast new light on his youth, his creativity, and his relationships.

During his sixty-year career, there was hardly a genre that Noguchi failed to explore. He produced more than 2,500 works of sculpture, designed furniture, lamps, and stage sets, created dramatic public gardens all over the world, and pioneered the development of environmental art.After studying in Paris, where he befriended Alexander Calder and worked as an assistant to Constantin Brancusi, he became an ardent advocate for abstract sculpture.

Noguchi's private life was no less passionate than his artistic career. The book describes his romances with many women, among them the dancer Ruth Page, the painter Frida Kahlo, and the writer Anaïs Nin.

Despite his fame, Noguchi always felt himself an outsider. "With my double nationality and my double upbringing, where was my home?" he once wrote. "Where were my affections? Where my identity?" Never entirely comfortable in the New York art world, he inevitably returned to his father's homeland, where he had spent a troubled childhood. This prize-winning biography, first published in Japanese, traces Isamu Noguchi's lifelong journey across these artistic and cultural borders in search of his personal identity.

... Read more

Book Description

The only major biography of Andy Warhol, reissued to coincide with his 75th birthday.

Artist, filmmaker, magazine publisher, instigator of Pop Art, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) used his canvasses of dollar bills, soup cans, and celebrities to subvert distinctions between high and popular culture. His spectacular career encompassed the underground scene as well as the equally deviant worlds of politics, show business, and high society. Warhol is the definitive chronicle of Warhol's storied life. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Invaluable
The first half of this book is invaluable for the intimate infomation that it gives on Andy Warhol's early years. It is very sensitively written and thoroughly engaging, though the latter years are sort of run through at the speed of sound. That would be the only criticsm I have of this book but you can flesh out the facts (from Andy's view) by getting a copy of the Andy Warhol Diaries. Otherwise it's a really great book.

A good early biography of Warhol
Although this Warhol biography was only written two years after his death, it does contain much interesting marterial about the man. Primarily focusing on his pop-art peak in the 1960's and his stint in moviemaking, the book gives little details about the final decade about Warhol's life. Regardless, this book will give you much insight into the man, as well as the groupies and various hangers-on who always accompanied Warhol.

Warhol Primer
As a huge fan of this fascinating man who blured the line between art and commerce, I was looking for a well written book
thicker than a brick that would reveal once and for all the mystery that is Andy Warhol. Im still looking, the definitive Warhol bio is yet to be written it seems, but in the meantime I'll settle for this Bockris book which is a sound overall portrait of the artist and his life. Starting from his poverty and illness stricken childhood in an industrial town in Pennsylvania the author breezily tours the reader through his
college life, and his subsequent move to New York to become a highly successful (and paid) graphic artist, before establishing himself as one of the founding pioneers of pop art. From there we take rollercoaster ride through his film making years at the Factory, his subsequent shooting, and the time he spent as a socialite and portait artist in the last two decades of his life. Some light is shed on the issues concerning Andy's sexuality, Catholicism, monophobia, work ethic, short lived
intimate relationships, shopoholism, and his seemingly aloof public persona.

Though Bockris rightly bestows more pages to Warhols peak years as an artist in the sixties, he skims the later decades of his life. As with his Lou Reed biography, Bockris has a tendency to demonize his subjects towards the final chapters of his works. Try as his he might here, his weakly supported insinuations of Warhol as a cold and manipulative character are more a reflection on the authors own
feelings of insecurity, rather than their being any intrinsic truth in the matter. There is a middle way between sycophantism and character debasement, and Bockris obviously hasn't found it. It's adequately written, albeit unimaginatively, and it takes real effort on part of the reader to stop turning the pages. As it stands, a fine Warhol primer, but for those with an inquiring mind, this book will probably raise more questions than it answers.

has info.
This is not a brilliant biography, but there are interesting facts about Andy's life, and so I do recommend it. Ironically, in Andy Warhol's DIARIES, he mentions how a magazine is considering hiring Victor Bockris as one of its writers. And Andy says, "So they are really scraping the barrel." Ironic that Bockris, then, would be Andy's biographer! Bockris, though, isn't as bad a writer as Andy thought.

Bockris is sympathetic, underawed and not sycophantic.
Victor Bockris' biography is sympathetic to Warhol's supposed contrived personality. The reader gets the impression that the author, who had a personal association with Warhol, really understood the facination his subject maintained for his adopted country (the U.S.) throughout most of his working life. While others tend to dismiss Warhol as a simple poseur Bockris relates his wide-eyed enthusiasm for the consumer society. While some have suggested he was manipulative, this biography suggests that he was slightly naive. Most of his life is covered here and, although there is documented proof of some interesting associations that are not touched upon, in general the work is broad in its scope and the reader will discover that the most notorious pop artist of all had far greater depth than his blank features and fickle comments suggested. It is also a feast for those interested in good gossip and the social history of the 60s and 70s. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Picasso in sunlight
This book superbly portrays Picasso as a man: his joie de vivre his love of women, his love of life, his guttural grasping at the meaning of life, love and beauty in its modern, cruel guise. Throughout the author refers toto real people: people who exist - people like you, and people like me:people who go down to the mall, people who eat ham and cheese baguettes,people who delve into the deeper things.... the ntherworld of life: love:the internet: humour; bullfighting, his mother his love , his daughter. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Amazing Grace is an intimate portrait of African American artistBeauford Delaney (1901-79). Author David Leeming, who knew Delaney, limns the complex inner life that informed his paintings--notable for psychological depth and vibrant colors--but also fueled his alcoholism and mental illness. A gentle, charming man, Delaney maintained close friendships with writers as diverse as Henry Miller andJames Baldwin, yet often felt lonely and underappreciated as an artist on his life's journey from Tennessee to New York City to Paris. Leeming tells this culturally and personally poignant story with sensitive grace. ... Read more

Reviews (2)

SAVED BY GRACE?
America's artistic milieu is known for dismissing from its memory those artists whose works and lives are deemed trivial and not worthy of consideration. Such an attitude has denied younger generations of artists the experience of knowing some of the great artistic man and women of our time. Beauford Delaney was one of those artists relegated to the halls of obscurity.

Amazing Grace is David Leemings biographical piece that examines Delaney's life and contributions to the art world. He looks at the forces which brought forth America's premiere modernist artist and shows how his gift impacted on the way one views life and art.

Who is this man, Delaney? A superficial view of his life reveals him as an impoverished homosexual Black artist who is plagued by many demons as he struggles to find himself as an artist and at peace with his sexuality. James Baldwin called him his spiritual father who was a cross between Brer Rabbit and St. Francis of Asissi. Others knew him as the good negro or an eccentric gadfly. Whatever one may call him, Delaney's goal was to infuse the concept of love within his work that would bring him the wholeness that he failed to capture in his life.

Plagued by paranoia, alcoholism and guilt over his homosexuality, Delaney failed to achieve intimacy in his relationships but poured out his inner struggle through his art. Like many artists, he went through several stages of development in his career which reached its climax in France. Unfortunately the demon of paranoia stripped him of his artistic ability in his later years.

This book must be read to get a handle on the artistic struggles of African Americans and how they succeeded inspite of their alienation from the mainstream art world. Delaney also struggled with being homosexual which undoubtably alienated him from his family and Black colleagues. His struggle opens up a new chapter in examining how sexuality impacts on a minority artists life. Delaney was saved from obscurity through this view of his life. Whether he was saved by grace is a moot point for his demonic voices did him in.

Reviewed in Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review
James E. Coleman, Jr., writing in the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1999 notes: "Whether Leeming is as successful in taking on an artist's life as he had been with the literary life of [James] Baldwin, I am not certain. His knowledge of Baldwin's literary world is not quite matched by his savvy of the art world of the same period. Nevertheless, we have a fine introduction to an artist whose reputation is growing and who lived a fascinating life." That's high praise coming from Coleman, editor of The Encyclopedia Homophilica. ... Read more

Book Description

"In the beginning, there was the Word. On the streets and in the yards, the word was the Name. And the name was everything. It was persona and place, form and content, truth and fiction. The name was an act of self-invention, a pure visual manifestation, through alter ego, alias, and nom de plume, of personal expressions in the public realm. The name was a line and the line begat the Mark. Then, in the great style wars toward the end of the second millennium, medium, meaning, and message were joined in a golden era where the name became the source and signifier of Style. And when the name became wild style, the word was Dondi."

-- from the Foreword

The dominance of the graffiti aesthetic in contemporary culture is undeniable. But how did an art form spawned in the train yards of 1970s New York achieve the ubiquity it now enjoys at every level of the mass-media landscape? There are many answers to the question, but one major factor is indisputable: Dondi White.

Coming of age in hardscrabble East New York in the early 1970s, Dondi White unknowingly began the process of introducing a whole new artistic dialect into the cacophony of the American art scene. His train pieces painted from roughly 1977 to 1982 stand as some of the most influential works ever committed to Transit Authority steel. Writing with legendary partners such as DURO, NOC 167, KID 56, KEL 139, and FUZZ ONE, Dondi created some of graffiti art's most enduring iconography. His pieces just don't stop -- and neither do the aliases. From the badass Mr. Whites to the cocky, self-satisfied Busses, from the nasty Pres to the perfect, vicious Rolls, Dondi straight killed it, again and again. Works like Children of the Grave Part 2 and Mr White + Bev remain benchmark pieces for graffiti aficionados the world over.

In the 1980s, partially through his collaborations with noted photographers Henry Chalfant and Martha Cooper, Dondi White's work entered the rarefied world of fine art. In making the transition from subway car to canvas, Dondi retained his unfaltering sense of letter form and balance, and his paintings remain a testament to the clarity of his aesthetic. Dondi's canvases were subsequently shown in galleries from New York to Amsterdam to Tokyo and beyond, influencing a new generation of young artists and introducing an indigenous American art form to the rest of the world.

Dondi White: Style Master General presents the life and work of a seminal -- yet heretofore overlooked -- American artist whose work has resonated on every level of our popular culture. Filled with rare photographs, original sketches, unpublished interview materials, and testimony from some of Dondi's closest cohorts, here, finally, is the full story. At the time of his death in 1998, Dondi had seen the majority of his work destroyed -- scraped off, painted over, or chemically removed from the steel upon which it thrived. Within these pages, however, it still speaks volumes.

Reviews (9)

Excellent Tribute to a Great Artist
Zephyr has done a great job compiling this book and I highly recommend it. Try and get it from your local bookshop and you can see just how slick it is before you purchase.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN BROOKLYN...
In a nutshell, "Dondi White Style Master General", is an excellent retrospective on the life of the great Dondi White. Bar-none, one of the illest artist to wield a can of spray paint; Dondi's work was highly influential and propelled him to great heights. From his stomping grounds in East NY, Brooklyn to the Boogie-Down Bronx, Dondi's subway pieces were some of NY's most exciting and arguably the best. One of a handful of early graffiti artists to successfully make the transition from subway to gallery, Dondi's unique pieces were well received at home and abroad. Longtime friend Zephyr and (Dondi's) brother Mike White do a fantastic job of covering Dondi's incredible body of work. The reader is given great insight into the life n' times of an extremely humble and incredibly gifted man. Dondi's untimely and mysterious demise left the graff community and artworld deeply saddened, but his work and spirit will forever live on. --James "Koe" Rodriguez

Excellent Book
great pics from sketch to finish. great text intermixed. cover to cover a great book.

This book is a MUST !!!!!!
If you are an inspiring writer or just interested in graffiti this book is a must. Dondi White is one of the most influential writers, looking at his pieces you will see the source for many styles regarding letter forms and fills. This book is in a word "fresh". Even if New York Flavor isn't you're taste, anyone interested in graffiti should vibe off this. Get it!!!!

Finally, a writer writes!
The graffiti movement has far too long relied on professional journalists to document its history. It's always the same story with elaborate social theories and catchphrases that those who were there (subway writers)find laughable. Zephyr's book is a tribute to a dear friend, a great artist and is one of the best books to date on graffiti.No art school phonies or gallery fakes in this one. A book by a real graffiti artist about a real graffiti artist. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Opportunities for sensationalism abound in a book about Arbus, who already had a history of severe depressions and a crumbling marriage by the time she began to take the controversial, technically innovative pictures of dwarfs, nudists and drag queens that won her a reputation as "a photographer of freaks." Bosworth balances the lurid details -- rumors that Arbus had sex with her subjects, that she photographed her own suicide in 1971 -- with a nuanced appraisal of an artist whose images captured the uneasy mood of the 1960s by expressing her personal obsessions. ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Genius Causes Loneliness
If you study the following two books you likely will realize that Diane Arbus was a genius:"An Aperture Monograph" and "Diane Arbus: Magazine Work."If you've ever tried to be a good photographer, even as a total amateur, you will appreciate her genius even more.

Bravo to Patricia Bosworth for interviewing so many people who are gone now!The following people who knew Diane or who studied her work while she was alive made comments to Bosworth shortly before *they* died:Andy Warhol, Lisette Model, Garry Winogrand, John Putnam (art director of Mad magazine for many years), Bernard Malamud (a friend of Diane's brother Howard Nemerov) and Irving Mansfield (immortalized in an Arbus print as an insecure, greedy man letting his sleazebag wife Jacqueline Susann sit on his bare thighs).

Ever heard of Gail Sheehy, author of the 1970s classic "Passages" that all women pursuing careers in social work and medicine used to read?She's still alive, and you can read in Ms. Bosworth's biography about her encounters with Diane before she (Gail) became famous for "Passages."

Bosworth presents eyewitness testimony about Diane's clinical depression along with medical records.But Bosworth wisely declines to speculate on why the depression persisted for so long or why Diane refused to take lithium shortly after it hit the market in 1970.(Come to think of it, Bosworth omitted that "lithium" detail from the book but divulged it in an interview she did with Popular Photography magazine for their December 1984 issue.)

I'm glad Bosworth annoyed people by presenting evidence but no insight.Here's the only insight she could have provided, and it would have annoyed readers even more.The insightful truth is that Diane was very depressed because her talent made her very lonely.Something inside her drove her constantly to approach new people even though they might have refused her offer for a photograph.Sometimes Diane herself decided after a lot of talking that the person would make a bad photograph.She told one reject (as you can read in the Bosworth book):"I'd never get you without your mask on."

But Diane, with her remarkable curiosity and empathy, just had to keep finding new people.How could she possibly have maintained a close relationship with anybody, even nice guy Allan Arbus (father of her children), when so many fascinating people lurked outside her home?Ergo, you get loneliness and depression.

That doesn't mean another photographer alive today can use genius as an excuse for clinical depression.You can't possibly have that genius because you're living in an age of the Internet when we all can "surf" the way Diane did on foot 35 years ago.What about the other legendary female photographers who were Diane's competitors during the pre-Internet era?Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cummingham, Margaret Bourke White, etc.?None of them committed suicide or did stupid things, and the careers of them all were much longer than Diane's.Even Lisette Model, to whom Diane wrote a suicide note, kept teaching photography until she was 75.So these women didn't use male chauvinism as an excuse to screw up.Neither did Diane.Diane's genius is her excuse for doing everything she did.

I'll close with two observations on Diane. The first you will find in the Bosworth book:"Nobody had such an enlarged sense of reality."

And here's one that's not in the Bosworth book.It's from Richard Lamparski, a writer whose name turns up many times in newspaper databases because he specializes in "whatever happened to" books and columns about actors of the 1950s.You've never heard of Jean Peters, Richard Webb aka Captain Midnight or Anthony Steel?Neither have most people before they read Richard Lamparski.He ain't wealthy as you can imagine.He may or may not have met Diane (his name is absent from the Bosworth bio), but he evidently knew who she was when she was alive. He put the following epigraph at the beginning of his annual catalog of has-been actors in 1972:

"To Diane Arbus (1923 - 1971), who did so much to enlarge the standards of her art and the consciousness of us all."

A Very Complex Person
This is a thorough retelling and discussion of a very complex person.Bosworth does a good job of drawing on interviews with people who knew Diane Arbus, and the reader does a get a vivid sense of what the burgeoning photography community was like in the 1960s.One concern I have is that this is very mucha re-telling of a life, not really an in-depth analysis.There is a certain lack of introspection about this, and the book fades off and becomes more episodic toward the end.I can't quite decide if that is intentional--an attempt to show a life coming apart at the seams--or just some final exaustion with the subject.

A fascinating account of afemale artistin the 60's.
Diane Arbus was the child of immigrant parents, and grew up exploring her potential set against the backdrop of the 50's, 60's and 70's.Her husband, actor Allan Arbus was also an artist looking for his potential. Hers in photography, his in acting.

If there is a down side to thebook, it is that it is pretty well factual, with very good and closesources, but the book starts to fade when the author explores Diane's lateryears.Was this woman, born into a family where depression had beendiscovered in her mother really depressed because of a failed marriage? The author opines to the affirmative.Or was it something more?The bookonly gives us a glimpse of Allan's troubled reaction to her depression.

I believe a more indepth study into the soul of this woman would haveshown dramatically the tragedy of her death.Set in the time period, oursociety was not cognizant or nor able to recognize signals in mentaldepression.There are many examples in the book of how Diane wasattempting to overcome the demons.

All in all, I found the bookinteresting and well written.

A Must For Serious Photographers
The author presents a well balanced accounting of the somewhat tragic life of this important, innovative photographer. Diane Arbus had significant talent, and it is amazing that she continued to produce outstanding work when burdened with a serious chronic depression. The author also impresses us with Arbus's special ability to coax almost anybody to pose for her. If she had lacked this skill, many of her portraits would never have come into being. This is a must read for those interested in the history of photography.

The bestbook about a woman photographer I have read,
Patrica Bosworth's biography of Diane Arbus is an exellent book.It gives a clear and comprehensive story of Arbus's life,from her comfortablebackground as a daughter of a Jewish New Yorkmerchant family through her early adulthood as the wife and photographic partner of her husband Allan,through the time after her marriage when she was one of the important people on the NY cultural scene,to her disturbing "adventures" and early, tragic death at her own hand. She could not haverealized how her influence would be felt so many years after her death,and this book is the only one that does justice to the life and effect of Diane Arbus. Buy it! Read it! ... Read more

Book Description

The first biography of Holbien in 50 years, revealing his involvement with the secret service surrounding Henry VIII. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

READABLE, OPINIONATED, NEVER DULL
The author attempts interesting 'symbolic' interpretations of some of Holbeins' more famous works in the visual context of the time. For example, Anna of Cleves' asymmetrical dress trim says "No social graces", to the initiated. One wonders why the King didn't see this if it was indeed common to include visual puns in paintings? I took issue with the author's rather silly descriptions of 16th century religious books as 'best-sellers', as if there was some sort of survey going on at the time. Otherwise, this is a very worthwhile addition to any Holbein fan's collection. It's written intelligently and attempts to place the artist in the various towns and countries with reason. And it will make you look twice at ALL the details in all the versions of a Holbein painting! ... Read more

Book Description

In this tell-all biography, journalist Richard Speer gives readers an all-access pass into the uproarious, uplifting life of Matt Lamb, a highly successful businessman turned world-famous painter. A rich and inspirational story, Matt Lamb: The Art of Success captures the essence of this flamboyant yet enigmatic figure and details how he transformed from his first success as CEO of a multi-million-dollar business to become one of the art world's most celebrated and controversial painters. Through candid interviews with Lamb, his family members, friends, detractors, and critics, readers will discover how Lamb came to run a family-owned funeral business with all the drama and pathos of the hit TV show, Six Feet Under only to be told by doctors he was dying of a grave illness and should begin planning his own funeral. Page after engaging page, Matt Lamb: The Art of Success moves on to reveal how Lamb beat the illness and lived to become a spiritually driven painter hailed as an heir to Pablo Picasso, all the while thumbing his nose at critics who dismissed him and his millions as the antithesis of starving-artist chic. Now in his 70s, Lamb is still moving and shaking, redefining the art world, and tackling his toughest challenge ever: painting for world peace. This book will uncover the secrets to Lamb's success in business and art and leave readers asking: What new adventures are around the corner for this maverick entrepreneur/philosopher? And what can we learn from his life? ... Read more

Reviews (2)

A Brilliant, Important, Inspiring Read
Richard Speer,journalist and art critic extraordinairehas crafted a masterpiece that does justice to an artist who has reached the pinnacles of creative success, achieving what even the most jaded observer would have to applaud.In Speer's own words, artist Matt Lamb "...has converted the passion and energy that made him a powerhouse in the business world and translated it directly into a successful, if controversial, art career.He has searched for and found his strengths as a painter and capitalized on them, deploying his every spiritual and material resource to widen the audience of his art and philosophy.He has, in other words, devoted everything he possesses to his life's highest mission.Can a man do any more?".I would say not, but more importantly,the reader is treated to a fascinating, first hand look at how he did it.All the human drama from the beginning of Lamb's life to the present,is captured with exquisite attention to detail and a faithful presentation of the ingredients to Lamb's success.We witness the tireless work, the failures,the spiritual vision,setbacks,principles and players involved with an ascent to the peak of artistic achievement.Regardless of the complex issues raised in the process, we are left inspired and awed by what can be accomplished against all odds.

By any standard, this is an amazing story told with marvelous wit, profound psychological insight, and journalistic expertise of the highest calibre.The issues involved with Lamb's career are offered with rigorous scholarship, clarity and objectivity, leaving the reader to decide the merits of the case, but in the end, it hardly matters.We have been taken along on an odyssey, a rich, colorful,creative journey so unlikey that it engenders faith in the impossible.Only the most embittered cynic could read this book and not feel buoyed up and encouraged to reach for the stars.And this is exactly as Lamb would have it.He is in the end, a motivator, a man of tremendous inner strength who is capable of generating hope even during the darkest of times.And yes, like many of us, Lamb appears flawed, self questioning and conflicted by the challenges of life.But through a very real compassion for the human tragedies we all face (no doubt from decades in the funeral business),and with a transcendent vision expressed through painting, he embodies the true spirit of a great artist.

You will marvel, laugh out loud, be challenged, inspired, and entertained.When finished, we are left with the feeling, no the conviction that one can make a difference, not only in our own small life but for the world at large.

Yes,this is an important book.It is a story that needed to be told and should be read by anyone who doubts if daily life can be transformed into a magnificent experience, or that the world is too far gone to bother with.Lamb and Speer are a dynamic duo in this rare literary endeavor full of heart, integrity and world class fun.

THE ART OF SUCCESS BY RICHARD SPEER
THE ART OF SUCCESS BY RICHARD SPEER

Richard Speer has completed a well conceived and well written global view of Matt Lamb that cleverly incorporates and blends his personal and artistic life. The fascinating vignettes concerning Lamb's interludes with the mafia, his seething wit, and his membership in a boyhood gang are retold with clarity and humor. The reader is not just introduced to Matt Lamb's world, s/he is engulfed by it, living through generations of Lambs before seeing pictures in her/his head of a cherubic baby Lamb, a boisterous boy living with a strict conservative Catholic father, an ambitious young man's goals, the successful entrepeneur, and the anticlimatic change of the adult Matt Lamb to art.

Speer plays with words in the re-telling the way Lamb played the business world - with outward charm and inner irony. For instance, Lamb's innovative interpretation of the word "conversation" and one of his primary ideas in painting, is clearly explained by Speer as he portrays how "conversation" is applied and shown through multitudes of Lamb's paintings. Speer aptly uses the term "paradox" to define Matt Lamb - his life, his works and his politics; the contrast between Lamb's strong political beliefs and adventurous business nature with his conservative and cautious father; or his "ready, fire, aim" policy that helped him build an empire of thirty-six successful businesses.

Introductions are made to the primary people that surround Lamb - who they are, their relationships, and how his life seems to be ordained with the people around him, each uniquely gifted to enhance and enable Lamb's vision; to help him "gravitate toward that which [he] secretly most love[s]" (p. 36).

Lamb's eclectic life is reflected in the diverse people with whom he has associated himself as an artist - from well-known established gallerists to Joe Cerqua and Wilfredo Rivera, from universities to hospitals, nuns to 20-something modern day hippies, from fashion designers to the Pope. Matt Lamb's network evokes a deep emotional response lying at the core of every human being.

Many of Lamb's works, perhaps especially Ghands, The Ascent of Man, The Civil War, Dachau and An Gorta Mor, are described by Speer as a "progression from oppression to crisis to liberation" (p. 135). The same formula could also easily be used to describe Lamb's life, beginning with his autocratic father, then a demanding business, to the crisis of facing death, and finally to the self liberation Lamb found in art.

The author of The Art of Success does not simply retell an amazing life, he also uses descriptive terminology and defines artistic terms, thus making the book an entertaining and educational read for the lay person, while still maintaining the necessary detail and interesting tidbits a Matt Lamb scholar would desire.

PROF. DR. ENRIQUE MALLEN
ON-LINE PICASSO PROJECT
TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY

... Read more

Book Description

The universal dream of doing work you love and earning a living at it forms the heart of this new edition of a book that has become a favorite of many potters. This fresh account of The Mud-Pie Dilemma updates by 25 years the classic story of Tom and Elaine Coleman and their struggles to create a successful, loving marriage and family while master potter Tom seeks to realize his extraordinary potential as a ceramic artist. The first edition of this book ended with them achieving high artistic and critical success, and low financial rewards. This new edition extends their story from 1977 to 2002, from a farmhouse and studio in Canby, Oregon, to a house with swimming pool and studio in the desert outside Las Vegas, Nevada. A new chapter documents how their lives and work have changed and grown over a quarter-century, and 75 new photographs show the dazzling results. Tom’s work achieves new heights of artistry and recognition, and Elaine emerges as a notable artist in her own right. The Mud-Pie Dilemma also provides inside information about the craft and art of working in clay–including recipes and tips for 40 of Tom’s much-praised glazes. ... Read more