From Publishers Weekly
Purely out of artistic ambition, Armenian-American abstract painter Gorky (1895-1948; born in Turkey as Vostanig Adoian) fabricated a new identity, complete with an Ivy League education and personal histories with master artists, on arriving in the United States. Spender (Within Tuscany), who is married to Gorky's oldst daughter, unhesitatingly exposes the painter's many "tall tales." He also assesses Gorky's difficulty in arriving at his own aesthetic until late in life in terms of both the artist's ties to the artistic patriarchs of the previous generation, the Surrealists (including Breton, Duchamp and Brancusi) and his complex status as a forerunner who eventually became alienated from the New York Abstract Expressionists (particularly de Kooning and Rothko). Spender derives much information from anecdotal sources, including an interview with de Kooning, and assumes a chatty tone in dealing with other artists. But he becomes increasingly less sympathetic to Gorky, whose last years are presented from the perspectives of Spender's wife and her mother. Nonetheless, painting constantly despite failing health, family problems and critical indifference, Gorky's frustrations are heartbreaking. Equally compelling is the window opened on New York's art scene when it was still a small clique. Gorky was so in love with the "artist" archetype that he not only lied about himself but also plagiarized anecdotes, artistic statements, love letters and possibly even his own suicide note. Spender preserves the personal dimensions of his subject while demonstrating that the painter should have adopted a youthful declarationA"I shall be a great artist or if not a great crook"Aas his motto. 90 b&w illustrations.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
From Library Journal
Spender, a sculptor and writer and the husband of Gorkys daughter, provides a personal and intimate biography of the Armenian American abstract expressionist Arshile Gorky (190448). Spenders access to family information and papers provides some fresh views of the life that the artist himself mythologized and obscured. Exiled from his homeland in 1915, Gorky became a follower of the School of Paris, only achieving his personal style five years before his death. Valuable for its use of primary sources and new translations of Gorkys letters and writings, this work focuses on personal biography more than on art history. A number of books on Gorky are in print (another extensive biography has just appeared in England), but noneincluding this oneis completely satisfactory. Nevertheless, Spenders work offers an accessible account of the person and the places of his life. Recommended for large general biography collections or for advanced art history collections that already have more art-historical works on the painter.Jack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Lib.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --Ce texte fait référence à une édition épuisée ou non disponible de ce titre.
