An illuminating commentary on much more than art, demonstrating how new ideas and cultural shifts take hold.
A globetrotting survey of the role women and spiritualism have played in modern art.
For art historian Higgie, author of The Mirror and the Palette, it is a matter of fact that as long as humans have been making art, women artists have been on the periphery. Readers can easily corroborate the author’s contention by noting the dates when women were finally admitted to various art schools or the percentage of works by women at any given show or exhibition. Indeed, what’s remarkable about this book is that Higgie doesn’t approach the subject with a particularly feminist lens. The artists she profiles are women who happened to have interest in or connection to spiritualism, but with few exceptions, the author doesn’t make a case for their gender informing either their art or their connection to the otherworldly. As readers meet unsung heroes of art and spirituality across time and space, they also travel with Higgie on her personal journey as she discovers and explores this fascinating facet of art history. Near the end of the book, she describes a conversation with an artist friend: “I ask Liliane what the word ‘spirituality’ means to her. She thinks for a moment and shakes her head. ‘Although the ultimate goal is to be enlightened, I don’t think you can pin it down. It’s different for everyone. It’s just a path and you never reach the end of it because you want to keep going.’ ” Like Liliane, Higgie eschews definitive conclusions about the connections among spiritualism, women artists, and modern art, but she paints a variety of compelling portraits. For more in-depth profiles of women artists, check out Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men.
An illuminating commentary on much more than art, demonstrating how new ideas and cultural shifts take hold.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781639365432
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.
All right, all right, all right: The affable, laconic actor delivers a combination of memoir and self-help book.
“This is an approach book,” writes McConaughey, adding that it contains “philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it. This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life.” Some of those philosophies come in the form of apothegms: “When you can design your own weather, blow in the breeze”; “Simplify, focus, conserve to liberate.” Others come in the form of sometimes rambling stories that never take the shortest route from point A to point B, as when he recounts a dream-spurred, challenging visit to the Malian musician Ali Farka Touré, who offered a significant lesson in how disagreement can be expressed politely and without rancor. Fans of McConaughey will enjoy his memories—which line up squarely with other accounts in Melissa Maerz’s recent oral history, Alright, Alright, Alright—of his debut in Richard Linklater’s Dazed and Confused, to which he contributed not just that signature phrase, but also a kind of too-cool-for-school hipness that dissolves a bit upon realizing that he’s an older guy on the prowl for teenage girls. McConaughey’s prep to settle into the role of Wooderson involved inhabiting the mind of a dude who digs cars, rock ’n’ roll, and “chicks,” and he ran with it, reminding readers that the film originally had only three scripted scenes for his character. The lesson: “Do one thing well, then another. Once, then once more.” It’s clear that the author is a thoughtful man, even an intellectual of sorts, though without the earnestness of Ethan Hawke or James Franco. Though some of the sentiments are greeting card–ish, this book is entertaining and full of good lessons.
A conversational, pleasurable look into McConaughey’s life and thought.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-13913-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
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