A revelatory gathering of beloved art and artists presented with distinctive prose.
An exciting new essay collection from the author of The Argonauts and Bluets.
Poet and critic Nelson draws from nearly 20 years of her career to create this perceptive and lively book. She pulls together conversations, critical essays, cultural criticism, and tributes to the artists she loves, including Björk, Eileen Myles, Carolee Schneemann, Hilton Als, and Judith Butler. Featuring her direct and incisive prose, Nelson’s examination of art and the people who make it is poignant and provocative. Her statement that “the art of our lives may not always be exactly where we presume it to be” is an assertion she demonstrates throughout. In assembly, these essays build a quilt of influences, friends, and loved ones. Nelson’s admiration and enthusiasm for her subjects is a palpable driver of joy and delight. Additionally, the author possesses the ability to provide surprise and enchantment, and the chronological arrangement allows recurring themes to emerge and flow across the essays, creating an effective sense of a larger whole. Among the many topics Nelson explores are motherhood, pleasure, literature, violence, music, queerness, liberation, feminism, transgression, and, of course, love. Throughout the book, the author asks insightful, thought-provoking questions about the nature of art: “What does it really mean for a work of art or a body of work to perform a critique? Can images provide—and do we really want them to provide—‘critique’ in the same way that, say, discursive prose does?” In an essay on Nayland Blake, Nelson asks, “How does someone fully inhabit and model a space of generosity, good witchery, and ‘niceness’ while making decidedly ‘not nice’ work? What is the relationship between grimness and pleasure?” The true delight in this winning collection is tracking the development of various themes across years and topics.
A revelatory gathering of beloved art and artists presented with distinctive prose.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781644452813
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Graywolf
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2024
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
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.
A potent series of “notes” paints a multidimensional picture of Blackness in America.
Throughout the book, which mixes memoir, history, literary theory, and art, Sharpe—the chair of Black studies at York University in Toronto and author of the acclaimed book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being—writes about everything from her family history to the everyday trauma of American racism. Although most of the notes feature the author’s original writing, she also includes materials like photographs, copies of letters she received, responses to a Twitter-based crowdsourcing request, and definitions of terms collected from colleagues and friends (“preliminary entries toward a dictionary of untranslatable blackness”). These diverse pieces coalesce into a multifaceted examination of the ways in which the White gaze distorts Blackness and perpetuates racist violence. Sharpe’s critique is not limited to White individuals, however. She includes, for example, a disappointing encounter with a fellow Black female scholar as well as critical analysis of Barack Obama’s choice to sing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a hate crime at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. With distinct lyricism and a firm but tender tone, Sharpe executes every element of this book flawlessly. Most impressive is the collagelike structure, which seamlessly moves among an extraordinary variety of forms and topics. For example, a photograph of the author’s mother in a Halloween costume transitions easily into an introduction to Roland Barthes’ work Camera Lucida, which then connects just as smoothly to a memory of watching a White visitor struggle with the reality presented by the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. “Something about this encounter, something about seeing her struggle…feels appropriate to the weight of this history,” writes the author. It is a testament to Sharpe’s artistry that this incredibly complex text flows so naturally.
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780374604486
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
