Jed Perl - Böcker

The first biography of America's greatest twentieth-century sculptor. In this beautifully written, deeply researched book Jed Perl shows how Alexander Calder became an avant-garde artist with enduring appeal.One of our most beloved modern artists, Calder is celebrated above all as the inventor of the mobile. Only now is the full story of his life being told in a gloriously illustrated biography, which features unseen photographs and is based on scores of interviews and unprecedented access to Calder's papers.Born into a family of artists, Calder forged important friendships with a who's who of twentieth-century creators, including Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp, Martha Graham, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian and Virgil Thomson. His early years studying engineering were followed by artistic triumphs in Paris in the late 1920s, and his emergence as a leader in the international abstract avant-garde.His marriage in 1931 to Louisa James—a great-niece of Henry James—is a richly romantic story. This transatlantic life carries readers from New York's Greenwich Village, to the Left Bank of Paris during the Depression, and then to a refugee-filled London just before the War, where Calder's circle of friends included Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Kenneth Clark.

As art critic for The New Republic , Jed Perl is renowned for combining a passion for art and a skepticism about the current art establishment with an ability to write about art in the context of our larger culture. In this collection of essays, including two written especially for this book, he delivers a brilliant mixture of first-rate art criticism and politically informed insight into the true workings of the American art world.Perl offers incisive analysis into the marketing mentality that dominates today's museums, the poverty of academic criticism, and the changing expectations of the gallery-going public. He re-evaluates the old masters, and turns an avid, unprejudiced eye on the works of his contemporaries. He laments the collapse of a gallery culture that once allowed artists to develop slowly, and argues for a radical reassessment of the way art is presented to,and is viewed by,the public.

This brilliant blend of history, biography, and criticism explores the seminal figures of twentieth-century French art—Matisse, Picasso, Derain, Léger, Dufy, Braque, Giacometti, Balthus, and Hélion—and the vital art world in which they thrived.The ten interlocking essays in this important book include radical new evaluations of Derain, Léger, and Dufy, and penetrating studies of the final works of Picasso and Braque. Paris Without End, Jed Perl’s first book, is now celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary and is essential reading for anyone passionate about modern art.Roberta Smith called it “a quiet, cogent tour de force. . . . As one critic’s demonstration of what he considers the best in art and the best way to write about it, this book sets a high standard.”Hilton Kramer also noted, “Everyone who cares about the art of the twentieth century will find something to disagree with in this book—its many unorthodox judgments are bound to be controversial—but that, in my view, is a mark of the book’s importance.”