Leonardo Digital Reviews
 LDR Home  Index/Search  Leonardo On-Line  About Leonardo  Whats New








LDR Category List

Books

CDs

Events/Exhibits

Film/Video

Lives of the Great 20th-Century Artists

by Edward Lucie-Smith.
Thames & Hudson, New York, NY, U.S.A., 1999.
ISBN: 0-500-23739-5.
Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens, Department of Art, University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls, IA 50613-0362, U.S.A. E-mail: ballast@netins.net


As the author admits at its outset, this book (as implied by its title) is indebted to Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari, a classic collection of articles on the agonies and ecstasies of individual artists, first published in 1550. Vasari's mission was more manageable, writes Lucie-Smith, if only because he did not have to deal with the bewildering diversity of modern life. That said, he embarks on the arduous task of selecting and writing about 100 artists of the Modern and Postmodern periods, beginning with "Toward the Modern" (featuring Edvard Munch and Kathe Kollwitz) and ending 23 sections and more than 300 pages later with "The Artist Not the Artwork" (Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Beuys, Yves Klein, Eva Hesse, and Jean-Michel Basquiat). The articles, like those of Vasari, are both entertaining and informative, and arranged chronologically in stylistic categories. The book is also well-illustrated, in the sense that the author has chosen artworks that are representative yet not overused, supplemented by curious, revealing photographs that are sometimes the strangest, most memorable part. (Reprinted by permission from Ballast Quarterly Review 15, No. 4, Summer 2000.)







Updated 13 September 2000.




Contact LDR: ldr@leonardo.org

Contact Leonardo: isast@leonardo.info


copyright © 2000 ISAST