A brilliant account of Nazi pillage and the ongoing efforts at restitution.
A scholar tells the story of 20th-century art dealers, the avant-garde and old masters works they promoted, and Nazi plunder.
In 1945, “Jewish gentleman” Lt. James Rorimer, the Harvard-educated director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval branch, was given the job of traveling to Buxheim monastery in Germany and “hunting down an unknown quantity of works of art that the Nazis had despoiled.” He discovered 158 paintings of a quality few museum collections could match, works by Boucher, Fragonard, Delacroix, and others. These would not be the only cultural assets recovered that the Nazis had taken from Jews through a Wehrmacht unit known as ERR; it was a “massive confiscation of fine and decorative art almost immediately after the fall of France and the beginning of the German occupation.” But how did European Jews acquire the art in the first place, given that such works had hitherto been available only to royalty and the landed classes? In this exceptional work of scholarship, Boston University history professor Dellheim “sets out to reframe our picture of Nazi-stolen art” by focusing on “the rise and fall of a small number of Jews, individuals and families, who were both merchants and connoisseurs, dealers and collectors.” The author devotes most of the book to a detailed history of the Jewish dealers and collectors who acquired these artworks—e.g., Nathan Wildenstein, a textile merchant who developed “an astonishingly good eye” for authenticating old masters paintings; and Joseph Duveen, who would become one of the most influential art dealers in history. In the devastating final chapters, Dellheim describes the “cultural violence” of the Nazi dispossession of art and recounts the grotesque goals of “ensuring that museums and galleries were securely judenrein, ‘cleansed’ of Jews,” and “removing old masters from Jewish hands."
A brilliant account of Nazi pillage and the ongoing efforts at restitution.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68458-056-9
Page Count: 672
Publisher: Brandeis Univ. Press
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
HISTORY | ART & PHOTOGRAPHY | HOLOCAUST | JEWISH | WORLD
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
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 cheeky, gossipy dual biography.
A study of two writers uncomfortably entwined.
After Eve Babitz (1943-2021) died, her biographer Anolik came upon a letter from Babitz to Joan Didion (1934-2021) that startled her. Filled with “rage, despair, impatience, contempt,” it read like a “lovers’ quarrel.” “Eve was talking to Joan the way you talk to someone who’s burrowed deep under your skin, whose skin you’re trying to burrow deep under.” That surprise discovery suggested a “complicated alliance” between the two. In sometimes breathless prose, with sly asides to the “Reader,” Anolik draws on more than 100 interviews with Babitz and many other sources to follow both women’s lives, tumultuous loves, and aspirations before and after they met in Los Angeles in 1967, sometimes straining to prove their significance to one another. “Joan and Eve weren’t each other’s opposite selves so much as each other’s shadow selves,” she asserts. “Eve was what Joan both feared becoming and longed to become: an inspired amateur.” At the same time, “Joan was what Eve feared becoming and desired to become: a fierce professional.” Didion had just won acclaim for Slouching Towards Bethlehem when Babitz, newly arrived from New York, began socializing with her and her husband, John Gregory Dunne. The reticent Didion and the sensual, energetic Babitz could not have been more different, and Anolik clearly prefers Babitz. “I’m crazy for Eve,” she admits, “love her with a fan’s unreasoning abandon. Besides, Joan is somebody I naturally root against: I respect her work rather than like it; find her persona—part princess, part wet blanket—tough going.” Their relationship—hardly a friendship—fell apart in 1974 when Didion and Dunne were assigned to edit Babitz’s autobiographical novel, Eve’s Hollywood. Babitz, resentful of Didion’s attitude and intrusion, “fired” her, pursuing her writing career on her own. Didion soared to literary fame; not, alas, Babitz.
A cheeky, gossipy dual biography.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781668065488
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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