Norman Rockwellrsquo;s tremendously successful; prolific career as a painter and illustrator has rendered him a twentieth-century American icon. However; the very popularity and accessibility of his idealized; nostalgic depictions of middleclass life have caused him to be considered not a serious artist but a ldquo;mere illustratorrdquo;ndash;a disparagement only reinforced by the hundreds of memorable covers he drew for The Sunday Evening Post.Symptomatic of criticsrsquo; neglect is the fact that Rockwell has never before been the subject of a serious critical biography. Based on private family archives and interviews and publishes to coincide with a major two-year travelling retrospective of his work; this book reveals for the first time the driven workaholic who had three complicated marriages and was a distant father mdash;so different from the loving; all-American-dad image widely held to this day. Critically acclaimed author Laura Claridge also breaks new ground with her reappraisal of Rockwellrsquo;s art; arguing that despite his popular sentimental style; his artistry was masterful; complex; and far more manipulative than people realize.
#1245765 in eBooks 2001-12-18 2001-12-18File Name: B000FC1JMG
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Performance and the politics of movement is not an easy read and requires effort and concentration to follow Lepeckirsquo;s ...By Madeline HarveyAndreacute; Lepeckirsquo;s Exhausting Dance: Performance and the politics of movement is a must read for the serious student of the contemporary dance/performance scene. Lepecki carefully analyzes the works of numerous choreographers and performance artists in the United States and Europe over the last 30 years; and their contributions to our understandings of the politics of movement. In particular; he addresses the issues of our linear concept of time; modernityrsquo;s subjectivization of bodies through perpetual movement (ldquo;...severed from the worldrdquo; p. 11); naming and writing; the choreographic connection to solipsistic masculinity; and the perpetuation of the cages of colonial; racial and gender bias. In doing so; he upturns centuries of ldquo;fantasy-basedrdquo; notions of choreography; dance; and society. Exhausting Dance: Performance and the politics of movement is not an easy read and requires effort and concentration to follow Lepeckirsquo;s choice of phrasing. Occasionally; his interpretations and insinuations reveal skeptical undertones; but he clearly evidences his thorough research and scholarship. His ideas are challenging; thought provoking and inspiring; and will certainly change the readerrsquo;s understanding of history; art; dance; and our social condition.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Interesting; but dense... very denseBy hereandnowPerformance and the Politics of Movement by Andreacute; Lepecki is a dense scholarly work which explores the connection and interplay between dance studies; philosophy; colonialism; critical theory; performance art; gender; racial bias; while placing Western dance in the realm of modernity. Throughout the book Lepecki delves into the works of European and American artists Bruce Naumann; Juan Dominguez; Xavier Le Roy; Jeacute;rocirc;me Bel; Trisha Brown; La Ribot; William Pope.L and Vera Mantero.To me the text is lacking in the amount of direct accounting of lsquo;intentionrsquo; from the artists themselves to support Lepeckirsquo;s analysis of their works. However; I did find his description and analysis of Vera Manterorsquo;s uma misteriosa Coisa disse e.e. cummings (a mysterious Thing said e.e.cummings) powerful and thought provoking. Within this chapter Lepecki delves into a reading of her work as he rethinks postcolonial melancholia.If you are new to dance studies I recommend starting somewhere else since there is very little explanation of the essence of the elements which are at play within the contemporary dance/performance art realm.1 of 1 people found the following review helpful. Some intriguing ideas followed by academic muckety muckBy The Thinking BodyLepeckis first Introduction: The Political Ontology of Movement and the following two chapters start this book on a strong note. As I was reading them I felt encouraged that Dance Studies was truly starting to come into its own as a serious discipline. Unfortunately he didnt end this short book (132 pages) sooner.His exegesis on Trisha Browns "Its a Draw/Live Feed" and La Ribots "Panoramix" are truly painful - showing the worst excesses of academic b.s. writing - full of multiple citations of the entire canon of postmodern theorists (the fact that there is a postmodern canon is a paradox that one doesnt need to Derrida to deconstruct); he even goes out of his way to cite Foucault when citing a different author by claiming the author he is citing has a similar project as Foucault. And...of course you cant have academic artspeak without the requisite invocations of Freud and Lacan - the vertical dimension is; of course; phallic and the horizontal is "virgin territory". (I find it interesting that the photos of artists that challenge phallic representation are full-frontal nudes....)It is clear that Lepecki is well read and can cite famous philosophers with the best of them but I get more than a little wary of a constant stream of excerpted; decontexturalized statements from varied philosophers parsed to make an rather strained point.Lepeckis exploration of modernism; movement and the definition of dance are quite interesting. However; I found it rather revealing that he was most successful in his exploration of choreographic works by performance artists. Perhaps "Dance Studies" isnt fully grown yet as an independent discipline when it is fully subsumed under the larger discipline of Performance Studies and; at least in this book; looks to artists who dont identify themselves as being within dance for its most cogent analysis.