Download or read book The Clarks of Cooperstown written by Nicholas Fox Weber and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2009-03-12 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicholas Fox Weber, author of the acclaimed Patron Saints (“Exhilarating avant-garde entertainment”—Sam Hunter, The New York Times Book Review) and Balthus (“The authoritative account of his life and work”—Michael Ravitch, Newsday), gives us now the idiosyncratic lives of Sterling and Stephen Clark—two of America’s greatest art collectors, heirs to the Singer sewing machine fortune, and for decades enemies of each other. He tells the story, as well, of the two generations that preceded theirs, giving us an intimate portrait of one of the least known of America’s richest families. He begins with Edward Clark—the brothers’ grandfather, who amassed the Clark fortune in the late-nineteenth century—a man with nerves of steel; a Sunday school teacher who became the business partner of the wild inventor and genius Isaac Merritt Singer. And, by the turn of the twentieth century, was the major stockholder of the Singer Manufacturing Company. We follow Edward’s rise as a real estate wizard making headlines in 1880 when he commissioned Manhattan’s first luxury apartment building. The house was called “Clark’s Folly”; today it’s known as the Dakota. We see Clark’s son—Alfred—enigmatic and famously reclusive; at thirty-eight he inherited $50 million and became one of the country’s richest men. An image of propriety—good husband, father of four—in Europe, he led a secret homosexual life. Alfred was a man with a passion for art and charity, which he passed on to his four sons, in particular Sterling and Stephen Clark. Sterling, the second-oldest, buccaneering and controversial, loved impressionism, created his own museum in Williamstown, Massachusetts—and shocked his family by marrying an actress from the Comédie Française. Together the Sterling Clarks collected thousands of paintings and bred racehorses. In a highly public case, Sterling sued his three brothers over issues of inheritance, and then never spoke to them again. He was one of the central figures linked to a bizarre and little-known attempted coup against Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency. We are told what really happened and why—and who in American politics was implicated but never prosecuted. Sterling’s brother—Stephen—self-effacing and responsible—became chairman and president of the Museum of Modern Art and gave that institution its first painting, Edward Hopper’s House by the Railroad. Thirteen years later, in an act that provoked intense controversy, Stephen dismissed the Museum’s visionary founding director, Alfred Barr, who for more than a decade had single-handedly established the collection and exhibition programs that determined how the art of the twentieth century was regarded. Stephen gave or bequeathed to museums many of the paintings that today are still their greatest attractions. With authority, insight, and a flair for evoking time and place, Weber examines the depths of the brothers’ passions, the vehemence of their lifelong feud, the great art they acquired, and the profound and lasting impact they had on artistic vision in America.
Download or read book Cooperstown written by Louis Clark Jones and published by . This book was released on 1949 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Story of Cooperstown written by Ralph Birdsall and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book In Gotham s Shadow written by Alexander R. Thomas and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In what may be the first explicitly comparative study of the effects of globalization on metropolitan and rural communities, In Gotham's Shadow examines how three central New York communities struggled over the last half century to survive in a global economy that seems to have forgotten them. Utica, formerly a city of one hundred thousand, experienced the same trends of suburbanization, deindustrialization, and urban renewal as nearly every American city, with the same mixed results. In Cooperstown and Hartwick, two small villages forty miles south of Utica, the same trends were at work, though with different outcomes. Hartwick may be seen as an example of how small towns have lost their core, while Cooperstown may be seen as an example of how a small town can survive by transforming itself into a tourist destination. Thomas provides extensive historical background mixed with newspaper excerpts and lively interviews that add a human dimension to the transformations these communities have experienced.
Download or read book Patron Saints written by Nicholas Fox Weber and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2014-10-29 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This lively work of cultural history tells the stories of five young art patrons who, in the last 1920s and 1930s, were instrumental in bringing modern painting, sculpture, and dance to America. A combination of wealth, Harvard education privilege, and family connections enabled Lincoln Kirstein, Edward M. M. Warburg, Agnes Mongan, James Thrall Soby, and A. Everett (Chick) Austin, Jr., to introduce the work of Picasso, Balanchine, Calder, and other important artists to the United States.
Download or read book Balthus written by Nicholas Fox Weber and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-09-25 with total page 1047 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-scale biography of one of the most elusive and enigmatic painters of our time -- the self-proclaimed Count Balthus Klossowski de Rola -- whose brilliantly rendered, markedly sexualized portraits, especially of young girls, are among the most memorable images in contemporary art. The story of Balthus's life has been shrouded by contradiction and hearsay, most of it his own invention; over the years he created for himself a persona of mystery, aristocracy, and glamour. Now, in Nicholas Fox Weber's superb biography, Balthus, the man and the artist, stands revealed as never before. He was born in Paris in 1908 to Polish parents. At age twelve he first stepped into the spotlight with the publication of forty of his drawings illustrating a story about a cat by Rainer Maria Rilke, who was then Balthus's mother's lover and a crucial influence on the young boy. From that moment, Balthus has never been out of the public eye. In 1934 his first exhibition, in Paris, stunned the art world. The seven canvases drew attention to his extraordinary technique -- a mix of tradition and imagination informed by the work of Piero della Francesca, Courbet, and Joseph Reinhardt, but unique to the twenty-six-year-old artist -- and to their provocative content; one of the paintings, The Guitar Lesson, was so powerful in its sadomasochistic imagery that it was deemed necessary to remove it from public display. Continuously since then, Balthus's work has provoked both great opprobrium and profound admiration -- as has the artist himself, whether collaborating with Antonin Artaud on his Theater of Cruelty, transforming the Villa Medici into the social center of Fellini's Rome in the 1950s, or competing for the artistic limelight with his friends Picasso and André Derain. The artist's complexities are clarified and his genius understood in a book that derives its particular immediacy from Weber's long and intense conversations with Balthus -- who never previously consented to discuss his life and work with a biographer -- as well as his interviews with the painter's closest friends, members of his family, and many of the subjects of his controversial canvases. Weber's critical and human grasp (he acutely analyzes the paintings in terms of both their aesthetic achievement and what they reveal of their maker's psyche), combined with his rich knowledge of Balthus's life and his insight into the ideas and forces that have helped to shape Balthus's work over the past seven decades, gives us a striking, illuminating portrait of one of the most admired and outrageous artists of our time.
Download or read book Never Say Die written by James C. Nicholson and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2013-05-04 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A quarter of a million people braved miserable conditions at Epsom Downs on June 2, 1954, to see the 175th running of the prestigious Derby Stakes. Queen Elizabeth II and Sir Winston Churchill were in attendance, along with thousands of Britons who were all convinced of the unfailing superiority of English bloodstock and eager to see a British colt take the victory. They were shocked when a Kentucky-born chestnut named Never Say Die galloped to a two-length triumph at odds of 33–1, winning Britain's greatest race and beginning an important shift in the world of Thoroughbred racing. Never Say Die traces the history of this extraordinary colt, beginning with his foaling in Lexington, Kentucky, as well as the stories of the influential individuals brought together by the horse and his victory—from the heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune to the Aga Khan. Most fascinating is the tale of Mona Best of Liverpool, England, whose well-placed bet on the long-shot Derby contender allowed her to open the Casbah Coffee Club. There, her son met musicians John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison, later joining their band. Featuring a foreword by the original drummer for the Beatles, Pete Best, this remarkable book reveals how an underdog's surprise victory played a part in the formation of the most successful and influential rock band in history and made the Bluegrass region of Kentucky the center of the international Thoroughbred industry.
Download or read book Follies in America written by Kerry Dean Carso and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2021-08-15 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follies in America examines historicized garden buildings, known as "follies," from the nation's founding through the American centennial celebration in 1876. In a period of increasing nationalism, follies—such as temples, summerhouses, towers, and ruins—brought a range of European architectural styles to the United States. By imprinting the land with symbols of European culture, landscape gardeners brought their idea of civilization to the American wilderness. Kerry Dean Carso's interdisciplinary approach in Follies in America examines both buildings and their counterparts in literature and art, demonstrating that follies provide a window into major themes in nineteenth-century American culture, including tensions between Jeffersonian agrarianism and urban life, the ascendancy of middle-class tourism, and gentility and social class aspirations.
Download or read book Induction Day at Cooperstown written by Dennis Corcoran and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-12-08 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly every year since 1939, baseball's most outstanding players, umpires, pioneers and executives have been enshrined at Cooperstown in a public ceremony attracting thousands of fans from across (and sometimes beyond) the United States. Whether conferred by the Baseball Writers Association of America, the Veterans Committee, or in the case of 17 Negro League greats in 2006, an ad hoc committee of historians, Hall of Fame membership is the game's highest honor. This book covers the origins and history of the Hall of Fame museum and its election process, provides general information on each year's class and induction ceremony, and includes concise biographical and career discussion for every Hall of Famer, as well as commentary on his (Effa Manley is the lone female) path to election, and highlights of his speech.
Download or read book The Bauhaus Group written by Nicholas Fox Weber and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2009-10-27 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicholas Fox Weber, for thirty-three years head of the Albers Foundation, spent many years with Anni and Josef Albers, the only husband-and-wife artistic pair at the Bauhaus (she was a textile artist; he a professor and an artist, in glass, metal, wood, and photography). The Alberses told him their own stories and described life at the Bauhaus with their fellow artists and teachers, Walter Gropius, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as well these figures’ lesser-known wives and girlfriends. In this extraordinary group biography, Weber brilliantly brings to life the Bauhaus geniuses and the community of the pioneering art school in Germany’s Weimar and Dessau in the 1920s and early 1930s. Here are: Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, the architect who streamlined design early in his career and who saw the school as a place for designers to collaborate in an ideal setting . . . a dashing hussar, the ardent young lover of the renowned femme fatale Alma Mahler, beginning when she was the wife of composer Gustav Mahler . . . Paul Klee, the onlooker, smoking his pipe, observing Bauhaus dances as well as his colleagues’ lectures from the back of the room . . . the cook who invented recipes and threw together his limited ingredients with the same spontaneity, sense of proportion, and fascination that underscored his paintings . . . Wassily Kandinsky, the Russian-born pioneer of abstract painting, guarding a secret tragedy one could never have guessed from his lively paintings, in which he used bold colors not just for their visual vibrancy, but for their “sound” effects . . . Josef Albers, who entered the Bauhaus as a student in 1920 and was one of the seven remaining faculty members when the school was closed by the Gestapo in 1933 . . . Annelise Else Frieda Fleischmann, a Berlin heiress, an intrepid young woman, who later, as Anni Albers, made art the focal point of her existence . . . Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, imperious, decisive, often harsh, an architect who became director—the last—of the Bauhaus, and the person who guided the school’s final days after SS storm troopers raided the premises. Weber captures the life, spirit, and flair with which these geniuses lived, as well as their consuming goal of making art and architecture. A portrait infused with their fulsome embrace of life, their gift for laughter, and the powerful force of their individual artistic personalities.
Download or read book iBauhaus written by Nicholas Fox Weber and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich, wide-ranging meditation on the iPhone as direct descendant of the 1930s Bauhaus, one of the twentieth century's most influential schools of art and design (summed up in Mies van der Rohe's dictum, "less is more") whose principle aim was to connect art and industry. From one of the leading authorities on the Bauhaus and modernism. Nicholas Fox Weber, in this deft, entertaining, and brilliant rumination on art and technology, writes of the iPhone as the essence of the Bauhaus principles of form following function--of honesty of design and materials that reflect the true nature of objects and buildings, favoring linear and geometrical forms; adhering to line, shape, and colors; synthesizing art to modern times; the fusion in design of art and technology. Weber, an authority and celebrant of twentieth-century modernism, ranging from the paintings of Balthus to the architecture of Le Corbusier, was a close associate of Anni and Josef Albers, the last living giants of the Bauhaus, and absorbed firsthand its truest beliefs. The Alberses emphasized their passion for "good design over bad art." Anni, a groundbreaking textile artist and printmaker, and Josef, a painter and color theorist and influential art teacher, stuck to "what was taught at the Bauhaus: the right use of materials, good technique, a purpose that serves all." Weber writes that the Bauhaus was not a style but an attitude: clear design and visual acuity as the embodiment of morality and honesty. And in iBauhaus, Weber explores how the iPhone, with its effective design and its versatility, honors these deepest beliefs, as well as the values that the Bauhaus sought to give to the world.
Download or read book Life at the Dakota written by Stephen Birmingham and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-12-01 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A history of the Manhattan building and its famous tenants, from Lauren Bacall to John Lennon, by the New York Times–bestselling author of “Our Crowd”. When Singer sewing machine tycoon Edward Clark built a luxury apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in the late 1800s, it was derisively dubbed “the Dakota” for being as far from the center of the downtown action as its namesake territory on the nation’s western frontier. Despite its remote location, the quirky German Renaissance–style castle, with its intricate façade, peculiar interior design, and gargoyle guardians peering down on Central Park, was an immediate hit, particularly among the city’s well-heeled intellectuals and artists. Over the next century it would become home to an eclectic cast of celebrity residents—including Boris Karloff, Lauren Bacall, Leonard Bernstein, singer Roberta Flack (the Dakota’s first African-American resident), and John Lennon and Yoko Ono—who were charmed by its labyrinthine interior and secret passageways, its mysterious past, and its ghosts. Stephen Birmingham, author of the New York society classic “Our Crowd”, has written an engrossing history of the first hundred years of one of the most storied residential addresses in Manhattan and the legendary lives lived within its walls.
Download or read book The Call to the Hall written by Kevin Warneke and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-01-13 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The names on the cast-bronze plaques hanging in the National Baseball Hall of Fame embody the history and drama of the sport—they are the royalty of baseball. Yet many inductees believed their entry into the Hall was anything but guaranteed, and even some who waited by the phone for the fateful “call to the Hall” were stunned to hear the news. Reactions to the call varied from stoicism to overwhelming emotion, but for most of the 31 inductees interviewed in this book, it was a moment of reflection and gratitude. In other cases, the call came years too late and family members received the posthumous honor.
Download or read book Art of Babar written by Nicholas Fox Weber and published by Harry N. Abrams. This book was released on 1995-09-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicholas Fox Weber, Executive Director of the Josef Albers Foundation in New Haven, Connecticut, worked with Laurent to reconstruct the genesis of Babar and his shy queen, Celeste, and to explore the themes that have made the Babar books so enduringly successful.
Download or read book New York State Peoples Places and Priorities written by Joanne Reitano and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The state of New York is virtually a nation unto itself. Long one of the most populous states and home of the country’s most dynamic city, New York is geographically strategic, economically prominent, socially diverse, culturally innovative, and politically influential. These characteristics have made New York distinctive in our nation’s history. In New York State: Peoples, Places, and Priorities, Joanne Reitano brings the history of this great state alive for readers. Clear and accessible, the book features: Primary documents and illustrations in each chapter, encouraging engagement with historical sources and issues Timelines for every chapter, along with lists of recommended reading and websites Themes of labor, liberty, lifestyles, land, and leadership running throughout the text Coverage from the colonial period up through the present day, including the Great Recession and Andrew Cuomo’s governorship Highly readable and up-to-date, New York State: Peoples, Places, and Priorities is a vital resource for anyone studying, teaching, or just interested in the history of the Empire State.
Download or read book The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art written by Joan M. Marter and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2011 with total page 3140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arranged in alphabetical order, these 5 volumes encompass the history of the cultural development of America with over 2300 entries.
Download or read book Henry James Framed written by Michael Anesko and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022-10 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henry James Framed is a cultural history of Henry James as a work of art. Throughout his life, James demonstrated an abiding interest in--some would say an obsession with--the visual arts. In his most influential testaments about the art of fiction, James frequently invoked a deeply felt analogy between imaginative writing and painting. At a time when having a photographic carte de visite was an expected social commonplace, James detested the necessity of replenishing his supply or of distributing his autographed image to well-wishing friends and imploring readers. Yet for a man who set the highest premium on personal privacy, James seems to have had few reservations about serving as a model for artists in other media and sat for his portrait a remarkable number of twenty-four times. Surprisingly few James scholars have brought into primary focus those occasions when the author was not writing about art but instead became art himself, through the creative expression of another's talent. To better understand the twenty-four occasions he sat for others to represent him, Michael Anesko reconstructs the specific contexts for these works' coming into being, assesses James's relationships with his artists and patrons, documents his judgments concerning the objects produced, and, insofar as possible, traces the later provenance of each of them. James's long-established intimacy with the studio world deepened his understanding of the complex relationship between the artist and his sitter. James insisted above all that a portrait was a revelation of two realities: the man whom it was the artist's conscious effort to reveal and the artist, or interpreter, expressed in the very quality and temper of that effort. The product offered a double vision--the strongest dose of life that art could give, and the strongest dose of art that life could give.
