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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Most recently seen as a silent, enigmatic figure in the Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's Ararat, modernist painter Gorky (1900?-1948) is fastidiously served in this comprehensive biography. Born near Lake Van in Ottoman-held Armenia, the young Gorky witnessed the Armenian genocide, a horror that Herrera (Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo) covers with extreme care. Following Gorky's emigration to the U.S. in 1920 and his name change from Manouk Adoian (he claimed to be the cousin of Russian writer Maxim Gorky), Herrera establishes the bulk of the narrative around Gorky's paintings, describing what he was working on when and under what circumstances. Most of Gorky's work life was based in New York, where, by the 1930s, he was paid a salary by the WPA for murals and other work in his surrealist style, largely derived from Miro and Leger, as the 64 pages of color and b&w images affirm. Herrera expects and encounters many difficulties in untangling the secretive Gorky's feelings and mostly confines herself to quoting others extensively, including long passages from the letters of Gorky's American wife, Agnes Magruder (or as Gorky called her, "Mougouch"). Herrera's restraint and suspension of judgment can flatten out events, yet she lingers for paragraphs on Gorky's many paintings, describing them, speculating on their meanings with lucidity and documenting their sales. The result is a book that, exhaustive in its research, will be a starting point for scholars and critics, but that will fail to engross casual readers. Conversely, readers already familiar with Gorky who are looking for political meanings to his suicide, shown here as undertaken in physical and marital distress, may find less than they are looking for.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
For Arshile Gorky, born Vosdanig Adoian in Armenian Turkey around 1900, painting was "like trying to twist the devil," a phrase emblematic of the heroic struggles of his brief and arduous life. Secretive about his painful past, especially his survival of the Armenian holocaust (his mother died in his arms), he changed his name and posed as a Russian after arriving in the U.S. A born artist, tall, dramatic, fastidious, and forever poor, Gorky worked tirelessly to develop a unique visual language. Herrera, also the author of a Frida Kahlo biography, assiduously chronicles every aspect of her subject's difficult life, particularly his conflict-ridden relationships with women and the despair that led to his suicide at age 45. Curiously, both she and fellow Gorky biographer Matthew Spender (From a High Place [1999]) have a family connection: Spender married Gorky's elder daughter, whose mother is Herrera's godmother. Monumentally detailed and deeply moving, Herrera's illuminating portrait perceptively traces the progression of Gorky's work, and the tragic link between the terrors of his youth and the traumas of his last days. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews
Most recently seen as a silent, enigmatic figure in the Armenian-Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan's Ararat, modernist painter Gorky (1900?-1948) is fastidiously served in this comprehensive biography. Born near Lake Van in Ottoman-held Armenia, the young Gorky witnessed the Armenian genocide, a horror that Herrera (Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo) covers with extreme care. Following Gorky's emigration to the U.S. in 1920 and his name change from Manouk Adoian (he claimed to be the cousin of Russian writer Maxim Gorky), Herrera establishes the bulk of the narrative around Gorky's paintings, describing what he was working on when and under what circumstances. Most of Gorky's work life was based in New York, where, by the 1930s, he was paid a salary by the WPA for murals and other work in his surrealist style, largely derived from Miro and Leger, as the 64 pages of color and b&w images affirm. Herrera expects and encounters many difficulties in untangling the secretive Gorky's feelings and mostly confines herself to quoting others extensively, including long passages from the letters of Gorky's American wife, Agnes Magruder (or as Gorky called her, "Mougouch"). Herrera's restraint and suspension of judgment can flatten out events, yet she lingers for paragraphs on Gorky's many paintings, describing them, speculating on their meanings with lucidity and documenting their sales. The result is a book that, exhaustive in its research, will be a starting point for scholars and critics, but that will fail to engross casual readers. Conversely, readers already familiar with Gorky who are looking for political meanings to his suicide, shown here as undertaken in physical and marital distress, may find less than they are looking for.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
For Arshile Gorky, born Vosdanig Adoian in Armenian Turkey around 1900, painting was "like trying to twist the devil," a phrase emblematic of the heroic struggles of his brief and arduous life. Secretive about his painful past, especially his survival of the Armenian holocaust (his mother died in his arms), he changed his name and posed as a Russian after arriving in the U.S. A born artist, tall, dramatic, fastidious, and forever poor, Gorky worked tirelessly to develop a unique visual language. Herrera, also the author of a Frida Kahlo biography, assiduously chronicles every aspect of her subject's difficult life, particularly his conflict-ridden relationships with women and the despair that led to his suicide at age 45. Curiously, both she and fellow Gorky biographer Matthew Spender (From a High Place [1999]) have a family connection: Spender married Gorky's elder daughter, whose mother is Herrera's godmother. Monumentally detailed and deeply moving, Herrera's illuminating portrait perceptively traces the progression of Gorky's work, and the tragic link between the terrors of his youth and the traumas of his last days. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
See all Editorial Reviews
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