Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Andy Warhol: A Penguin Life by Wayne Koestenbaum ISBN: 0-670-03000-7 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 06 September, 2001 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.18 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Really Up There
Comment: This is an important book, the first biography of Warhol to put his films at the center of the vast project that was Warhol's life and work, life transformed into work. Rather than rely on received ideas, Koestenbaum has availed himself of the overwhelming Warhol archive (from time capsules to scrapbooks); actually watched and considered all the Warhol movies currently restored and available for viewing; and looked at the paintings and sculptures--which is how he can, in lightning bright prose, provide a new beginning for thinking about Warhol. No familiar folksy "Andy" but an artist as strange and daunting as any other this country has produced. Few writers on Warhol ever bother to LOOK AT (and READ) what Warhol did; Koestenbaum does look, and his looking becomes the basis for his illuminating, trenchant commentary. (The electric chic of his sentences is as theoretically bracing as his critical observations.) Too many think they know who or what Warhol was/is. Bravely, Koestenbaum allows his thought as writing to be as new, estranging and probing as Warhol's art. "Ur-sexual" Warhol working non-stop to negotiate the glamourous nothingness and Ronellian stupidity called being or "life": this is the Warhol Koestenbaum pushes, star-like, into the klieg light, finally ready for his close-up.
Rating: 5
Summary: A gorgeous, innovative work
Comment: As a Warhol scholar, and someone who has read dozens of books and essays about him, I would heartily recommend this as an _addition_ to the other works. It's not really a biography in the traditional sense at all, and it certainly shouldn't be the first or only thing you read.
If you prefer a clinical, detached, "just the facts, ma'am" approach - skip this. If you are terrified by 20th century philosophy and psychoanalysis - skip this. If you find it easier to disparage strawman concepts like "postmodernism" rather than actually reading and thinking about continental philosophy (yes, I know it's difficult) - skip this. And judging from the reviews, if you're terribly uncomfortable with sexual themes or "swishiness" in art or writing - forget it.
The book is excellent. The prose is often rich and compelling - my copy is dogeared from all the passages I've marked - and the philosophical and psychoanalytic themes, while not developed, can be very suggestive. Koestenbaum has an excellent reading of many of the films - perhaps the most important and underexamined aspect of his work. Warhol's art is certainly not reduced to postmodernist cliches (as it has been so often elsewhere) nor is it reduced to being "about" his sexual identity. In a striking change, Warhol is not considered as a celebrity or a monster, but like the frail yet determined individual he was, the complex and multifaceted life he led, and the gorgeous, troubling, powerful art he produced. If you don't know anything about Warhol, if you've haven't seen much of his work or any of his films, don't start with this book - you'll be confused and dissappointed. But if you already think you know all about Warhol, and you read this book -slowly - while looking at his work, I think you've find it an incredibly helpful guide.
For real reviews, ...read Hal Foster's review in the London Review of Books
Rating: 4
Summary: A Repetitive Artist
Comment: Frankly, I didn't know very much about Andy Warhol until I read this book. I learned how sexual and abstract (to use one of his favorite words) he really was. The book is a nice overview. It makes me want to learn more about him and see more of his work. There is a wonderful source reference at the end of the book for anyone who may want to continue research and study of WARHOL. He definitely made a mark in the art world for the 20th Century. ....
 |
Title: Jane Austen by Carol Shields ISBN: 0670894885 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 15 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: Virginia Woolf by Nigel Nicolson ISBN: 0670894435 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: October, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: Dante (Penguin Lives) by R. W. B. Lewis ISBN: 0670899097 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 25 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: Simone Weil by Francine Du Plessix Gray, Francis Du Plessix Gray ISBN: 0670899984 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 25 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: Rosa Parks (Penguin Lives) by Douglas Brinkley ISBN: 0670891606 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
