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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Mean-Spirited Life, October 9, 2004
This review is from: Breaking Ground (Hardcover)
I enjoy biographies of creative people and occasionally veer into the architectural field. Brendan Gill's `Man of Many Masks' about Frank Lloyd Wright, and Margaret Heilbrun's `Inventing the Skyline' about Cass Gilbert provide intelligent and balanced insights into these fine minds. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Libeskind's book is a one-sided, tale of how he bettered almost everyone he came in contact with. From the start, when he claims to have upstaged musician, Itzhak Perlman, to his constant belittling of his teammates on the Ground Zero project, Libeskind believes he alone is a genius in a world of incompetents. Even when describing his first meeting with his eventual wife Nina, he says she was "so beautiful she must be stupid", - perhaps the most telling indication of how this arrogant man assesses the world and the people he encounters. Three quarters of the way through this vindictive and self-indulgent rant, I packed it in, in favor of Roger Kimball's `Art's Prospect', a compelling view of our age where celebrity too often triumphs over substance. The obviously insecure Libeskind is a case in point, and I'll be thankful when he gets the comeuppance he so richly deserves.
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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Childish Tale, October 4, 2004
This review is from: Breaking Ground (Hardcover)
At times merely banal, at others a cringing read, this silly little book might attract a few youngsters investigating architecture for the first time, but it will not engage or satisfy the adult mind. - For Libeskind, architecture need only be new and different in order to be good. Logically, of course, this does not follow, but that point is lost on the skittish author who carelessly makes this uncritical claim to support his work. In chirpy, passages Daniel tells us his design for the Holocaust Museum is the missing movement of an unfinished symphony - though details for this peculiar claim are never offered. Similarly, his choice of heart-tugging names for Ground Zero's `Park Of Heroes' and `Freedom Tower' are somberly given as evidence of his sensitive vision. But you have to wonder if it was aesthetics or a calculated marketing that capriciously set the latter's height at 1776 feet? That his designs are based on these and other superficial factors (such as the direction of the incoming terrorist's planes, not to mention the infamous `Wedge Of Light' which did not actually work), is glossed over in this intellectually-challenged narrative. These one-dimensional excuses serve to underscore his failure to understand scale, proportion or context, the core basis for quality architecture anywhere. Reading this book, I am reminded of sophomore architecture studies where insubstantial nonsense of this sort is commonly left to pubescent students. It is surprising to find a supposedly grown man in the sandbox playing these juvenile games today.
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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Big Head - Small Mind, January 28, 2005
This review is from: Breaking Ground (Hardcover)
It is hard to know what Libeskind hoped to accomplish with this oddball book. By his own admission, he is "more cornball than cosmopolite" (page 159), and granted no one will ever use the word "sophisticated" to describe either Daniel or Nina Libeskind. But most of this disjointed and confused story reads like a schoolgirl's diary hastily scribbled beneath the bedclothes. And with all the insecurity of such diaries, it is replete with smug and nasty comments about people Libeskind feels have been mean to him, or who have been critical of his work. Curiously, for a man who too frequently professes to be a genius, his own book portrays mostly him as puerile and petulant. Much of this book reveals Libeskind's deep-seated bitterness and jealousy towards his professional peers. He claims his internships with Richard Meier and Peter Eisenman were beneath him and he stormed out of their offices (pages 41 and 42) when asked to do the routine tasks that inform the careers of most novice practitioners. Even when describing his own designs, the writing is disappointingly inane. "MY building would not be about toilets", he proclaims a bit too proudly about his Jewish Museum project, implying that most other architects and buildings are only about lavatories. And, of the Nussbaum Museum he declares to his own amazement - "I called this project `the museum without an Exit', because for Nussbaum, there was no exit, (from Nazi persecutions). Defensive and embarrassing writing like this was common in this bumbling and very unsatisfying book.
I bought this biography looking for a glimpse into the mind of a supposedly creative person. What I got was a close look at a pompous architect who spent so much of his time bragging about himself, that he seems oblivious to humanity around him. Given how little Libeskind has actually built, such delusional arrogance should be embarrassing, but sensitivity or discretion are not the author's strong suit. The book lurches awkwardly between incessant ego-tripping, quasi-intellectual posturing, and cliched, self-pitying stories intended to suggest that the author is thoughtful, reflective and has learned from life experiences. But it all comes across as coldly calculated and patronizing. Somehow, one of life's lessons that the "genius" Daniel Libeskind never learned, is that compliments are really meaningful only if they come from someone other than himself.
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