This is a comprehensive study of the work of Elie Nadelman (1882-1946), an important sculptor and a key member of the New York art scene in the first half of the 20th century. It accompanies a major retrospective of Nadelman's work. Nadelman fused classical influences with the subject matter and imagery of popular culture. Using bronze, marble, wood and plaster, he created stylized, curvilinear emblems of modern life whose formal motifs referenced both the antique and the modern.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
A prominent Polish émigré artist of the 1910s and ‘20s, Elie Nadelman brought continental wit and style to American sculpture in an improbable way--by combining elements of ancient Greek sculpture and folk art. In Elie Nadelman: Sculptor of Modern Life, noted art historian Barbara Haskell offers a lively account of the artist's career. Influenced by the abstract qualities of Symbolism and Jugendstil while still living in Europe, he developed a style of simplified geometric forms and smooth surfaces in sculptures of svelte nudes and "classical" female heads with blank eyes and demure hairdos. The cosmetics queen Helena Rubenstein adored these pieces and became his biggest patron. A happy discovery—-that the cap worn by the god Hermes could be gently tweaked into the outlines of a contemporary man's bowler hat—-sent Nadelman on a fruitful new path. His painted plaster figures of the late 'teens combined whimsy with an ever-so-slight mockery of the American upper class he had come to know. (In 1919 he married an heiress.) Curiously, these pieces hit a nerve, upsetting patrons and unleashing damning reviews. In the 1920s, his figures in marble or papier-mâché acquired softened contours and a more introverted quality. During his final decade, after he had lost both his fortune and his prized folk art collection, he created his most unbuttoned body of work--palm-sized, ambiguously sexual miniature figures that cannot stand up on their own. Nadelman's reputation is well served by this meticulously designed book with 245 reproductions in color and black-and-white. --Cathy Curtis
About the Author
Barbara Haskell has been a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art since 1975: she is now Curator of Early Twentieth Century Art. A well-known scholar on American art, she most recently curated Edward Steichen, as well as organized and wrote the book for Part One of the landmark exhibition, The American Century: Art & Culture 1900-2000. Ms. Haskell has written extensively on early 20th-century American modernists and has authored monographs on a range of artists including Marsden Hartley (1980), Milton Avery (1982), Ralston Crawford (1985), Charles Demuth (1987), Burgoyne Diller (1990) and Joseph Stella (1994). She has also organized exhibitions and written on contemporary art and artists, including Agnes Martin (1992), Donald Judd (1988) and BLAM! The Explosion of Pop, Minimalism and Performance 1958-1964 (1984).
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Elie Nadelman: A Great American Artist,
This review is from: Elie Nadelman: Sculptor of Modern Life (Hardcover)
This book which was originally the accompanying catalogue to Elie Nadelman's 2003 retrospective exhibition at The Whitney Museum is a treasure trove of new and revelatory imformation on a great American artist. Forgotten? No. Under-rated or not well known enough? Yes! This is the first really comprehensive study of the amazingly varied artwork and life of Elie Nadelman since the well written but slightly over-stuffed bio on the artist written by his original biographer/historian, the always quirky and self-absorbed Lincoln Kirstein.
In this thankfully easier to read book on Nadelman by Whitney curator Barbara Haskell we get a much more intimate idea as to the life and working influences of Nadelman. Unlike Kirstein's book, there is a consise way to Haskell's writing which invites the reader into the artist's life and puts you right where the action is, which is exactly where Elie Nadelman was as an artist in the early decades of the 20th Century. Not as popular a figure as he should be in the art-world this tome to a great American artist fulfills what even the artist himself never did. It solidifies Elie Nadelman as one of the greats !
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