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From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky

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Matthew Spender has something to offer for someone really curious about this artists work. I have been comparing the three biographies. Herrara's book has been much acclaimed. But, when it comes to getting into the nitty -gritty of an artist's work, Spender is better. Particularly when he writes of his work in the fields of Virginia.None of the other writers have really tackled this important part of Gorky's art. As a sculpture Spender must have wondered would Gorky like me and my work.The Armenian backgound has been covered by quite a few books. None can surpass some of Spenders insight into Gorky's creative process.A shortcomihg of this biography is the lack of color reproductions of the paintings.His choice of photos of the family of Gorky ,give us a glimpse of his background. The paper back (a catalogue ) "the breakthrough years /Arshile Gorky" would be a good companion book of this bio as it has ample repros and an essay by Spender among others ;Aupling for one.Herrara,Mattosian,Rosenberg,and other books on Gorky have fewer references to their books :in the Retrospective catalogue by the Philadelphia Museum of Art than Spender.Why? he raises questions about Gorky's work and life.On Gertrude Stein's deathbed she said to Alice B. Toklas,No alice it isn't the answers..its the Questions! I find that I refer to this book more than many of the other books on Gorky .I have 17 plus an old Arts issue dedicated to Gorky. Spencer wrote this book as his ideal reader would be the artist. Something I am grateful for his passion for landscape was renewed in Virginia. My favorite of the biographies written on Gorky. Herrara &Mattosian battle it out for academic prestige in the history of art.Herrara especially writes from a woman's point of view( too much on Gorky's love life.)

Matthew Spender, son of poet Stephen, is a good writer who does a deft job of weaving his research into a lively story. But being the husband of Gorky's oldest daughter limits his interests to the "family" side of the artist's life: to hear Spender tell it, Gorky lived through three decades of New York's modern art revolution dreaming of butterchurns back in Armenia. He never really explains what drove Gorky to become an artist, let alone an abstract modern artist, in the face of family pressures, the trials of being an immigrant, and the burden he carried as a survivor of the Armenian genocide.

Gorky's idyllic memories of childhood clearly played a major role in his life and art, but so did Picasso and Cezanne, whose style he copied until the breakthrough near the end of his life. Spender plays down the endless hours Gorky spent in front of the canvas trying to insert himself into the history of Western art, preferring to read the artist's somewhat restricted interests (he steered clear of the tumultuous politics of Thirties New York, avoided bohemia, and refused to theorize about the inner sources of his art) as a gauge of how deeply Armenia held him. Maybe. But more attention to the exciting world his work unfolded in would have helped to explain Gorky's achievement a little more clearly. Hayden Herrera's more recent "Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work" may have replaced this biography and is probably the better place to turn for learning more about his life.