The evocative reminiscences of one of America's great men of modern American culture focuses on Kirstein's youth and early struggle for identity, from his childhood in Boston to his world travels, culminating in his 1933 attempts to bring Balanchine to the U.S.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Kirstein ( Movement and Metaphor ), a pivotal figure in the arts best known as a founder of the New York City Ballet and its associated school, also established and edited a literary quarterly, the Hound & Horn , organized the Harvard Society for Contemporary Art (which later evolved into the Museum of Modern Art) and has contributed richly to American culture as a critic and historian of dance and visual art, as a poet and as a collector. His memoirs give a resiliently irascible intelligence a fresh opportunity to play and work. The memoirs cover a span beginning in Kirstein's childhood (he was born in 1907) and leading up to 1933, when he sought out George Balanchine in Europe to help assemble the beginnings of the NYCB. Kirstein's reflections are personal, insightfully assessing people encountered in his youth (e.g., the critic R. P. Blackmur at Harvard) and during travels abroad; aesthetic (his "strident 'modernism' " took early root); and philosophical. Part of Kirstein's fascination is his eccentricity: though aided with a family fortune (his father was a partner in Filene's department store in Boston), his aggrandizing, energetic vision seems singularly entrepreneurial; though he is known as a stern advocate of the virtues of classicism, his pugnacity seems as likely to challenge or to oppose as it does to submit or assimilate. Kirstein's caustic urbanity and questioning wit are critical and companionable by turns in this selective survey of his past.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Mosaic, originally meaning "pertaining to the muses" and later referring to the process of producing pictures or patterns by cementing bits of glass, stone, or wood, is an apt title for this episodic and anecdotal reminiscence. Ballet director, writer, and dance historian Kirstein recalls his unique coming-of-age. Centered around the development of artistic taste and the search for a vocation, these autobiographical writings describe a privileged youth in the mansions of old Boston, New England prep schools, Harvard University, and Bloomsbury. The memoir ends at the onset of Kirstein's public career, when he meets George Balanchine and makes arrangements for the choreographer to come to the United States. Given Kirstein's contributions to the arts and his compelling if somewhat enigmatic writing style, this book will have an audience among those interested in biography, dance, and Modernism. Recommended for public and academic collections.
Joan Stahl, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Joan Stahl, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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