Customer Reviews

Tamara de Lempicka: A Life of Deco and Decadence

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I knew Tamara well for many years and this book is a very authentic portrayal of the woman, her art and her times. It is a readable and literate work. Sad in many ways as Tamara was one of the last of her kind and knew it. The book would interest anyone who enjoys books about the great personalites of the 20's and 30's. Reminded me a bit of the Rubenstein 2 volume biography.

Over the many years spent in research for this book, ProfessorLaura Claridge acquired extraordinarily detailed knowledge of thecultural, moral, and intellectual atmosphere of early 20th century European aristocracy and avant guard high society. Then, with penetrating wit and spellbinding ingenuity, she wove this Zeitgeist into every relevant passage of this scholarly book. The uniqueness of Professor Claridge's biography is that she has been able to show that just as De Lempicka's paintings represented more than a mere accumulation of colors on canvas, her bewitching life represented more than the simple sum of its parts. Claridge has managed to capture the "gestalt" of the "brave new woman". With compassion and humor, flawless prose and delicate discrimination, impeccable elegance and style, affection, grace, and savoir faire, Professor Claridge has shown how it is possible for a woman to have it all! This book is an education in history, art history, anthropology, sociology, politics, civics, and European culture and aristocracy at the height of its decadent best. I loved this gripping book and read it with the excitement and absorption usually reserved for suspence novels. Bravo.

Many things have, and will be said about Tamara de Lempicka. Relentless research, numerous personal interviews, and newly uncovered resources, never accessed before by any individual person, have allowed Laura Claridge to piece together a consummate documentary of the "Total Tamara". Laura transfers the powerful emotions of Tamara's private, public, and artistic life to the reader with her artful use of the English language and vividly detailed descriptions of places and events. These images make reading Tamara's remarkable story as if you were living every day with her in person. Other volumes have been written documenting her artwork, and her life as an artist. This work goes beyond all those attempts to paint a personal picture of the talent, dedication, aspiration, and undying will that catapulted Tamara into the limelight. It also takes you inside the private times to show you the frustration, disappointment, and loneliness of a perfectionist who always had to have, and be, the ultimate. From a historical standpoint, it allows the reader to view the impact the world had on Tamara, and the incredible impact she had on the world. Always fresh and fascinating, from cover to cover, this is the most enjoyable critical biography I have ever read.

This book is vivid with details and descriptions of Tamara's fascinating life. A sumptuous bite into the life of an artist; this story is simmered in vibrant retellings of Tamara's historical tribulations, her numerous tumultuous relationships (both male & female), her eccentricities along with an almost infamous ego, and the constant tribulations of trying to express oneself via pigment & canvas. Even if you are not currently familiar with Tamara's work (audible gasp) this book is guaranteed to enrich your view of artists and vibrant women alike.

I like a million other people, had never heard of Tamara De Lempicka (how sad!!) until I heard Madonna in an interview mention how incredible she is. This biography was wonderful, very insightful, I feel like I know 'something' about Tamara now. I have developed a wonderful appreciation of her life and work. Some biographies can be dry and boring, but this one was facinating! Good read!

A long time Lempicka fan, I read Claridge's biography as part of the research for my master's thesis on the artist. This book provided so much information not only on events in Lempicka's life, but also her sexual habits and personal characteristics. I also found this book a great source on life in 1920s and 30s Paris. But be warned, this book does not provide many images of Lempicka's unique paintings, although many of the illustrations are full-color reproductions.
This book reads easily and is entertaining as well as informative. I highly recommend it for Lempicka and Art Deco fans!

....and it still fills a void in Tamara scholarship, but in trying to be so many things...biography, art history, art criticism, psychological profile, social history...this book weaves a somewhat arbitrary and bumpy trail through De Lempicka's life, times, and art. It mixes gossipy trivia with modernist theory in a way that often doesn't mix very well. The book, as a whole, feels sort of welded together...if it were a meal, it would be a big bowl in which appetizer, main course, desert, and midnight snack would have all be thrown in and mixed together under the dubious rationale, "it's all going to the same place."

Nonetheless, in the absence of many authoritative books that might better take one or another aspect of De Lempicka's life and art and make a real study of them, this book is well worth reading for an overall look at this still underrated and under-appreciated artist. That said, even after 375 pages, I didn't feel that the author really grasped the "mystery" of de Lempicka. Something about the various aspects of her life and personality, as presented here, didn't quite add up. I cant help but wonder if the author, who seemed to rely a good deal on De Lempicka's daughter for information, insights, and documents, didn't compromise her objectivity too much in securing this cooperation.

As it is, the De Lempicka who comes through on these pages isn't all that likable a woman. In fact, I found myself really shuddering at the idea of being in contact with such a selfish, shrewish, manipulative, hysterical, insensitive, self-dramatizing person. She isn't really any worse than the misbehaving male artists we're all familiar with--its just that she misbehaves in an entirely different--in some senses, distinctly "feminine" way that we may not be as familiar with in artist biographies dominated as they are by male subjects. Here we see De Lempicka at her worst, and often, playing the emotionally abusive and psychologically overbearing wife, mother--and grandmother--wielding her financial clout as family matriarch like a club to beat down all opposition to her wishes. At other times, her abuse is more subtle, insinuating in ways that'll make your skin crawl.

Technically an aristocrat, De Lempicka thought it something to be proud of, something that conferred upon her a privileged natural superiority over and above her fellow mortals. It's hard for Americans, in particular, to swallow this sort of class arrogance. But perhaps worst of all is that De Lempicka didnt seem to have much of a sense of self-irony. She could be just as outrageously flamboyant as Dali in appearance and behavior, but where Dali seemed to do it with a wink and a nod, De Lempicka doesn't seem to get the joke whatsoever. In fact, she doesnt seem to think there is a joke to be gotten. She's as serious, at least as she's portrayed in this biography, as a root canal over nine miles of bad road.

Even giving her the benefit of every doubt, I certainly didn't come away from this book liking De Lempicka, nor even sympathizing with her, and I'm not sure the author did either, although she seems to do her best to get the reader to do both. Basically, this is the story of a not-very-nice person who turned out some very great art...a story not quite unfamiliar to any reader of artist biographies.

If I go on at some length about DeLempicka's character it's because this book seems to focus on that more than anything else. While the author makes the necessary effort to trace De Lempicka's art career, the book falls short in this regard. Mention is made of other artists of the era, and even of De Lempicka's acquaintance with some of them, but little of real substance is offered of her interaction with them. She seems to exist side-by-side with them in a bubble. When the author talks about art history or art theory, her comments seem somewhat perfunctory, almost canned, as if gleaned from another source or reliant upon authority not her own. I'm not saying they are...but thats how they read to me. This impression may be a consequence of the aforementioned attempt to make this one book serve too many functions, which, as also aforementioned, makes it useful, given the paucity of quality De Lempicka studies.

And that paucity of alternative studies is what makes this book a worthwhile and generally rewarding, if at more times than one might have wished, tedious read.

Claridge has done her homework here to an astonishing degree. The amount of research put into pealing back the layers of time and mystery that have surrounded the life of one of the 20th century's most fascinating painters is incredible. This book should be on the shelf of any Lempicka fan if for no other reason than it debunks the most popular myths of the others books by so called "scholars" littering the same shelf left and right.

The writing in this is incredibly dense. There's just so much material to cover here that there's no other way this book could be written even semi-competently without even half of the information present here. And what information there is! I knew Tamara lived the high life in Paris but the ammount of drugs, alcohol and sex present in this book are insane. Couple this with heart wrenching affairs, royal bumfoolery and daring political escapes and you have only one tenth of what the life of this woman was about.

One thing more that I wish to address is the statement by another reviewer on here that this is more of an art history book than I biography. I would say the the truth lies somewhere between the two. While this is a very in depth biography there were times that I did find myself having to pause time and time again to look up certain names, dates and places to see what the author referenced off handedly throughout the book. Some names are easier to pick up than others - Lhote, Denis and Marinetti are easy to pick out, but some of the more obscure ones took away a lot of time from reading this. So yes, not exactly a book you can blow through in a matter of days unless you're willing to make some sacrifices as you go.

Mujer de altos vuelos, Tamara de Lempicka, decidió pasar sus últimos días en la ciudad en la que vivo, la ciudad de la eterna primavera: Cuernavaca, Morelos (México). Hasta ella trajo sus maravillosas obras, catalogadas como lo mejor del Art Déco por los expertos. Única en su momento, se jactaba de haberlo probado todo y de haber roto con las convenciones más gazmoñas.

Su obra está influída por el tubismo de Léger, el cubismo sintético y la pintura del quattrocento italiano, aunque de su maestro Lohte aprendió a componer según el principio de la rima plástica.

No obstante su formación rusa, se sentía polaca; rehuyó toda la vida lo ruso por haber sufrido en carne propia a manos de los bolcheviques. De madre y abuela aprendió el amor al arte. Se casó dos veces --de su primer marido Tadeusz Lempicki, el padre de su única hija ya fallecida, tomaría el nombre profesional-- y tuvo una hija que más adelante redactó sus memorias.

El éxito de su carrera se dio en la Europa de entreguerras, trabajaba incesantemente y llevó una vida social muy activa, cuestión que paradójicamente ocasinó que el mundo culto y bohemio en el que se movía, le demostrara cierta desconfianza: esta ambigüedad que la mantenía como una bohemia-aristócrata la definió toda su vida.

Hizo de su vida un relato espectacular, hecho que ha motivado que quienes intentan biografiarla, tengan que sortear los productos de su febril imaginación. Laura Claridge, a quien le debemos el trabajo más completo sobre la fascinante mujer, ha rescatado del olvido a esta notable pintora, cuya obra rebazó los dos millones de dólares en la década de los ochenta.

Su pintura, caracterizada por la geometrización de la figura, los primeros planos agobiantes y el manejo del erotismo sin trabas, es magnífica y puntualmente analizada por la autora, quien tiene en su haber otras publicaciones sobre arte, literatura y psicoanálisis.

El Museo Brady de Cuernavaca cuenta con dos piezas de Lempicka, una pintora que se ganó un lugar imborrable en la historia del arte occidental.