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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
With her couture clothes and movie-star good looks (she was frequently mistaken for Greta Garbo), Tamara de Lempicka seemed too glamorous to be a serious painter. Even in the years of her greatest success, 1925 to 1935, the luscious colors and highly wrought finishes of her portraits--a suspect genre in any case to high modernists--linked Lempicka more closely to the Italian Renaissance painters she revered than to her cubist contemporaries. She was labeled an "Art Deco artist," someone whose work was more decorative than substantive. Feminist scholar Laura Claridge, a good guide despite her overuse of the phrase "gender politics," enhances readers' appreciation of Lempicka's work without scanting her enjoyably lurid personal life. Born (around 1895) in Russia of Polish and Jewish descent, Lempicka fled the revolution to set up shop in Paris during its avant-garde heyday; the Nazi threat sent her to America, where Hollywood proved a natural setting. Two husbands, one daughter, male and female lovers, manic-depressive illness--nothing ever really cramped her style or her dedication to art. She died in 1980, a venerable survivor still looking forward rather than back. Blending art history with psychological analysis, Claridge helps readers understand why this gifted painter, although commercially successful, has not enjoyed the critical respect she deserves. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
Even a reader with doubts about de Lempicka's artistic output will be charmed by the eccentricities described in this feminist-flavored, engrossing account of the bawdy and amusing painter whose work Claridge sees as an "early protest against the denial of female sexuality." Born into a Polish family in Russia, de Lempicka (1898-1980) was raised in an atmosphere of luxurious frivolity. At 16, she caught the eye of Tadeusz Lempicka by appearing at a St. Petersburg ball with two geese in tow, and her pursuit of the handsome but spineless playboy culminated in an ill-fated marriage. After the Russian Revolution, the couple arrived penniless in Paris, where de Lempicka was encouraged by her family to take up art as a means of support. She threw herself with gusto into the debaucheries of '20s Paris, having numerous affairs with both men and women while the unhappy Tadeusz languished. Her garishly exuberant portraits and nudes were extremely successful in no small part because of her flair for publicity and her high society connections. After she moved to the U.S. in 1939 with her second husband, Baron Kuffner, the press focused increasingly on her extravagance and dinner parties rather than on her paintings, and she began having difficulties with her work, though the decorative sensuality of her early paintings has made her fashionable again among contemporary collectors. The book's final chapters are affecting, as Claridge adeptly shows de Lempicka's decline into a cantankerous society lady, color coordinating her clothes with her car, tormenting her daughter and granddaughters and painting her houses lavender. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
With her couture clothes and movie-star good looks (she was frequently mistaken for Greta Garbo), Tamara de Lempicka seemed too glamorous to be a serious painter. Even in the years of her greatest success, 1925 to 1935, the luscious colors and highly wrought finishes of her portraits--a suspect genre in any case to high modernists--linked Lempicka more closely to the Italian Renaissance painters she revered than to her cubist contemporaries. She was labeled an "Art Deco artist," someone whose work was more decorative than substantive. Feminist scholar Laura Claridge, a good guide despite her overuse of the phrase "gender politics," enhances readers' appreciation of Lempicka's work without scanting her enjoyably lurid personal life. Born (around 1895) in Russia of Polish and Jewish descent, Lempicka fled the revolution to set up shop in Paris during its avant-garde heyday; the Nazi threat sent her to America, where Hollywood proved a natural setting. Two husbands, one daughter, male and female lovers, manic-depressive illness--nothing ever really cramped her style or her dedication to art. She died in 1980, a venerable survivor still looking forward rather than back. Blending art history with psychological analysis, Claridge helps readers understand why this gifted painter, although commercially successful, has not enjoyed the critical respect she deserves. --Wendy Smith
From Publishers Weekly
Even a reader with doubts about de Lempicka's artistic output will be charmed by the eccentricities described in this feminist-flavored, engrossing account of the bawdy and amusing painter whose work Claridge sees as an "early protest against the denial of female sexuality." Born into a Polish family in Russia, de Lempicka (1898-1980) was raised in an atmosphere of luxurious frivolity. At 16, she caught the eye of Tadeusz Lempicka by appearing at a St. Petersburg ball with two geese in tow, and her pursuit of the handsome but spineless playboy culminated in an ill-fated marriage. After the Russian Revolution, the couple arrived penniless in Paris, where de Lempicka was encouraged by her family to take up art as a means of support. She threw herself with gusto into the debaucheries of '20s Paris, having numerous affairs with both men and women while the unhappy Tadeusz languished. Her garishly exuberant portraits and nudes were extremely successful in no small part because of her flair for publicity and her high society connections. After she moved to the U.S. in 1939 with her second husband, Baron Kuffner, the press focused increasingly on her extravagance and dinner parties rather than on her paintings, and she began having difficulties with her work, though the decorative sensuality of her early paintings has made her fashionable again among contemporary collectors. The book's final chapters are affecting, as Claridge adeptly shows de Lempicka's decline into a cantankerous society lady, color coordinating her clothes with her car, tormenting her daughter and granddaughters and painting her houses lavender. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews
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