Utopia Parkway: The Life And Work Of Joseph Cornell

By Martin Handford

Book Overview

Deborah Solomon's definitive biography of Joseph Cornell, one of America's most moving and unusual twentieth-century artists, now reissued twenty years later with updated and extensively revised text Few artists ever led a stranger life than Joseph Cornell, the self-taught American genius prized for his enigmatic shadow boxes, who stands at the intersection of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art. Legends about Cornell abound--the shy hermit, the devoted family caretaker, the artistic innocent--but never before has he been presented for what he was: a brilliant, relentlessly serious artist whose stature has now reached monumental proportions. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0878466843
• ISBN13: 9780878466849
• Release Date: November 2004
• Publisher: MFA Publications
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.2" x 9.2"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Informative Read

I gained knowledge from reading this book, and I could relate completely. I am giving this book a four star simply because there was a lot of jargon that made some sections hard to read, if you are not a musician. Then again, it is a book about music. Here are some excerpts that moved me: "Through the history of black music in the United States, it has been through the repetition and revision of texts, through the interplay...

A radical presentation of African American music

I am thankful to Guthrie Ramsey who referred to this book in his book "Race Music", and made me buy it and read it. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a must for anyone interested in African American music. The book begins with the spiritual-mythological aspects of African life - and their musical expressions. He shows how these aspects were brought to America with the tranplanted and enslaved Africans. Floyd generalizes...

Not an easy read, but worth it.

This book is not an easy read, but it's worth it. It was written by a scholar for other scholars, but a lay person with patience will draw a great deal from the reading. It explains common threads -- basic components of African music-- in genres as diverse as blues,rock n' roll, be-bop, hip-hop, etc. What's nice is that the author, a noted scholar and head of Chicago's Collumbia College Center for Black Music Research,...

Kirkus

Has anyone noticed that the Kirkus reviews tend to be fairly condescending about works from people of color and they tend to disparage the works as limited in their understanding when in fact it could well be that they themselves are the ones with the limited understanding