- Hardcover: 142 pages
- Publisher: Yale University Press (2 April 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0300081871
- ISBN-13: 978-0300081879
- Product Dimensions: 24.3 x 16.6 x 2.6 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 3,715,994 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
"Essential reading for anyone concerned with the history of twentieth-century American art. Lucid, accessible, and studded with insights, Weinberg's essays add up to a powerful take on the meaning of artistic ambition and artistic success." Alan Wallach, College of William and Mary"
Product Description
Freud wrote that the artist "desires to win honour, power, wealth, fame, and the love of women". In this engrossing book, Jonathan Weinberg investigates how an artist's ambition interacts with his or her art, how wealth and celebrity play a role in the artistic process. He shows that anxiety about the relationship of an artwork to identity and the corrupting influence of fame plague modern artists of all genders and sexual orientations. Weinberg begins by discussing Whistler's famous portrait of his mother in terms of maternal metaphors for painting. He then looks at the familial relationships forged by artists like Jackson Pollock and Sally Mann with their imagined tradition. He next focuses on the role of love in photographs by Alfred Stieglitz as well as Georgia O'Keeffe's attempts to find autonomy from her partner Stieglitz. Weinberg also reveals that artistic fame is usually a matter of competition, and he examines the impulse of artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol to work together. The book concludes with a rumination on the NAMES Project Quilt and the problem of what becomes of those who die in obscurity.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.9 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Purchase this Book! Incredibly Absorptive..., 27 July 2001
By zakaraiah jason - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Ambition and Love in Modern American Art (Yale Publications in the History of Art) (Hardcover)
I loved this book. This magisterial work makes for absorptive reading- it absorbs your interest in art as well as your capacity to read further. The author displays an incredible sponge-like capacity. Like a sponge used to prevent any conception, the work keeps anything from coming into mind. I particularly loved the chapters on Wharhole and Polyp: Weineberg's own style pays fantastic homage in imitating the abrasive contents of the former's brillo box. It's also great how the author just soaks up some cast off comments from Freud and Manzoni, draining them like a vampire. He just sinks his teeth right in! I had a few disagreements about how he handled Basquiat with rubber gloves, especially the early work, but in the end I appreciated Weinberg's janitorial finesse and the range of his sweeping generalization.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Book!!!, 23 July 2001
By Phyllis Johnson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Ambition and Love in Modern American Art (Yale Publications in the History of Art) (Hardcover)
It's certainly true, as some critics have argued, that there's not enough here to satisfy the intellectual curiosity of professional art historians. But that misses Weinberg's central point: that it's far less important to possess talent than it is to convince others that you have it. Indeed, implicit in Weinberg's study is the idea that the plain and undisguised absence of talent is no obstacle to thinking of oneself as an artist. But whereas any number of critics have made this argument before, and convincingly so, what makes Weinberg's analysis different is his choice of words -- for even as he neatly reiterates the arguments of earlier scholars, he oftentimes uses entirely different words to do so, sometimes going so far as to construct whole sentences that might reasonably be labelled as his own. Less hospitable reviewers have described Weinberg's book as "an academic redundancy," "the fatuous mutterings of a vacant and sterile intellect," and even "the crudely drawn transcript of a mind nearly porcine in its desire to wallow around in its own filth." But what such judgments fail to acknowledge is that, in the context of Weinberg's book, such intellectual ineptitude is transformed into a self-justifying vehicle for professional advancement. It may be all its critics have made it out to be (in the end, one is hard pressed to refute their attacks). But the important lesson that Weinberg teaches us is that scholarly merit, or the lack thereof, is ultimately no substitute for artless ambition.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Try in vain to put it down., 30 Jun 2002
By "keithkaky" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Ambition and Love in Modern American Art (Yale Publications in the History of Art) (Hardcover)
I, like others, picked up Weinberg's book after the stellar Nochlin review. I was somewhat puzzled by the project at first, but as is often the case with the art Weinberg discusses, "Ambition and Love in Modern American Art" is too seductive to dismiss. While his categories seem vague, even silly, his discussion of the artists and their work is elegant. His style is always engaging, mostly because it is so often personal. I suspect that critics have been troubled by Weinberg's approach, the lack of any real scholarly investigation, replaced by coffee-table talk and emotional musings. I can't really refute such critiques. But I do think that Weinberg's approach holds a lesson for all those interested in studying, writing about, and even practicing art. To try and separate oneself from the art you create or examine is a futile enteprise. His inclusion and discussion of such themes (God forbid!) as love, desire, and ambition adds a much needed jolt of blood and flesh into art history. It reminds us that art history is no science and that art historians need not feel so insecure about that. After all, art-making itself is not just a process of intellect, it is one of passion. Perhaps historians should investigate their own stirrings a bit more, as Weinberg has done here, to make their own scholarship truly insightful and what's more, readable.
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