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Top of the pile
80
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
98/100Critics
61/100Scholars
Author:
Jed Perl
Publisher:
Knopf Publishing Group
Date:
April 14, 2020
The concluding volume to the first biography of one of the most important twentieth-century sculptors.
What The Reviewers Say
It takes a big-hearted, ambitious biographer to take on the life of a big-hearted, ambitious artist. Alexander Calder has found a perfect match in Jed Perl.
... [Perl] does not generally seek to prove or explain or argue for the deeper seriousness of Calder’s sculptures, and perhaps he should not need to do so. Instead, he allows the lavish illustrations to speak for themselves while he charts Calder’s life through a well-researched and engaging narrative rich in anecdotes. Like most biographers, Mr. Perl is fully on the side of his subject and quick to leap to Calder’s defense when he feels that a critic like Greenberg, or a dealer like Pierre Matisse, has behaved badly toward his protagonist.
Perl’s narrative makes Calder come alive.
Perl completes his zestfully expert two-book biography of exuberantly radical sculptor Calder in a volume every bit as scintillating and substantial as the first.
