The Atlantic

October 26, 2006

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ART, DESIGN & FASHION

Things I Didn't Know, by Robert Hughes (Knopf)
Reviewed by Benjamin Healey and Benjamin Schwarz ("Cover to Cover", November 2006)

"The noted art critic recounts his Australian boyhood, his deepening romance with the art world, and the heady atmosphere of 1960s London, as well as the horrific 1999 traffic accident that almost took his life and made him a pariah in his homeland."

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Phaidon Design Classics, by Editors of Phaidon Press (Phaidon Press)
Reviewed by Benjamin Schwarz ( "Chairs, Rag Mags, Indian Wars," July/Aug 2006)

"Great design ennobles daily life, and reading these handsome, well-made books, which illuminate hundreds of exquisitely functioning, beautiful products, is also an elevating experience."

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Art Czar, by Alice Goldfarb Marquis (Knopf)
Reviewed by Benjamin Healy and Benjamin Schwarz ("Cover to Cover", June 2006)

"A life of Clement Greenberg, the most influential American art critic of the twentieth century."

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Norman Rockwell: The Underside of Innocence, by Richard Halpern (Chicago)
Reviewed by Benjamin Healey and Benjamin Schwarz ("Cover to Cover", November 2006)

"An occasionally ridiculous but nevertheless persuasive Freud-tinged assessment of the myriad perversions (sexual and otherwise) that lurk just beneath the surface of the illustrator's wholesome oeuvre."

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Success Through Failure, by Henry Petroski (Princeton)
Reviewed by Benjamin Healy and Benjamin Schwarz ("Cover to Cover", May 2006)

"From caveman tools to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge to the World Trade Center, failure is innovation's constant companion."

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A Dash of Daring: Carmel Snow and Her Life in Fashion, Art, and Letters, by Penelope Rowlands (Atria)
Reviewed by Benjamin Schwarz ( "Chairs, Rag Mags, Indian Wars," July/Aug 2006)

"Rowlands...is exhilarating, at least for those with an interest in fashion and in what the former Vogue staffer Joan Didion called the 'effortlessly glossy' look and tone of the bygone rag mags."

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Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, by Albertus Seba (Taschen)
Reviewed by Sally Singer ("Establishing Shots", September 2006)

"This spectacular volume...underlies the recent trend in high fashion toward the quirky and the wunderkammer-ish: i.e., wearing or carrying stuff that looks like it might have been scavenged at Tulum or from the steamer trunk of your monkey-fur-wearing great-great-aunt."

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The Private House, by Rose Tarlow (Clarkson Potter)
Reviewed by Terry Castle ("Home Alone" , March 2006)

"The book's illustrations— chill, austere, and undeniably gorgeous— give form to the tomb-like aesthetic: not one of the exquisite rooms shown (all designed by Tarlow) has a human being in it.

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Burlesque and the Art of the Teese/Fetish and the Art of the Teese, by Dita Von Teese (Regan Books)
Reviewed by Sally Singer ("Establishing Shots", September 2006)

"[Teese's] recent book, which can be entered from either the front or the back (yikes!) and thus has two titles... discloses her most chic secrets, including how to powder one's nose—or one's latex catsuit."

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Staying Up Much Too Late, by Gordon Thiesen (St. Martin's)
Reviewed by Benjamin Healy and Benjamin Schwarz ( "Cover to Cover," July/August 2006)

"An interdisciplinary meditation on Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, which here emerges as a compelling monument to thwartedness that challenges the standard narrative of can-do American optimism."

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Photos 1954-1995, by Karlheinz Weinberger (Scalo Publishers)
Reviewed by Sally Singer ("Establishing Shots", September 2006)

"A volume of enduring fascination for designers seeking to build a better beaten-up jean and photographers looking for new ways to shoot fashion's most basic basic."

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Service and Style, by Jan Whitaker (St. Martin's)
Reviewed by Benjamin Healy and Benjamin Schwarz ("Cover to Cover", September 2006)

"A cultural history of (and wistful elegy for) the American department store and the sunnily paternalistic function it served in teaching the middle class how to recognize and outfit itself."

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