The Lives of Artists

For my birthday this year my wife gave me The Lives of Artists, a collection of magazine profiles in book form, written by Calvin Tomkins, published by Phaidon.

For art history types, the title and concept are familiar. They echo Giorgio Vasari's book of Renaissance artist biographies, one of the best ways to understand the art of that period.

Tomkins’s book serves a similar purpose and his challenge is no less great.

Making sense of the artists behind modern and contemporary art is no mean feat.

And yet Tomkins comes at it tirelessly, writing profile after profile as a participant observer.

Phaidon promotes the collection as "part art history and part personal anecdote” which rings true.

Each profile can be read in a single sitting.

I’ve been bouncing around and thusfar read profiles of Isamu Noguchi, Jean Tinguely, Cindy Sherman and Mark Bradford.

Tomkins notes in his introduction that despite wide differences between the pieces published in the early 1960’s and those written in the past few years, everything is a product of New Journalism, written in a personal tone, seeking maximum transparency between reader and subject.

TLoA is an art object itself, the kind that Phaidon excels at designing and producing.

The volumes are small, designed to fit in your hand, with compact page layouts, printed on quality archival paper. They come as a set, in a box-inside-a-box that resembles something that might come from Apple or Muji.

As Tomkins’s longtime editor David Remnick observes in his thoughtful introduction “If art can be anything, this limitless freedom places an unrelenting burden on artists. And Tomkins lets us watch with fascination as, against all odds, important work gets made and the mysterious, undefinable, surprisingly difficult practice of art continues … ”

If you are considering ordering a copy, please use my Amazon associate store link.