California Literary Review

Articles written for the California Literary Review:

• Book Review: René Blum and the Ballets Russes by Judith Chazin-Bennahum
  Posted on 11 Jul 2011 in Books, Dance, France, Germany, Non-Fiction Reviews, Russia
  

  All of Blum’s many accomplishments were bracketed between the anti-Semitic turmoil of the Dreyfus Affair that tormented France from 1894 to 1904 and the Nazi-led Holocaust in which he perished. To his dying day, Blum thought of himself as a French patriot. Yet it was the complicity of French officials during the German occupation that set him on the road to Auschwitz.

• Collab: Four Decades of Giving Modern and Contemporary Design, Philadelphia Museum of Art
  Posted on 09 Jun 2011 in Art, Art & Design, Design
  

  Put them together as an integrated unit and you have a masterpiece. And in doing so, you have a vivid testimonial to Nelson’s famous 1965 evocation of “junk” as the “crowning glory” of modern consumer culture, “the symbol as clear a statement as the pyramids, the Parthenon, the cathedrals … the rusty, lovely, brilliant symbol of the dying years of your time. Junk is your ultimate landscape.”

• Book Review: Doc by Mary Doria Russell
  Posted on 28 May 2011 in Books, Fiction Reviews, Historical Fiction, Westerns
  

  It is the daily struggle of life that blights the lives of Russell’s protagonists. Ill-health and empty wallets are a greater danger than a Cheyenne raid. For Doc Holliday, the enemy is tuberculosis, a cruel, cunning disease that truly consumes him, body and — steadily, stealthily — soul. During a brief period of remission, Doc rides out to the surrounding prairie and experiences an epiphany of what life, during a good spell, can offer.

• Art Review: Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore
  Posted on 12 May 2011 in Art, Art & Design
  

  While Robinson’s depiction of a pensive young woman in a sylvan setting hardly seems revolutionary today, his painting marked a significant moment of transition in the American art scene. During the 1890′s, wealthy Americans like Henry Frick were buying Rembrandts by the cart-load.

• Book Review: Dividing the Spoils: The War for Alexander the Great’s Empire by Robin Waterfield
  Posted on 03 May 2011 in Books, Egypt, Greece, History, Military, Non-Fiction Reviews
  

  It did not take long before most of the Diadochi were gripped by a lust for power nearly as manic as had possessed Alexander. Ptolemy, however, showed a greater restraint. Though he launched several offensive campaigns, Ptolemy largely contented himself with ruling Egypt. Moreover, his policy decisions were marked by an astute blend of urban and economic development, along with encouraging the arts and sciences. Where Demetrius squandered vast sums on siege towers and Dreadnought-sized warships, Ptolemy built Alexandria into a cultural center whose brilliance eventually surpassed Athens.

• Art Review: Health for Sale, Philadelphia Museum of Art
  Posted on 15 Apr 2011 in Art, Art & Design, Medicine
  

  Designed for short-term use to promote public health or sell the latest “miracle” drug, medical posters have often been ignored. Traditionally, these posters have ranked well below the “stars” of Ars Medica collections, such as books of hand-tinted herbal remedies or anatomical drawings from the 16th century. But each of the prints in Health for Sale tells an amazing story, often confounding the expectations of the viewer.

• Art Review: Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle, Philadelphia Museum of Art
  Posted on 30 Mar 2011 in Art, Art & Design
  

  Chagall was a major exception to the ready embrace of western modes of art and thought by artists from Eastern Europe. However much he might borrow a stylistic element from Cubism or Orphism, Chagall maintained a spiritual element in his art that was in keeping with his Jewish and Russian heritage.

• Book Review: From Splendor to Revolution: The Romanov Women, 1847-1928 by Julie P. Gelardi
  Posted on 15 Mar 2011 in Biography, History, Non-Fiction Reviews, Russia
  

  Following this betrayal, the Romanov dynasty was swept off the stage of history. Many of the family were arrested by the Bolsheviks and executed, some with a degree of cruelty and incompetence that beggars belief. Marie Feodorovna and Marie Pavlovna were evacuated to safety, but the lives of both women were blighted by the near extermination of the Romanov family.

• Art Review: Gauguin: Maker of Myth, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
  Posted on 02 Mar 2011 in Art, Art & Design
  

  “You know that I have Indian blood, Inca blood in me, and it’s reflected in everything I do,” he wrote in 1889 to Theo van Gogh, brother to Vincent. “It’s the basis of my personality; I try to confront rotten civilization with something more natural, based on primitivism…”

• Book Review: Justice For Hedgehogs by Ronald Dworkin
  Posted on 17 Feb 2011 in Non-Fiction Reviews, Philosophy
  

  Dworkin believes firmly in “cooperative” interpretation, reinforcing ethical precepts with insights from history, literature and philosophy that have stood the test of time. Among the great philosophers, he summons Plato, Immanuel Kant, David Hume and Frederick Nietzsche to lend their voices to the debate.

• Book Review: Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
  Posted on 01 Feb 2011 in Fiction Reviews
  

  The passing of Swamplandia!, a crass, hokey “hicksville” where live chickens are suspended from wires to get the gators to leap for their supper, hardly merits more than a moment of regret. But Russell’s evocation of the disintegration of the Bigtree clan is profoundly moving. Arms linked together, Ava, Kiwi and Ossie embrace “in a panic of love.” The mutual devotion of the Bigtree children is as heartfelt a tribute to steadfast family bonds as the ordeal of the Joads in The Grapes of Wrath or the Finch children in To Kill a Mockingbird.

• The Civil War Begins: An Exhibition at the Rosenbach Museum and Library, Philadelphia
  Posted on 26 Jan 2011 in Art & Design, History
  

  These are not merely newspapers, letters, transcripts of speeches and official reports from the 1850′s through the first major battles of the war in 1861. To a very significant degree, the words inscribed on these timeworn documents actually influenced the outbreak of the Civil War.

• Book Review: Destiny and Desire by Carlos Fuentes
  Posted on 13 Jan 2011 in Fiction Reviews, Mexico
  

  A decapitated head washes ashore near the Mexican resort city of Acapulco. A young man, Josué, whose head it once was, uses this grisly episode to recount how he came to lose it. A more dramatic curtain raiser for a novel can scarcely be imagined.

• Book Review: The Sherlockian by Graham Moore
  Posted on 06 Jan 2011 in Fiction Reviews, Mystery
  

  There is a telling scene in the novel, when Conan Doyle visits the theatre managed by Stoker and is snubbed by the celebrated actress Ellen Terry, who is wearing a black armband to mourn the death of Sherlock Holmes. “The world does not need Arthur Conan Doyle,” Stoker declares. “The world needs Sherlock Holmes.”

• Art Review: Alessi: Ethical and Radical at the Philadelphia Museum of Art
  Posted on 30 Nov 2010 in Art, Art & Design, Design, Italy
  

  The Tea and Coffee Piazza sets, produced in limited editions of ninety-nine, with three artist’s proofs, were a critical success. The project served to introduce Michael Graves to the Alessi “stable,” while traveling exhibits informed museum patrons on the ways that high art and industrial design could form working partnerships. Mendini’s original conception was vindicated.