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Product Description
Born in 1899 to Russian aristocrats, Tamara de Lempicka escaped the Bolsheviks by exchanging her body for freedom, dramatically beginning a sexual career that included most of the influential men and women she painted. After burning brightly at the centre of Paris's artistic circle, she made her way to America in the late 1930s, where she dazzled and seduced the rich and famous of a new continent. Her paintings, like the artist herself, glow with beauty and sexuality. Contemporary critics, however, dismissed her gorgeously stylised portraits and condemned her scandalous lifestyle. A resurgence of interest in her work occurred in the 1980's, spurred by such celebrity collectors as Jack Nicholson, Barbra Streisand, and Madonna. In this meticulously researched, absorbing biography, Laura Claridge explores Lempicka's artistic accomplishments, her amorous adventures, and the critical judgements that at first excluded her from artistic recognition.
Amazon.com Review
With her couture clothes and movie-star good looks (she was frequently mistaken for Greta Garbo), Tamara de Lempicka seemed too glamorous to be a serious painter. Even in the years of her greatest success, 1925 to 1935, the luscious colors and highly wrought finishes of her portraits--a suspect genre in any case to high modernists--linked Lempicka more closely to the Italian Renaissance painters she revered than to her cubist contemporaries. She was labeled an "Art Deco artist," someone whose work was more decorative than substantive. Feminist scholar Laura Claridge, a good guide despite her overuse of the phrase "gender politics," enhances readers' appreciation of Lempicka's work without scanting her enjoyably lurid personal life. Born (around 1895) in Russia of Polish and Jewish descent, Lempicka fled the revolution to set up shop in Paris during its avant-garde heyday; the Nazi threat sent her to America, where Hollywood proved a natural setting. Two husbands, one daughter, male and female lovers, manic-depressive illness--nothing ever really cramped her style or her dedication to art. She died in 1980, a venerable survivor still looking forward rather than back. Blending art history with psychological analysis, Claridge helps readers understand why this gifted painter, although commercially successful, has not enjoyed the critical respect she deserves. --Wendy Smith
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