Background
Tomkins, Calvin was born on December 17, 1925 in Orange, New Jersey, United States. Son of Frederick and Laura (Graves) Tomkins.
(First published in 1971 and now available for a younger g...)
First published in 1971 and now available for a younger generation with a new introduction by the author, Living Well Is the Best Revenge is Calvin Tomkins' now-classic account of the lives of Gerald and Sara Murphy, two American expatriates who formed an extraordinary circle of friends in France during the 1920s. First in Paris and then in the seaside town of Antibes, they played host to a cast of some of the most memorable artists and writers of the era, including Cole Porter, Pablo Picasso, Fernand Léger, Ernest Hemingway and Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. It was in Paris that Gerald Murphy first encountered Cubist painting, which prompted him to embark on an all-too-brief career as a painter--roughly from 1922 to 1929--during which he produced 15 works, seven of which survive, and every one of which is a unique American modernist masterpiece. This dazzling phase of work was brought to a close in 1929, when one of the Murphys' sons, Patrick, was diagnosed with tuberculosis and the family returned to New York. When their second son, Boath, succumbed to meningitis in 1935, and Patrick's death followed shortly thereafter in 1937, Murphy hung up his brush. Despite the brevity of Murphy's oeuvre, the intensity of its conception and its recently acknowledged status as a crucial precedent to Pop art have elevated Murphy's reputation considerably. In 1974, The Museum of Modern Art mounted the first Gerald Murphy retrospective. Illustrated with nearly 70 photographs from the Murphys' family album and with a special section on Murphy's paintings, Living Well presents a fascinating Lost Generation chronicle as charming and enticing as the couple themselves.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/087070897X/?tag=2022091-20
(Unlike the treasures of European museums, accumulated dur...)
Unlike the treasures of European museums, accumulated during centuries of royal patronage and plunder, the Metropolitan's vast collection reflects the tastes and resources of only a handful of remarkable nineteenth- and twentieth-century individuals, including J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Philip and Robert Lehman, who developed, along with their millions, a taste for immortality through art. Blending anecdote with lively social history, Calvin Tomkins reveals the ideas, personalities, and financial power behind the Metropolitan's dramatic climb to greatness. His story is nothing less than the story of art in America.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805010343/?tag=2022091-20
( Calvin Tomkins first discovered the work of Robert Raus...)
Calvin Tomkins first discovered the work of Robert Rauschenberg in the late 1950s, when he began to look seriously at contemporary art. While gazing at Rauschenberg's painting Double Feature, Tomkins felt compelled to make some kind of literal connection to the work, and it is in that sprit that "for the last forty years it's been his ambition to write about contemporary art not as a critic or a judge, but as a participant." Tomkins has spent many of those years writing about Robert Rauschenberg, whom he rapidly came to see as "one of the most inventive and influential artists of his generation." So it seemed natural to make Rauschenberg the focus of Off the Wall, which deals with the radical changes that have made advanced visual art such a powerful force in the world. Off the Wall chronicles the astonishingly creative period of the 1950s and 1960s, a high point in American art. In his in his collaborations with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and as a pivotal figure linking abstract expressionism and pop art, Rauschenberg was part of a revolution during which artists moved art off the walls of museums and galleries and into the center of the social scene. Rauschenberg's vitally important and productive career spans this revolution, reaching beyond it to the present day. Featuring the artists and the art world surrounding Rauschenberg--from Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning to Jasper Johns, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol, together with dealers Betty Parsons, and Leo Castelli, and the patron Peggy Guggenheim--Tomkins's stylish and witty portrait of one of America's most original and inspiring artists is fascinating, enlightening, and very entertaining.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312425856/?tag=2022091-20
(First published to great acclaim in 1996, New Yorker writ...)
First published to great acclaim in 1996, New Yorker writer and art critic Calvin Tomkins’ biography of the influential artist Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) has been out of print for many years. Now, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, is publishing a new and revised edition of the landmark biography to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Duchamp’s first Readymade, “Bicycle Wheel,” a later version of which is in MoMA’s collection. Duchamp is widely considered one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, yet his personal life remained an enigma throughout his avidly scrutinized career. Tomkins, from his unique vantage point as both an accomplished art critic and a friend of Duchamp’s since the late 1950s, presents a piercing portrait of Duchamp, adeptly analyzing his art and career while also recounting his personal life, influences and relationships. This thoroughly researched, eminently readable book is by far the most authoritative Duchamp biography.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0870708929/?tag=2022091-20
(In this enchanting memoir, New Yorker writer Calvin Tomki...)
In this enchanting memoir, New Yorker writer Calvin Tomkins re-creates the privileged world of Gerald and Sara Murphy, two American originals who found themselves at the center of a charmed circle of artists and expatriate writers in France in the 1920s. Their home in Antibes, Villa America, served as a gathering place for Picasso and Léger as well as Hemingway and Fitzgerald, who used the glamorous couple as models for Dick and Nicole Diver in Tender Is the Night. A bestseller when it first appeared in 1971, Living Well Is the Best Revenge features sixty-nine intimate photographs collected from the Murphys' family album, along with reproductions of several of Gerald Murphy's remarkable paintings--canvases that predate Pop Art by forty years. "Living Well Is the Best Revenge is a superb little study, alive with an elegance very much the Murphys'," said Nancy Mitford. Critic Russell Lynes found the book to be "at once a sharp and charming evocation of an era and a cast, mostly delightful, surely famous, and usually talented, written with an elegant balance between tongue in cheek and sympathy." This Modern Library edition includes Calvin Tomkins's new Introduction and a rewritten last chapter.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679603085/?tag=2022091-20
( "Brilliantly illuminating . . . This latter-day Vasari ...)
"Brilliantly illuminating . . . This latter-day Vasari puts his dry wit and keen eye to work in fashioning enduring portraits of ten contemporary-art stars, tracing the fruits of creative genius back to their strange roots."--Vogue For more than four decades Calvin Tomkins's incisive profiles in The New Yorker have given readers the most satisfying reports on contemporary art and artists available in any language. In Lives of the Artists ten major artists are captured in Tomkins's cool and ironic style to record the new directions art is taking during these days of limitless freedom. With the decline of formal technique and rigorous training, art has become, among other things, an approach to living. As Tomkins says, "the lives of contemporary artists are today so integral to what they make that the two cannot be considered in isolation." Among the artists profiled are Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst, the reigning heirs of deliberately outrageous art; Matthew Barney of the pregenital obsessions; Cindy Sherman, who manages multiple transformations as she disappears into her own work; and Julian Schnabel, who has forged a second career as an award-winning film director. Whatever the choice, the making of art remains among the most demanding jobs on earth.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805091440/?tag=2022091-20
Tomkins, Calvin was born on December 17, 1925 in Orange, New Jersey, United States. Son of Frederick and Laura (Graves) Tomkins.
Bachelor of Arts, Princeton University, 1948.
Associate editor, Newsweek magazine, New York City, 1955-1957; general editor, Newsweek magazine, New York City, 1957-1959; staff writer, The New Yorker, New York City, since 1960.
(First published in 1971 and now available for a younger g...)
(Unlike the treasures of European museums, accumulated dur...)
(In this enchanting memoir, New Yorker writer Calvin Tomki...)
(First published to great acclaim in 1996, New Yorker writ...)
(The Bride and the Bachelors, published here in a revised ...)
( Calvin Tomkins first discovered the work of Robert Raus...)
(This book is an absolute model of its kind; amusing, info...)
(This item is only available from third-party sellers.)
(Living Well Is the Best Revenge)
( "Brilliantly illuminating . . . This latter-day Vasari ...)
(Will be shipped from US. Brand new copy.)
(Book by Tomkins, Calvin)
(Art Studies, History)
(Vintage softcover)
(nonfiction: art)
Board directors Cunningham Dance Foundation, New York City, 1963-1990. With United States Navy, 1944-1946. Member Authors League American Inc., Pen American Center Clubs: Century (New York City).
Married Grace Lloyd Fanning, September 11, 1948. Children: Anne Graves, Susan Temple, Spencer. Married Judy Johnston, November 11, 1961 (divorced February 1981).
Married Susan Cheever, October 1, 1981. 1 child, Sarah Liley Cheever. Married Dodie Kazanjian, May 28, 1988.