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Fierce Poise
- Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York
- Narrated by: Alison Fraser
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
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Publisher's Summary
A National Book Critics Circle Finalist
One of Vogue's Best Books of the Year
A dazzling biography of one of the 20th century's most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as an artist in postwar New York
“The magic of Alexander Nemerov's portrait of Helen Frankenthaler in Fierce Poise is that it reads like one of Helen's paintings. His poetic descriptions of her work and his rich insights into the years when Helen made her first artistic breakthroughs are both light and lush, seemingly easy and yet profound. His book is an ode to a truly great artist who, some 70 years after this story begins, we are only now beginning to understand.” (Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women)
At the dawn of the 1950s, a promising and dedicated young painter named Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, moved back home to New York City to make her name. By the decade's end, she had succeeded in establishing herself as an important American artist of the postwar period. In the years in between, she made some of the most daring, head-turning paintings of her day and also came into her own as a woman: traveling the world, falling in and out of love, and engaging in an ongoing artistic education. She also experienced anew - and left her mark on - the city in which she had been raised in privilege as the daughter of a judge, even as she left the security of that world to pursue her artistic ambitions.
Brought to vivid life by acclaimed art historian Alexander Nemerov, these defining moments - from her first awed encounter with Jackson Pollock's drip paintings to her first solo gallery show to her tumultuous breakup with eminent art critic Clement Greenberg - comprise a portrait as bold and distinctive as the painter herself. Inspired by Pollock and the other male titans of abstract expressionism but committed to charting her own course, Frankenthaler was an artist whose talent was matched only by her unapologetic determination to distinguish herself in a man's world.
Fierce Poise is an exhilarating ride through New York's 1950s art scene and a brilliant portrait of a young artist through the moments that shaped her.
Critic Reviews
“Neither conventional biography nor arm’s-length critical appraisal, Alexander Nemerov’s Fierce Poise shines a light on Helen Frankenthaler’s early artistic breakthrough by blending both forms.... A thrillingly alive account of a woman unapologetically pursuing her own vision in an era and a milieu largely defined by men.” (Vogue)
“Nemerov is emphatic about not neglecting the political side of art. He has written extensively about art that is embedded in social life, and the power of art to prod the conscience and change the world. But in this book he wrestles with another kind of art - art that is deeply self-conscious, inward, sensitive and committed to extending a tradition of art as a sacred calling. The ability to convey the particularity of a sensation, at a precise moment, isn’t political in the usual sense, but it can be deeply ethical, reminding another person of a simple fact that is profoundly hard to process: that other conscious beings exist.... For a long time, art critics and historians have worked to recover the darker truths obfuscated by the glamour and mystique of America at the mid-century, including the world in which Frankenthaler built her career. Next up is redeeming the lightness from that darkness, without indulging the old myths or perpetuating the old inequities. Nemerov believes that is possible. He has written a book that shows us how it can be done.” (Philip Kennicott, The Washington Post)
“Nemerov, a professor of art history at Stanford, explores the abstract expressionist’s career between 1950 and 1960, starting each of the book’s 11 chapters on an important day in her life.... The result is the illumination of not only how central Frankenthaler was to the artistic movement that’s often defined by the likes of Pollock and Rothko, but how she’s also one of the most compelling personalities in contemporary art history.” (WSJ Magazine)
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Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- adnil
- 06-16-21
Fierce Poise
Good story about a fascinating era. Sorry to say tho the narration was quite distracting. The « voice of Helen » was so pretentious answered most others that I barely made it thru and almost opted to just buy the book and read it instead. Sorry to say this but I cannot recommend this narration. Gave performance 1* because it was required by audible.
2 people found this helpful
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- Frank H
- 04-30-21
Somewhat disappointed
After reading the lengthy tome, 9th Street Women (which is a fabulous, timely and well-worthy read!) I found 'Fierce Poise' repetitive of the Helen Frankenthaler story with which I was already familiar. While her decade of the 50's was a seminal beginning for her talent and background to be able to explore, I expected more insight regarding the development and interactions behind Frankenthaler's skill.
I consider it peculiar that the author, who apparently chose not to meet or interview her, did not do so - even while his family was associated with her own original family.
In addition, due to this, I found it even more unusual, and inappropriate, that in his Intro, the author decided to call this famed painter by her first name.
While the reader, Allison Fraser is excellent in other works to which I've listened, her tone and attitude taken when quoting/acting the role of Frankenthaler in the book, is cloyingly affected. Fingers scraping a blackboard for me.
However, Frankenthaler remains one of my very favorite painters - and I was exposed to the details of many titled works.
2 people found this helpful
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- EKSparks
- 04-10-21
Awful narration
Enjoyed the content, though often felt the need to clarify the somewhat abstractly poetical accounts of the paintings wi a google search for images. However, the book was nearly ruined for me by the Audible narration which adopted a drawling, petulant, pretentious voice for Frankenthaler that made me want to slap her upside the head every time she opened her mouth. Seems quite a strange ( and inevitably sexist) editorial decision to intentionally trivialize the main subject of a book by constantly emphasizing how annoying she was. Listening to it required conscious resistance to the parody I was being offered.
1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-26-21
I don’t want to write a review
And can’t get rid of the box so I can go back and re-listen to this book
It’s beyond annoying!
1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 02-05-23
Get the paper version
This audiobook is so badly read that in spite of the interesting characters portrayed and the interesting story it make this experience of listening to it excruciating. I am not sure why the reader provides a different tone and voice (definitely counterproductive and deeply annoying) to the main character quotes and
why
she
puts
long
innumerable
pauses
when
ever
as if reading a new line after each single words or some obscure bad poem.
As a professor of art history and fine art I strongly recommend you do not miss out on the remarkable life and production of Helen Frankenthaler but please do get a written text copy, whether digital or paper.
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- Aunt B
- 09-06-21
interesting informative
I enjoyed the book. I came away with a different view of Frankenthaler than before. I found the Helen voice very condescending and uppity. I guess that is how some people saw her. It took away from the story for me. but good book anyway
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- Optimistic fool
- 02-19-23
Not sure I learned so much
This is definitely responsible- but no way near the mega beast that’s ninth street woman.
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Story
One of the nation’s top art critics shows how six great artists made old age a time of triumph by producing some of the greatest work of their long careers—and, in some cases, changing the course of art history. Though these six artists differed in many respects, they shared one thing: a determination to go on creating, driven not by the bounding energies of youth but by the ticking clock that would inspire them to produce some of their greatest masterpieces.
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An art history course in one slim book
- By LC on 02-19-23
By: Richard Lacayo
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I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going
- The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s
- By: Peter McGough
- Narrated by: Peter McGough
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Brilliantly funny, frank, and shattering, this is the bittersweet memoir by Peter McGough of his life with artist David McDermott. Set in New York’s Lower East Side of the 1980s and mid-1990s, it is also a devastatingly candid look at the extreme naiveté and dysfunction that would destroy both their lives.
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Funny, endearing, and soul-baringly frank
- By Client on 10-17-19
By: Peter McGough
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Peggy Guggenheim
- The Shock of the Modern
- By: Francine Prose
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Acclaimed best-selling author Francine Prose offers a listen of Guggenheim's life that will enthrall enthusiasts of 21st-century art as well as anyone interested in American and European culture and the interrelationships between them. The lively and insightful narrative follows Guggenheim through virtually every aspect of her extraordinary life, from her unique collecting habits and paradigm-changing discoveries to her celebrity friendships, failed marriages, and scandalous affairs.
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Good listen
- By Amazon Customer on 05-04-21
By: Francine Prose
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Ninth Street Women
- Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art
- By: Mary Gabriel
- Narrated by: Lisa Stathoplos
- Length: 40 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Five women revolutionize the modern art world in postwar America in this "gratifying, generous, and lush" true story from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times). Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of 20th-century abstract painting - not as muses but as artists.
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Painful pronunciation issues!
- By Curious Reader on 05-20-19
By: Mary Gabriel
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The Forest
- A Fable of America in the 1830s
- By: Alexander Nemerov
- Narrated by: Clarke Peters
- Length: 9 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, featuring both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans living and working in a world still made largely of wood. Some of the historical characters—such as Thomas Cole, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nat Turner—are well-known, while others are not. But all are creators of private and grand designs.
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Not suited to audio?
- By Secutor on 03-23-23
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1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
- A Memoir
- By: Ai Weiwei, Allan H. Barr - translator
- Narrated by: David Shih
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Once a close associate of Mao Zedong and the nation’s most celebrated poet, Ai Weiwei’s father, Ai Qing, was branded a rightist during the Cultural Revolution, and he and his family were banished to a desolate place known as “Little Siberia,” where Ai Qing was sentenced to hard labor cleaning public toilets. Ai Weiwei recounts his childhood in exile, and his difficult decision to leave his family to study art in America, where he befriended Allen Ginsberg and was inspired by Andy Warhol and the artworks of Marcel Duchamp.
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This book changed my life
- By Johnny Nopolis on 08-16-22
By: Ai Weiwei, and others
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Last Light
- How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph
- By: Richard Lacayo
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 13 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
One of the nation’s top art critics shows how six great artists made old age a time of triumph by producing some of the greatest work of their long careers—and, in some cases, changing the course of art history. Though these six artists differed in many respects, they shared one thing: a determination to go on creating, driven not by the bounding energies of youth but by the ticking clock that would inspire them to produce some of their greatest masterpieces.
-
-
An art history course in one slim book
- By LC on 02-19-23
By: Richard Lacayo
-
I've Seen the Future and I'm Not Going
- The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s
- By: Peter McGough
- Narrated by: Peter McGough
- Length: 9 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Brilliantly funny, frank, and shattering, this is the bittersweet memoir by Peter McGough of his life with artist David McDermott. Set in New York’s Lower East Side of the 1980s and mid-1990s, it is also a devastatingly candid look at the extreme naiveté and dysfunction that would destroy both their lives.
-
-
Funny, endearing, and soul-baringly frank
- By Client on 10-17-19
By: Peter McGough
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Peggy Guggenheim
- The Shock of the Modern
- By: Francine Prose
- Narrated by: Carrington MacDuffie
- Length: 6 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
-
Story
Acclaimed best-selling author Francine Prose offers a listen of Guggenheim's life that will enthrall enthusiasts of 21st-century art as well as anyone interested in American and European culture and the interrelationships between them. The lively and insightful narrative follows Guggenheim through virtually every aspect of her extraordinary life, from her unique collecting habits and paradigm-changing discoveries to her celebrity friendships, failed marriages, and scandalous affairs.
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Good listen
- By Amazon Customer on 05-04-21
By: Francine Prose
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Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018
- By: Peter Schjeldahl, Jarrett Earnest - introduction
- Narrated by: Peter Schjeldahl
- Length: 15 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Hot Cold Heavy Light collects 100 writings - some long, some short - that taken together form a group portrait of many of the world’s most significant and interesting artists. From Pablo Picasso to Cindy Sherman, Old Masters to contemporary masters, paintings to comix, and saints to charlatans, Schjeldahl ranges widely through the diverse and confusing art world, an expert guide to a dazzling scene.
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needs pictures
- By Petra Juarez on 02-19-20
By: Peter Schjeldahl, and others
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In Montparnasse
- The Emergence of Surrealism in Paris, from Duchamp to Dalí
- By: Sue Roe
- Narrated by: Kristin Atherton
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In Montparnasse begins on the eve of the First World War and ends with the 1936 unveiling of Dalí’s Lobster Telephone. As those extraordinary years unfolded, the Surrealists found ever more innovative ways of exploring the interior life, and asking new questions about how to define art. In Montparnasse recounts how this artistic revolution came to be amidst the salons and cafés of that vibrant neighborhood.
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Great Second of Two Books
- By Robert Keith on 10-26-19
By: Sue Roe
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Mad Enchantment
- Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies
- By: Ross King
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
We have all seen, whether live, in photographs or on postcards, some of Claude Monet's legendary water lily paintings. They are in museums all over the world and are among the most beloved works of art of the past century. Yet, ironically, these soothing images were created amid terrible personal turmoil and sadness.
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Wonderful book. Awful awful narration.
- By Stephanie Croquez on 06-23-17
By: Ross King
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At the Center of All Beauty
- Solitude and the Creative Life
- By: Fenton Johnson
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 7 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Solitude is the inspirational core for many writers, artists, and thinkers. Alone with our thoughts, we can make discoveries that matter not only to us but to others. To be solitary is not only to draw sustenance from being alone, but to know that our ultimate responsibility is not only to our partner or our own offspring, but to a larger community. Fenton Johnson's lyrical prose and searching sensibility explores what it means to choose to be solitary and celebrates the notion that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling.
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Learn about others and yourself
- By C. FREEMAN on 12-25-20
By: Fenton Johnson
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Art Is Life
- Icons and Iconoclasts, Visionaries and Vigilantes, and Flashes of Hope in the Night
- By: Jerry Saltz
- Narrated by: Jerry Saltz, Mark Bramhall
- Length: 16 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jerry Saltz is one of our most-watched writers about art and artists and a passionate champion of the importance of art in our shared cultural life. Since the 1990s he has been an indispensable cultural voice: Witty and provocative, he has attracted contemporary listeners to fine art as few critics have.
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WRONG for audio program
- By Karen Lehrer on 11-07-22
By: Jerry Saltz
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Daybook: The Journey of an Artist
- By: Anne Truitt
- Narrated by: Anne Truitt
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A classic work for artists of all kinds, about reconciling the call of creative work with the demands of daily life and narrated by Anne Truitt herself. Renowned American artist Anne Truitt kept this illuminating and inspiring journal over a period of seven years, determined to come to terms with the forces that shaped her art and life. Within its beautifully written pages, you will come to know a woman whose range of sensitivity - moral, intellectual, sensual, emotional, and spiritual - is remarkably broad.
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Luminous, insightful, lovely
- By Mary on 11-24-17
By: Anne Truitt
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How to Be an Artist
- By: Jerry Saltz
- Narrated by: Jerry Saltz
- Length: 2 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Art has the power to change our lives. For many, becoming an artist is a lifelong dream. But how to make it happen? In How to Be an Artist, Jerry Saltz, one of the art world’s most celebrated and passionate voices, offers an indispensable handbook for creative people of all kinds. From the first sparks of inspiration - and how to pursue them without giving in to self-doubt - Saltz offers invaluable insight into what really matters to emerging artists: originality, persistence, a balance between knowledge and intuition, and that most precious of qualities, self-belief.
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Terrible Book Waste of Money
- By Classic on 04-22-20
By: Jerry Saltz
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ArtCurious
- Stories of the Unexpected, Slightly Odd, and Strangely Wonderful in Art History
- By: Jennifer Dasal
- Narrated by: Jennifer Dasal
- Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
We're all familiar with the works of Claude Monet, thanks in no small part to the ubiquitous reproductions of his water lilies on umbrellas, handbags, scarves, and dorm-room posters. But did you also know Monet and his cohort were trailblazing rebels whose works were originally deemed unbelievably ugly and vulgar? And while you probably know the tale of Vincent van Gogh's suicide, you may not be aware that there's pretty compelling evidence that the artist didn't die by his own hand but was accidentally killed - or even murdered.
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Very odd but I could not stop listening!
- By Walter G. Carlson on 10-05-21
By: Jennifer Dasal
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Sontag
- Her Life and Work
- By: Benjamin Moser
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag. Mythologized and misunderstood, lauded and loathed, a girl from the suburbs who became a proud symbol of cosmopolitanism, Sontag left a legacy of writing on art and politics, feminism and homosexuality, celebrity and style, medicine and drugs, radicalism and Fascism and Freudianism and Communism and Americanism, that forms an indispensable key to modern culture.
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Cloying voice
- By Suzanne on 11-02-19
By: Benjamin Moser