Blaise Bulletin

LIVES OF THE ARTISTS
by Calvin Tomkins

Our fabulous friend Stephanie Adamowicz had this book on hand a few weeks ago, so we knew it was an important read. Obviously anything written by Calvin Tomkins is a must-read. This book is a great supplement to the usual technique- or style-based reviews of an artist’s work, because it lends an easily readable insight into the artists when they are not in the act of immediate creation. Learning that Jasper Johns serves lemongrass iced-tea to Tomkins and his wife while visiting him on St. John somehow perfectly fills in a blank I didn’t realize I’d been missing to begin with! Tomkins offers similar anecdotes on Currin, Koons, Cattelan, Serra, Sherman, Schnabel, Turrell, and Barney. It’s wonderful to read anything and everything with an open mind like this; sometimes you don’t know what you need until it’s given to you.
We read Tomkins’s Rauschenberg biopic “Off the Wall”about ten years ago years ago and are constantly referring back to it. This is why you should never get rid of your books; being able to flip through one for a phrase or idea that you vaguely remember from years before can spark a whole new original concept. (This is also why we won’t be buying a Kindle anytime soon.)