Edited with text by Samantha Friedman, Jodi Hauptman. Text by Lynn Garafola, Michelle Greet, Michelle Harvey, Richard Meyer, Kevin Moore.
Kirstein was cofounder of the New York City Ballet and a key figure in MoMA’s history, shaping American culture in the 1930s and ‘40s
Lincoln Kirstein was a polymathic writer, critic, curator and impresario: a key connector and an indefatigable catalyst whose sweeping contributions to American cultural life in the 1930s and ‘40s shaped artists and institutions. Best known for cofounding the New York City Ballet, he is also a crucial figure in the Museum of Modern Art’s early history. He championed photography and figurative art; established the Museum’s short-lived Dance Archives and curatorial department of Dance and Theater Design; acquired a significant trove of Latin American art for the collection; and contributed an alternative vision to a museum known for its devotion to abstraction.
Published in conjunction with an exhibition devoted to Kirstein’s expansive view of modern art, this volume also explores his wide-ranging and overlapping professional and social networks in New York City and beyond. The richly illustrated book features paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs and costume and set designs by artists including Antonio Berni, Paul Cadmus, Walker Evans, Raquel Forner, Jared French, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Gaston Lachaise, George Platt Lynes, Elie Nadelman, Ben Shahn, Honoré Sharrer, Pavel Tchelitchew and Joaquín Torres-García.
Lincoln Kirstein (1907–96) has been called “the closest thing to a Renaissance man of culture that 20th-century America has produced.” He founded three journals (Hound & Horn, Dance Index and Films), and, with the Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine, established the New York City Ballet in 1948. He organized exhibitions and contributed to accompanying catalogues, authored ballet librettos, and published novels, memoirs and poetry, as well as extensive criticism on painting, sculpture, photography, film, dance, theater and literature.
Antonio Berni, "New Chicago Athletic Club (Club Atlético Nueva Chicago)" (1937) is reproduced from 'Lincoln Kirstein's Modern.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Hyperallergic
Thomas Micchelli
Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern takes a close look at a period when patriotism was distinct from nationalism, populism did not equal demagoguery, and left-wing radicalism was the coin of the aesthetic realm.
L'Officiel
The 200-work showcase discovers Kirstein's development of the art of dance, integrating music, movement, and design.
New York Review of Books
Jed Perl
If there is a lesson that Lincoln Kirstein has to teach us, it is that an infatuation with the ephemeral can only be justified by a hunger for the eternal.
The Nation
Barry Schwabsky
“Lincoln Kirstein’s Modern” illustrates what Keynes called “the variable spectra of taste” by showing Kirstein’s position on painting in a context where it is merely one item in the vast range of his eclectic interests.
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"Most people fall in love with the dance because of something they have seen. In Lincoln Kirstein's case it was because of something he didn’t' see—a 1916 performance of Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Boston with the company's star, Vaslav Nijinsky. As it turned out, Nijinsky probably wasn't dancing that evening. But his image set the nine-year-old Kirstein on a decades-long quest to find the 'magic' that his mother had unwittingly denied him by not taking him to the performance at the Boston Opera House that evening." So begins Lynn Garafola's essay in Lincoln Kirstein's Modern, published to accompany the show that's currently on view at MoMA. The rest, as they say, is history. Featured image is a set design by Paul Cadmus for the ballet "Filling Station" (1937). continue to blog
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FORMAT: Hbk, 9 x 10.5 in. / 200 pgs / 205 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $55.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $75 ISBN: 9781633450820 PUBLISHER: The Museum of Modern Art, New York AVAILABLE: 4/23/2019 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
Kirstein was cofounder of the New York City Ballet and a key figure in MoMA’s history, shaping American culture in the 1930s and ‘40s
Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Edited with text by Samantha Friedman, Jodi Hauptman. Text by Lynn Garafola, Michelle Greet, Michelle Harvey, Richard Meyer, Kevin Moore.
Lincoln Kirstein was a polymathic writer, critic, curator and impresario: a key connector and an indefatigable catalyst whose sweeping contributions to American cultural life in the 1930s and ‘40s shaped artists and institutions. Best known for cofounding the New York City Ballet, he is also a crucial figure in the Museum of Modern Art’s early history. He championed photography and figurative art; established the Museum’s short-lived Dance Archives and curatorial department of Dance and Theater Design; acquired a significant trove of Latin American art for the collection; and contributed an alternative vision to a museum known for its devotion to abstraction.
Published in conjunction with an exhibition devoted to Kirstein’s expansive view of modern art, this volume also explores his wide-ranging and overlapping professional and social networks in New York City and beyond. The richly illustrated book features paintings, drawings, sculptures, photographs and costume and set designs by artists including Antonio Berni, Paul Cadmus, Walker Evans, Raquel Forner, Jared French, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Gaston Lachaise, George Platt Lynes, Elie Nadelman, Ben Shahn, Honoré Sharrer, Pavel Tchelitchew and Joaquín Torres-García.
Lincoln Kirstein (1907–96) has been called “the closest thing to a Renaissance man of culture that 20th-century America has produced.” He founded three journals (Hound & Horn, Dance Index and Films), and, with the Russian-born choreographer George Balanchine, established the New York City Ballet in 1948. He organized exhibitions and contributed to accompanying catalogues, authored ballet librettos, and published novels, memoirs and poetry, as well as extensive criticism on painting, sculpture, photography, film, dance, theater and literature.
