by Katharine Kuh
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Product Description
A unique look at the evolution of modern art in America, from art historian and eminent former curator of the Chicago Art Institute Katharine Kuh, a key figure in opening America+s eyes to contemporary art. -Any artist worth his salt is in advance of his time,+ writes Katharine Kuh. Picasso, Duchamp, LŽger, Mir—, Braque, Chagall, Klee, Calder, Davis, Hopper, Weston, Rothko, Arensberg, Dale, Philips. These are just a few of the artists, photographers, and collectors Katharine Kuh knew and worked with during her long career. One of America+s pivotal forces in the arts for over four decades, she began with her own gallery in Chicago in the early 1930s. To sell contemporary art in post-Depression America was almost suicidal, but with guts and gumption Kuh survived. In 1954, the Chicago Art Institute named her its first curator of modern art-a position of great prestige. Over the next 26 years, scouring the world, she acquired some of the most famous pieces in the institute+s collection, and formed close relationships with the artists themselves. Here she gives us insights into their personal lives, their creative influences, and the way they worked. After her death in 1998, noted art historian Avis Berman, Kuh+s literary executor, selected her key writings for this book.
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Provides a moving memoir, 2006-11-07
In the 1930s interest in modern art was low - but Katharine Kuh opened a gallery in Chicago anyway, exhibiting many then-obscure artists form Paul Klee to Ansel Adams and Marc Chagall. Her passion for modern art fostered their careers and led to a world-wide revitalization of interest, documented here in a blend of modern art history and autobiography. Her friend Avis Berman, a art historian, edited her writings for this book after Kuh's death: it provides a moving memoir of a life in the art world at a time when her artists' visionary works weren't widely recognized.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
my love affair with modern art, 2006-11-04
This is a wonderful book. It consists of short vignettes about the author's interaction with artists she met in the course of her career as a curator at the Chicago Institute of Art and later as a gallery owner. Her insight and her ability to describe the artists are wonderful. The story about Edward Hopper was just great!!
1 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
 Good description of an artsy fartsy world!, 2006-07-06
Sometimes during my read of this book I would find myself asleep but you can be sure I kept coming back. I certainly have a new appreciation for K. Kuh's modern art world and since I was able to visit the Institute of Arts in Chicago it was practically nostalgic. I think sometimes one gets so much of an education that it pushes one beyond the basic human side and one forgets that inevitably everybody takes a dump. I never realized all of the politics and tedium involved with being a museum curator. I had to look up some big words which means it broadened my horizons; right? Maybe... I enjoyed reading this book, was a bit over the top and for a hard cover book I had hoped for more photos.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Back in the day, and what a day, 2006-06-27
As a general reader with an appreciation for art, I loved MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MODERN ART. It is a vital and highly readable document of one of the most important eras in art history.
Katharine Kuh (1904 - 1994) was a gallery owner, then curator, then art critic (Saturday Review) and in the course of her long career, she came to know the international movers and shakers. Many came to trust her and call her their friend and shared their private lives and ideas about art with her. She outlived just about all who parade across her pages--each chapter profiles a different artist or collector--and had the luxury of reflection at the end of her life to select what about each personage mattered most. For example, though she opens the chapter on Mark Rothko with the tragedy of his 1970 suicide, that's not how she wants him remembered and thus her story emphasizes what he was like twenty years before as he struck his flow. The chapter on world-class collector Bernard Berenson seems anomalous at first--his heart was pre-Modern--but in many ways the story of such a man living in the heart of the Modern era is quite revealing. That is the one chapter where the very private Kuh allows for some self revelation as well.
The portraits of the lights like Brancusi, Hopper, Noguchi and Kline, to name a few, are priceless, and they offer Kuh a chance to discuss a number of issues, including the dynamics of cultivating collectors in hopes of donations to museums, government interference, general public taste, fakes, curating a retrospective exhibit, and artists' estates. Though she keeps the attention on the artists, Kuh comes through as a very interesting person, one who chose to go against the conventional choices for women of her time. Avis Berman, who edited and completed the book posthumously, has kept Kuh's extraordinary voice intact without a quiver.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
 The Buyer should know that..., 2006-04-15
while the writing is superb, this costly edition is printed on the cheap. At a minimum, the pages with pictures should have been in full color on glossy stock. Kuh would have been ashamed.
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