Robert Storr: Interviews on Art

While Robert Storr is not a household name, he has been at the center of the art world for decades. Storr, formerly a curator at the Museum of Modern Art and dean of the School of Art at Yale University, is one of the foremost art critics of the past 40 years. In Robert Storr: Interviews on Art, editor Francesca Pietropaolo culls his interviews with 61 artists from across the art scene.

Arranged alphabetically, each interview was conducted between 1981 and 2016. Some subjects are titans of the art scene. Interviewed two years before his death, Buckminster Fuller details how his revolutionary architectural designs emerged during the Depression. Chuck Close discusses his return to painting following a debilitating medical event. Several colorful interviews with French American artist Louise Bourgeois reveal her fascinating perspective on a range of issues, including being a woman in an art world dominated by men. Younger artists such as Nigerian-born Wangechi Mutu may lack the name recognition of Jeff Koons or Gerhard Richter, but her insight into the representation of the black female body in art is insightful, as is Mary Reid Kelley's discussion of the use of rhyme as a powerful force in her video art.

While the conversations occasionally lean toward the academic, they are never dull or pedantic. The interviews wouldn't be as rich as they are if it weren't for Storr. Trained as an artist, he has the ability to engage intimately with his subjects in a way that feels like a dialogue between peers. --Frank Brasile, selection librarian, writer, editor

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