There
will be a book launch of The Loft Generation by author Edith Schloss, mother of my good friend and collaborator film artist, Jacob Burckhardt. This will take place at 7PM on Wednesday, November 17 at the McNally Jackson bookstore
at 4 Fulton street in the South Street Seaport in New York. Jacob Burckhardt will be reading from the book and will be having a conversation with Phillip Lopate. Support Jacob and his mom Edith and come! Admission is free.
Reviews:
“Schloss brilliantly conveys her experiences . . . Thoughtfully edited by Venturini, [The Loft Generation] combines Schloss’s personal memoir with her art criticism to provide a riveting firsthand account of the daily lives, complex social interactions, and marital spats of artists . . . Rich in granular detail and rendered in eloquent and captivating prose, this is an intimate look at a pivotal era in its formative stages and offers an invaluable source for the study of one of the great art movements.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred review)
"Shrewdly observant, Schloss conveys in painterly prose the spirited individuals whose lives she shared and the worlds they inhabited . . . A captivating memoir of a life in art." —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
“Zestily precise and deeply knowledgeable . . . With preternatural recall, a discerning eye, keen ear, and hard-won insights, Schloss shares spirited, funny, wry and poignant tales . . . Intrepid, attentive, judicious, and radiantly expressive, Schloss presents an exhilarating perspective on a salient chapter in art history.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
“If you are even remotely interested in the idea of what it is to make a life from your art, Edith Schloss’s diaristic account of New York City’s post-war bohemia is indispensable reading . . . [The Loft Generation] is remarkable and engrossing.” —Jonny Diamond, LitHub
"I am tempted to say Edith Schloss’s Loft Generation is remarkable, but remarkable seems inadequate to describe it. Schloss’s memoir of life in New York during the heyday of the Abstract Expressionist movement and her subsequent expat years in Italy is wise, witty, and wild in equal measures. Writing from the position of the ultimate insider about a world that we are only beginning to understand and fully appreciate, she introduces readers to the artists and writers and composers who became part of her life – Willem and Elaine de Kooning, Rudy Burckhardt, Edwin Denby, Paul and Jane Bowles, John Cage, Frank O’Hara, among many, many others. And she describes the romance that is the life of the artist, despite poverty, monstrous political and social turmoil, and changing artistic fortunes. By the end of her story, which is so intimate and so true, we are left feeling as though we are part of that world, too. Quite simply, Schloss transports us, and that is the most any writer can hope to do. No, remarkable does not begin to describe her memoir. The Loft Generation is superb." —Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women, Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement that Changed Modern Art
“This indispensable eyewitnessing of a crucial period in American culture is wonderfully alive, entertaining, and beautifully written, with a dazzling mix of the personal and the aesthetic. Warmly honest, perceptive, and humane, Edith Schloss’s memoir is itself a work of art.” —Phillip Lopate, author of The Art of the Personal Essay
