Synopsis
Recounts the tragic life of the celebrated American artist, from his Greenwich Village childhood and journeys among the Sioux and Uinta Indians, through his struggles with mental illness in turn-of-the-century New York, and the exploitation of his work by an unscrupulous philanthropist. 35,000 first printing.
Reviews
American painter Ralph Albert Blakelock's tragic life story has all the trappings of a Victorian mystery: kidnapping, madness, seduction, forgery and betrayal. In this spellbinding narrative, playwright and journalist Vincent shows how Blakelock (1847-1919), whose dreamy and haunting landscapes are precursoers to the Abstract Expressionist movement that would follow in 50 years, became one of the country's most innovative and controversial artists. At the height of Blakelock's fame in 1916, however, he had already been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and locked up in a public New York sanatorium, leaving his wife and children destitute. These facts alone would be excitement enough for most "mad artist" biographies. In this case, they represent only the beginning of an increasingly unbelievable story. Beatrice Adams, a seductive and glamorous New York socialite with a shady past, set up a charitable fund to liberate Blakelock from the sanatorium and, supposedly, to provide money for his family. It was a ruse that allowed Adams to gain legal and financial control over the easily manipulated artist and his family, bringing Blakelock's delusional fantasies of persecution to bizarre fruition. Over the next couple of years, using her enormous influence and apparently unstoppable powers of persuasion, Adams isolated Blakelock from his family and retained the profits of his increasingly valuable paintings (here reproduced on eight four-color pages) for herself. Blakelock, eventually fearful of the manipulative and sometimes violent Adams, made repeated attempts to escape from her clutches. The artist's somewhat mysterious death while still under Adams's care only adds to the drama-as does Adams's own eventual diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Compellingly and empathetically told, this chronicle is a must for art lovers and anyone with a passion for turn-of-the-century history and culture.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The life of Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847-1919) has long been left unexamined; likewise, the eerie nocturnal landscapes he painted are forgotten sidebars to the work of his more celebrated contemporaries George Inness and Albert Pinkham Ryder. A century ago, however, while he languished for two decades in an upstate New York insane asylum, Blakelock was lauded as America's greatest painter. When parts of his prolific body of work began selling at prices of up to the then-astronomical sum of $20,000 apiece, the opportunists descended and began to exploit the now-elderly paranoid schizophrenic and his family. In this retelling of a fascinating and sad story, journalist/playwright Vincent captures an artist whose descent into "dementia praecox," as he was then diagnosed, had until now been romanticized, drawing comparisons to Van Gogh. Vincent's account of Blakelock's early hardships in New York City are a template for what it's like to be an unrecognized, struggling artist anytime, anywhere, and the descriptions of the swindlers who exploited his late-won fame are subtly terrifying portraits of greed and dishonesty. Vincent's authoritative tone and level of detail in describing the artist's life are supported by copious documentation, as well as 30 pages of "source notes" that cite personal papers, medical records, and interviews with descendants. A dramatically unhappy life compellingly told; recommended for all libraries.
Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., CA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Ralph Albert Blakelock's mystical landscapes, especially his celebrated "moonlights," are clearly the work of a man enthralled by nature's power and beauty, but awe and art weren't the only forces to rule his unique and bizarre life. Journalist Vincent brilliantly relates the startling story of America's "most expressive and idiosyncratic" nineteenth-century painter with the suspense and metaphorical richness of fiction, eloquently defining the particular vision and magic of Blakelock's highly charged landscapes and sensitively parsing the pathos of his brave struggles as an outsider in the clubby New York art world, and, more dauntingly, with the pernicious demon of schizophrenia. And then there was Beatrice Van Rensselaer Adams, a dishy scam artist who pretended to rescue the long-institutionalized artist only to enrich herself and betray his long-suffering family. Diminutive but scrappy and very smart, New Yorker Blakelock (1847-1919) left the city to learn his craft in "the palace of nature," undertaking daring journeys deep into the western wilderness where he documented Indian life on the eve of its brutal destruction. Vincent theorizes that the tragedies he witnessed, along with personal losses and relentless poverty, helped trigger Blakelock's late-onset mental illness. An arresting and ultimately haunting portrait of an intrepid and besieged artist of moonlight and lost worlds. Donna Seaman
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