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The story of Chick Austin is the story, in Virgil Thomson's words, of "a whole cultural movement in one man." Becoming director of Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum at the age of twenty-six, Austin immediately set about to introduce modern art to America and to transform this conservative insurance capital into a cultural mecca that would become the talk of the art world during the yeasty years between the two world wars.
The first in the United States to mount a major Picasso retrospective, Austin was soon acquiring works by Dalí, Mondrian, Miró, Balthus, Max Ernst, and Alexander Calder. In the museum's new theater (which he designed), he staged the premiere of the revolutionary Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson opera Four Saints in Three Acts (with an all-black cast). At Lincoln Kirstein's instigation, he brought Balanchine to America. And he embraced all the new art forms, making film, photography, architecture, and contemporary music part of the life of his museum. For his own family he built a Palladian villa (now a recently restored national historic landmark), filling it with the baroque and the Bauhaus and inviting all the locals in to see how it felt to be modern.
Austin's instinct for quality proved infallible. Whether acquiring a matchless Caravaggio or a startling Dalí, he balanced the old masters with the modern. Mounting provocative shows that linked the past to the present, he created dramatic installations--and he threw himself into everything, hanging fabrics, creating backdrops, stitching up costumes. He loved to teach, to paint, to act, to give lavish costume balls, and to dazzle audiences of all ages with his performances as a magician, the Great Osram.
Brilliant at using his magician's sleight of hand, he could manipulate his conservative trustees to get what he wanted--but only up to a point. One more purchase of an incomprehensible abstract canvas, one outrageous party too many, one more shocking theatrical role, eventually led to a crisis. Never one to be idle for long, Austin left Hartford and took on a new challenge--to make an artistic triumph of the pink-and-white palace in Sarasota, Florida, known as the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, which housed the circus king's moldering but magnificent collection.
Here is the colorful life of Chick Austin, and as we relish his audacious career--the risks he took, the successes he enjoyed along with the inevitable setbacks--we understand what a far-reaching influence he had on the way Americans look at and think about art. Not only a brilliant portrait of an extraordinary man, this wonderfully American story gives us a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into the art world as it was then--and in many ways still is today.
- Sales Rank: #1103505 in Books
- Published on: 2000-12-05
- Released on: 2000-12-05
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 1.44" w x 6.25" l,
- Binding: Hardcover
- 512 pages
Amazon.com Review
It's hard to pinpoint the exact location of the center of the art world. It has resided most famously at one time in Paris and then New York, with other major cities making claim to the title at different times throughout the years. However fleeting this title may be, it still seems surprising that once upon a time Hartford, Connecticut, a town most known for its insurance companies, served as the unofficial gateway and capital of modern art in America. Beginning in the late 1920s, a young and somewhat rebellious Harvard graduate began a career at Hartford's Wadworth Atheneum that would make waves throughout the country and help shape the American artistic climate for years to come. Magician of the Modern: Chick Austin and the Transformation of the Arts in America is the biography of this creative museum director (and amateur actor) whose energy and romantic visions inspired so many. The story is one of a charmed life full of upper-class indulgences like transatlantic trips, short-lived college suspensions, lavish parties, and country houses.
Underneath the shiny surface was a real-life soap opera, from an overbearing mother and distant father to a blissful marriage that very slowly crumbled under the pressures of an ever-changing lifestyle--and through it all Austin remained steadfast in his commitment to art and theater. Not every endeavor was successful: a failed collaboration with arts patron Lincoln Kirstein to bring George Balanchine to Hartford was a crushing blow, and his mounting of a Picasso show brought much neighborly criticism. Yet, whatever the project, Austin was always way ahead of the cultural curve, and in Hartford that meant that much of the community was playing a constant game of catch-up. Austin's life is a complex story of travel, art, family, romance, and an ever important group of friends. --J.P. Cohen
From Publishers Weekly
Transcending the usual dusty confines of museum curatorships with unusual artistic range, grasp, ambition and flair, Austin (1900-1957) shone as director of Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum and Florida's Ringling Museum. Born to a rich family, Austin married for social position, despite a flamboyant bisexual life (apparently reported matter-of-factly to his wife). By his late 20s he was already running the Atheneum, burning old paintings he disliked in the museum furnace and going on buying binges in Europe, usually snagging rare masterworks at bargain basement prices. In a typical case, he facilitated the world premiere of the Virgil Thomson-Gertrude Stein opera Four Saints in Three Acts (recently thrice-revived) at the Atheneum, and helped arrange George Balanchine's arrival in America to found what became the New York City Ballet. (The choreographer took one look at Hartford in the 1930s and fled to Manhattan.) Gaddis (Austin Memorial: The First Modern Museum), who currently curates the Austin House museum at the Atheneum, points out that many of Austin's artistic friends, from architect Philip Johnson to historian H. Russell Hitchcock, were gay, but fails to detail whether Austin's work and sexuality were related. A pioneer in the appreciation of film as art, baroque painting and the links between 19th-century kitsch and modern art, Austin seems here an ever open-minded intelligence, unique in his time and even more valuable today, when his like would languish in the bureaucratic, hype-obsessed art world. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The Wadsworth Atheneum of Hartford, Connecticut, America's oldest public art museum, was transformed into an avant-garde landmark by Arthur Averett "Chick" Austin Jr., director from 1927 to 1945. He was known to the art world as a passionate modernist with the solid underpinnings of an Old World connoisseur. Austin was trained in Europe in Italian Renaissance painting, but his keen and adventurous aesthetic was inspired by Egyptian and Mexican archaeological digs. Boasting movie-star looks and a flair for the bold and original, this chain-smoking, debonair, bisexual champion of the avant-garde mounted America's first major Picasso exhibit, and staged the world premiere of Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein's opera Four Saints in Three Acts in his personally designed Bauhaus-inspired addition to the museum, the Avery Memorial, welcoming such opening-night guests as Alexander Calder, Isamu Noguchi, and Buckminster Fuller. Austin also oversaw the nation's first surrealist exhibit, featuring Persistence of Memory by a young Spaniard named Dali. Gaddis' scholarly research in this title, complemented by extensive endnotes and a bibliography, does justice to this pioneer of modernism in America. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent Biography - Highly Recommended
By A Customer
The author weaves a very interesting and well-organized tale about a fascinating person and an exciting time to be involved in the art world in the United States. Although the substantial footnote section validates the author's detailed and thorough research, I never felt as if the text itself were bogged down with unnecessary or uninteresting detail. I suspect that some readers will note similarities between many of the struggles that Chick Austin faced and similar situations in the contemporary art scene today. This is an excellent book with a great story - I highly recommend it.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful.
Long-awaited Brilliant Biography
By David W Wright
A must-read for anyone interested in the arts in America. This splendid biography of Chick Austin is a landmark, defining what it means to be modern. The book brilliantly describes Austin's ground-breaking career and fascinating life: helping bring Balanchine to America, building the country's first modernist museum building, scandalizing Hartford, and bringing the magical Asolo theatre to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. The biography will appeal greatly to those interested in American museums, theatre, music, the Italian Baroque, the 1920's period, the Bauhaus style, as well as surrealism, cubism, and all aspects of the modern. Written with great taste and insight; highly recommended.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Very interesting reading
By A Customer
Chick Austin is a national treasure and what he did for the art scene is truly remarkable. I enjoyed the entire book and reading about how he developed his collection. I am not much of an art history buff and picked this book up during the holidays while visiting my family...I was hooked from the beginning. I am glad I read this.
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