{"id":1249,"date":"2018-12-31T16:24:21","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1249"},"modified":"2018-12-31T16:24:21","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T16:24:21","slug":"lone-star-book-reviewsby-michelle-newby-nbcccontributing-editor-131","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1249","title":{"rendered":"Lone Star Book ReviewsBy Michelle Newby, NBCCContributing Editor"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/span><\/span>Michelle Newby<\/span> is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews<\/span> and Foreword Reviews, <\/span>writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine,<\/span> and The Collagist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Lone Star Book Reviews
of Texas books appear weekly
at LoneStarLiterary.com<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n
\n

BIOGRAPHY\/ART<\/p>\n

William Middleton<\/span><\/p>\n

Double Vision: The Unerring Eye of Art World Avatars Dominique and John de Menil<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Alfred A. Knopf<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-0-3754-1543-2, (also available as an e-book), 784 pgs., $40.00<\/p>\n

March 27, 2018<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m after the excitement not the object per se\u2014after the light, not the bulbs. I\u2019d like to provide for people plenty of bulbs to switch on.\u201d<\/span> \u2014Dominique de Menil<\/p>\n

Y\u2019all know that old question asking who you\u2019d invite<\/span> to your dinner party if you could invite anyone you wanted? I\u2019d invite Dominique and John de Menil.<\/p>\n

Born in France at the beginning of the twentieth century, they came to Houston, Texas, in the early 1940s with the family oilfield services multinational that would become Schlumberger Limited. John de Menil was a baron; Dominique the heir to Schlumberger, descended from a distinguished line of French intellectuals, important to the governments of kings and emperors. Over the decades, the de Menils built the Menil Collection, the Rothko Chapel, the Byzantine Fresco Chapel, and the Cy Twombly Gallery, and underwrote the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Their personal collection exceeded 20,000 works of art, including paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, rare books, and decorative objects. They were not only the vanguard of art collectors and advocates, but thought leaders in civil rights, human rights, and ecumenicism, often still a dicey proposition, not to say dangerous, in Texas.<\/p>\n

How in heck did these two wash up in Houston, you ask? It\u2019s a fascinating story well told. Dominique and John de Menil come alive again in these pages.<\/p>\n

Double Vision: The Unerring Eye of Art World Avatars Dominique and John de Menil<\/span> is the new biography of the first family of Houston\u2019s arts community by William Middleton. Middleton, a journalist and editor who has worked with Harper\u2019s Bazaar,<\/span> the New York Times,<\/span> and Texas Monthly,<\/span> among other outlets, has written an encyclopedic yet profoundly personal account of not only the extraordinary lives of Dominique and John de Menil, but a history of the flowering of modern art in the United States post\u2013World War II.<\/p>\n

Middleton begins in the New World, with the opening in 1987 of the Menil Collection. Part Two takes a deep dive into the Old World, Normandy in the eighteenth century, leisurely making his way back to Houston and the death of Dominique de Menil in 1999. Along the way we get an education\u2014European history, American history, art history, and how to view art with a good eye and proper attitude, tracing their developing aesthetic from Alsace to Paris, then New York to Houston. Obviously a labor of love, Middleton\u2019s book doesn\u2019t shy from more difficult aspects of the de Menils, notably the controversy involving art thieves, cultural appropriation, and those Cypriot Byzantine frescoes. While it\u2019s dense with minute detail and overly long\u2014I suggest sitting with your knees drawn up so as to prop up the book and rest your wrists\u2014it\u2019s impossible to overstate the importance of Middleton\u2019s superb work.<\/p>\n

Middleton conducted ten years of research and writing in Paris, New York, and Houston. He had the cooperation of the five de Menil children, as well as extended family, friends, artists, and colleagues. He was granted interviews, provided with candid family photographs, and given use of the family archives. Double Vision is an intimate work that includes not only sixteen pages of photographs, but also 135 illustrations throughout the text, representing an impressive feat of curation itself.<\/p>\n

Dominique and John de Menil are household names in Houston, and now, thanks to this supreme effort of research \u2014 indeed, immersion \u2014the rest of Texas, and the world, will understand why the de Menils are considered \u201cthe Medici of modern art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201d[Great artists] can be difficult, dissolute, but they are never base and in their quest for perfection they come closer to eternal truths than pious goody-goodies. So we are collectors without remorse.\u201d <\/span>\u2014John de Menil<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Newby is a reviewer for Kirkus Reviews and Foreword Reviews, writer, blogger at TexasBookLover.com, member of the Permian Basin Writers’ Workshop advisory committee, and a moderator for the Texas Book Festival. Her reviews appear in Pleiades Magazine, Rain Taxi, Concho River Review, Mosaic Literary Magazine, Atticus Review, The Rumpus, PANK Magazine, and The Collagist. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1249"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1249\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}