Studios by the Sea: Artists of Long Island's East End by Bob Colacello, Jonathan Becker (Photographer), Jonathan Becker (Photographer)

From the Publisher

"The seaside resort towns and rural hamlets of the East End of Long Island, popularly known as the Hamptons, have served as havens for artists since the late nineteenth century. Today, the East End remains a thriving artists' colony, drawing painters, sculptors, photographers and performers who are attracted to the area's legendary coastal light, natural beauty, historic ambience, and rich cultural life. Many renowned contemporary artists have established roots as full-time or part-time residents of the East End, either converting old cedar-shingled barns into studios and living spaces, renovating farmhouses and cottages, or custom-designing and building their own environments." This book is an illustrated chronicle of the current artistic community of the East End - an insider's look at the homes and studios of luminaries such as Chuck Close, Robert Wilson, John Chamberlain, Larry Rivers, David Salle, April Gornik, Ross Bleckner, and Julian Schnabel, among others. Bob Colatello's text traces the artistic legacy of the East End, from William Merritt Chase and his high-society circle in the nineteenth century through the bohemian Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s and up to the present, drawing on illuminating conversations with many of the artists featured in the book. In more than 230 color photographs, Jonathan Becker captures the personalities of the artists and takes us inside their environments, offering a glimpse of how they live and work. This book is a must for anyone interested in the interwoven artistic, cultural, and social milieu of this legendary region.

New Yorker

Before the era of overpopulated time-shares, minivans, and Lizzie Grubman, Long Island's East End was famed as the "premier retreat for America's artistic and literary luminaries." So write Helen A. Harrison and Constance Ayers Denne in Hamptons Bohemia, a colorful ode to the Hamptons' often overlooked cultural legacy. Filled with photos of such residents and weekenders as Jackson Pollock, Kurt Vonnegut, and Truman Capote at work and at play, "Hamptons Bohemia" reveals a South Fork that first became a haven for artists in the nineteenth century, when James Fenimore Cooper and Winslow Homer were drawn to the remote beaches and austere potato fields. By the nineteen-forties, wide-eyed locals could be overheard asking, "Can you tell us where we'll find the Surrealists?"

As one East Ender, Edward Albee, points out, the Hamptons have since become "suburbs of New York City." Yet some evidence of artistic exile remains. In Studios by the Sea, the former Interview editor Bob Colacello and the photographer Jonathan Becker document the current crop of beachside artists, including Julian Schnabel, who has set up shop in an 1882 Stanford White mansion. Architects have also gravitated to the East End. Weekend Utopia, by the lifelong Hamptonian Alastair Gordon, explores the idea that the "beach house was the sonnet form of American architecture." It was in the Hamptons that White, Philip Johnson, and Robert Venturi worked out their ideas, and where now, as Gordon ruefully notes, ersatz manor houses twice the size of the White House gobble up the landscape. As Capote warned back in the seventies, "Some of the potato fields, so beautiful, flat and still, may not be here next year." (Mark Rozzo)

Publishers Weekly

Long before they became the playground of celebrities and nouveaux riches, the Hamptons were a popular refuge for artists. The tradition continues to this day, and Studios By the Sea: Artists of Long Island's East End showcases the homes of contemporary artists Julian Schnabel, Chuck Close, April Gornik, David Salle and many others. Color photographs by Vanity Fair contributing photographer Jonathan Becker show artists in their studios and backyards hard at work, posing with their masterpieces, or romping with their families. The introductory text is by Vanity Fair correspondent Bob Colacello (Holy Terror). (June) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Here are two art books that give Long Island its due. The large and geographically organized Studios by the Sea is an engaging photographic account of artists past and present working and living on Long Island's East End. Becker, a Vanity Fair contributing photographer, and Colacello (Holy Terror: Andy Warhol Up Close) let us into the work spaces of some 50 artists from sculptor Larry Rivers to painter Jane Freilicher to photographer Chuck Close capturing them in their creative environments. Included is an intimate look into the studio of Willem de Kooning, whose only daughter has kept his work and materials exactly as they were the day he stopped painting. Giving short yet telling descriptions of each artist, the book is an excellent visual reference to the spaces and faces of the art scene in the Hamptons from the 1930s to the present. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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