Tales from the Art Crypt : The painters, the museums, the curators, the collectors, theauctions, the art

Rating:
Summary: Yawn
Review: Feigen does a wonderful job of tooting his own horn and bashing the hard-earned reputations of others. The subtitle of the book: "The Painters, the Museums, the Curators, the Collectors, the Auctions, the Art" should have read "ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME". There a few useful or interesting tidbits of information buried in the book, but the challenge is staying awake long enough to unearth them.

Rating:
Summary: Yawn
Review: Feigen does a wonderful job of tooting his own horn and bashing the hard-earned reputations of others. The subtitle of the book: "The Painters, the Museums, the Curators, the Collectors, the Auctions, the Art" should have read "ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME". There a few useful or interesting tidbits of information buried in the book, but the challenge is staying awake long enough to unearth them.

Rating:
Summary: Yawn
Review: Feigen does a wonderful job of tooting his own horn and bashing the hard-earned reputations of others. The subtitle of the book: "The Painters, the Museums, the Curators, the Collectors, the Auctions, the Art" should have read "ME, ME, ME, ME, ME, ME". There a few useful or interesting tidbits of information buried in the book, but the challenge is staying awake long enough to unearth them.

Rating:
Summary: stories of how wonderful I am
Review: Gossip and other matters previously reported by others. Too bad the author did not say more about modern art.

Rating:
Summary: Name Droppings - Views from the Bottom of the Cage
Review: Gossip and other matters previously reported by others. Too bad the author did not say more about modern art.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting insider's prospective of the art world.
Review: I enjoyed this look at the art world through Mr. Feigen's eyes and experiences. The book is written in a very conversational tone with humor and brutal honesty.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting insider's prospective of the art world.
Review: I enjoyed this look at the art world through Mr. Feigen's eyes and experiences. The book is written in a very conversational tone with humor and brutal honesty.

Rating:
Summary: Worthy criticism
Review: I found Richard Feigen's book to be a mostly worthy criticism of the current art world. I am the son of Sam Salz who is mentioned in a short passage in the book as a legendary art dealer. I think Mr.Feigen's description of his method of dealing is accurate eventhough my father's german-jewish accent is slightly overdone. My father may have been a shrewd and sometimes ruthless negotiator but he always saught a good home for "his pictures" and could judge a great one from a "postage stamp". The rest of the book deals very well with the gradual takeover of large corporate interests in the museums. Sometimes Mr. Feigen has a tendency to portray himself a the sole saviour in a corrupt system but more than a few of his shots are right on target.

Rating:
Summary: A Lively Tale
Review: In this account of his many years as one of New York's most prominent art dealers, Richard Feigen offers readers a personal and engaging view of the art world's past and the many issues it faces in the present.

The difficulty with Mr. Feigen's book is that fails to approach these issues in an intellectually engaged and balanced manner. Though he presents delighful, and at times humourous accounts of his relationships with several prominent collectors, Feigen then proceeds to mow down most of the museum directors of the last thirty years and several very influential and erudite academics. He also glosses over important details and omits others, presenting a one-sided, opinionated view of many events that in reality were much more complicated. In his account of the "Boston Massacre," for example, he does not address concerns that many of the curators fired were uncooperative, unproductive, or both.

Though the book's organization obscures its thesis somewhat, it appears that Feigen envisions a return to an era in which museums functioned as private clubs for the independently wealthy and art historians were chiefly concerned with objects' formal qualities. This hardly seems like a desirable goal and ignores the many financial and legal issues that face the modern museum. In the end, the reader is disappointed that Feigen was unable to provide a more thoughtful and productive contribution.

Rating:
Summary: stories of how wonderful I am
Review: Mr. Feign is a well known art dealer who has written a disjointed series of stories related in that they all involve him and some noble act or great art find by him. In many of the stories Mr. Feign is critical of collectors, dealers, and administrators of art museums who are now dead and unable to defend themselves. Richard the Great emerges as the only noble and knowledgable person who always does the right thing and always barely misses the gold ring of finding and acquiring a lost art treasure. If you are interested in an egomaniac's view of his life and the shortcomings of others, written in the guise of stories about art this is the book for you. The editor should be fired for not catching the number of duplications of facts and typographical errors.