Reviews for Ronnie Cutrone

The average rating for Ronnie Cutrone based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-01-31 00:00:00 William Ferullo I decided to not finish this book by the time I'd reached page 4. This has never happened to me before. Usually, I give an author at least the first third of the volume before I give up on him, but this time was different because Emmanuel Cooper destroyed whatever credibility he had on page 4. What happened? "The Sexual Perspective" is about homosexuality in the arts. It's a great and important topic, well worth discussing. I'm an art historian, so I was very interested. One of the first artworks Cooper discusses is Donatello's bronze David, one of the most famous works of Italian Renaissance art. It is definitly an example for homosexual aesthetics in the arts at the time and Cooper goes on to show this by describing the statue to the reader. And now it comes: he gets the description wrong. I don't know what David he was thinking of when he wrote this, but it's not the Donatello. Cooper bases his whole argument on the fact that the young man stands on a helmet decorated with a feather that curves up the leg and touched the figures genitals. The problem is that Donatello's David does not stand on a helmet (he's standing on Goliath's head) and there is no feather touching his genitals. There is nothing else that touches the figure's genitals either. Goliath's helmet is decorated with a feather but it only reaches up to David's knee. Illustrating this wrong description, on the same page even, is a picture of the David statue. Apparently, neither the author nor the editor realized the discrepancy. I'm sorry, but if he got something so fundamental wrong, what am I supposed to believe of his other examples and arguments? Call me pedantic, but this isn't a novel it's supposed to be non-fiction and while interpretation is a matter of perspective, the work of art itself is unchangeable. If he got it wrong with a world-famous statue, what about less well-known works? Art history is a science, and judging by this Cooper's work isn't sound science.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-08-17 00:00:00 Deborah Capanna A great resource for people looking into LGBT+ art history. Pros of reading this book; you'll find out a large number of artist names. Cons; the book jumps between artists so can feel quite 'messy' and repetitive at times. As mentioned in a previous review, the description of page 4 is wrong. The writer seems to be stretching too much to confirm his opinion. All in all a great book, but it did get painful to read towards the end just because the writing style was kind of dull. I'm glad I read it though as it drew my attention to a lot of artists I hadn't heard of.