Product Description

Nothing Is More Sacred or central to the iconography of Manhattan than its bridges. For countless artists, writers and poets, these enduring structures have provided not only a link from the city to the outside world, but a means by which the great metropolis was introduced. Bridges reflect the spirit of their age; and the bridges of Manhattan are consistent with the city's pride in itself and its confidence in the future (why else build an edifice like the Brooklyn Bridge?).

This lovely book, containing fourteen full-color paintings by Bascove and a bounty of pertinent prose and poetry, is a celebration of the city's bridges, their architects and designers, their builders and their advocates. In it, readers will find a dazzling array of prose and poetry, from the classics by Hart Crane and William Carlos Williams, to lesser known, but no less resonant, work by writers as diverse as Gay Talese and Helen Keller, Octavio Paz, and Derek Walcott.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1895753 in Books
• Published on: 1998-03-01
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.40 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 93 pages

The Washington Post Book World, May 17, 1998
"Iron rainbow to the bright water bending: That's how Derek Walcott describes a bridge in his poem of the same name. Walcott's "The Bridge" is one of many literary evocations of bridges in this book honoring the presence, both literal and metaphorical, of New York' famous spans, from the Brooklyn to the Queensboro, from the Hell Gate to the Harlem River bridges. Bascove, an artist whose work can be found in the collections of the Museum of the City of New York and the Musee de Cherbourg - as well as on the jackets of books by Robertson Davies, Jerome Charyn, and T.C. Boyle - brings a passionate geometry to her paintings of the various bridges, evoking the exhilarating, fearsome beauty of these "iron rainbows."

Communication Arts, July 1998
Bascove...is a wonderfully fluid painter whose lines are reminiscent of the elegant yet muscular paintings of the Works Progress Administration muralists. Here, she has combined an interesting array of poetry and prose - ranging in mood and style from John Dos Passos's "Steamroller," and Gay Talese's "Building a Bridge is Like Combat..." to Joyce Carol Oate's mournful and reflective "Last Exit Before the Bridge" and the wonderful Galway Kinnell poem, "The River That is East" - with her spare yet evocative paintings...Stone and Steel is elegantly and clearly a reflection of an artist's style and personal interests and a beautiful addition to any library.

1010 WINS
Stone and Steel, a special part of the history, heart and beauty of New York.