Dialogues: Conversations With European Artists at Mid-Century

by Edouard Roditi

The American poet, critic & biographer Edouard Roditi, born in 1910, has spent most of his life in Europe, where he works as an art critic for French, English & American periodicals. He has written & published extensively in French & German in addition to English. This volume includes Roditi's interviews with the artists Victor Brauner, Carlo Carra, Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Barbara Hepworth, Josef Herman, Hannah Hoch, Oskar Kokoschka, Marino Marini, Joan Miro, Henry Moore, Giorgio Morandi, Gabriele Munter, Ettore Sottsass, Pavel Tchelitchev, & Ossip Zadkine. Includes black-&-white illustrations of the artists' work.

156 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1991

About the author

Poet, essayist, and translator Edouard Roditi was born (1910) in Paris to American parents. He studied at Oxford University and earned his BA from the University of Chicago. An art critic for the French journal L’Arche for roughly 30 years, Roditi was closely associated with the Surrealist movement, and he was the first to translate the writings of the French surrealist Andre Breton into English. He lived most of his life in Paris, though he spent time in the United States and worked as a translator at the Nuremberg war crimes trials. He died in Spain in 1992.

Reviews

[Charlie Hix · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are interviews with 16 artist- some of whom are very familiar like Marc Chagall, Joan Miro and Henry Moore- others less well known. The author didn't record these interviews though he does take notes, and then transcribes them post meeting- sometimes quite some time after the meeting, without the subjects final approval.

The books title - Dialogues- signifies the authors high opinion of his own thoughts- that he shares with his subjects and then asks his subjects to either validate or disapprove. This is not a criticism- since the author is quite intelligent- the New York Times review on the back of the book puts it nicely: "Roditi has brought out the broadest insights into issues of contemporary culture. Taken together the interviews point indisputably to the conclusion that the quality of the artist testimony is determined by the intellectual caliber of the interviewer."

There is only one black and white picture of each artist work- though it's easy enough to see more images via the internet.

I found the interviews incredibly fascinating. There is a lot of opinionating about other artist and the paths they chose.

The Miro interview was pretty funny since he wasn't a willing participant- and at one point he declares that he does not wish his interview to be in a collection that also has an interview with Dali.