Deborah Solomon

Deborah Solomon (born August 9, 1957, New York City) is an American art critic, journalist and biographer. She wrote primarily for The New York Times and authored a weekly column called "Questions For" which ran in The New York Times Magazine from 2003 to 2011. She is currently the art critic for WNYC Public Radio, the New York City affiliate of NPR.

Early life and education

Solomon was born in New York City and grew up in New Rochelle, New York. Her parents, Jerry and Sally Solomon, owned an art gallery. She was educated at Cornell University, where she majored in art history and served as the associate editor of The Cornell Daily Sun. She earned a bachelor of arts degree in 1979. The following year, she received a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Solomon was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2001 in the category of biography.

Professional work

Solomon began her career writing about art for various publications, including The New Criterion. For most of the 1990s, she served as the chief art critic of The Wall Street Journal. She has written extensively about American painting, and is the author of several biographies of American artists, including Jackson Pollock and Joseph Cornell and Norman Rockwell.

On January 5, 2003, Solomon made her debut as the New York Times Magazine's "Questions For" columnist in which she posed a brief series of questions to notable people. On September 30, 2010 New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz answered a question posed to him by Solomon in his "Ask An Art Critic" column. He began his reply by proclaiming "OMG! Deborah Solomon! One of my writing heroes, a friend who’s brilliantly transforming the interview format into a form of criticism!"

On February 4, 2011 Solomon was dismissed from the New York Times Magazine and her "Questions For" column cancelled.

Political Perspective

In 2010, Solomon was ranked by the Daily Beast as one of "The Left's Top 25 Journalists."

Controversy

92nd Street Y incident

On November 29, 2010, at the 92nd Street Y in New York, Solomon was scheduled to interview actor Steve Martin regarding his new novel, An Object of Beauty, which is set in the art world. However, midway through the conversation, a Y representative handed Ms. Solomon a note asking her to talk more about Mr. Martin’s movie career and, implicitly, less about the art world. The next day, the Y issued an apology to audiences, along with an offer to refund the $50 ticket price in the form of gift certificates to future Y events to the 900 people who had attended. prompting much controversy. Solomon told The New York Times, "Frankly, you would think that an audience in New York, at the 92nd Street Y, would be interested in hearing about art and artists. I had no idea that the Y programmers wanted me to talk to Steve instead on what it's like to host the Oscars. I think the Y, which is supposedly a champion of the arts, has behaved very crassly and is reinforcing the most philistine aspects of a culture that values celebrity and award shows over art." In an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Martin praised Solomon as an "art scholar" and said he would have rather "died onstage with art talk" than with the movie trivia questions the Y had chosen for him.

"Questions For"

According to The New York Observer Solomon's weekly “Questions For” column "has been a slow-burning controversy since Ms. Solomon’s debut in 2003. Ms. Solomon’s editing practices (despite the weekly disclaimer) led some of her subjects–including Tim Russert, Ira Glass, and Amy Dickinson–to cry foul. But then some weeks’ interviews–Das Racist comes to mind–seemed to redeem the whole practice."

Norman Rockwell

In 2013 Solomon's book "American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell" was published. While generally complimentary about his artistic abilities, the book attempts to delve deeply into the personal life of the painter. Solomon's book has been largely overshadowed by what many consider to be her outlandish and unfounded assertions regarding her perception of Rockwell's sexuality. “Was Rockwell homosexual?” Solomon asks. His first two marriages strike her as “less genuine unions than a strategy for ‘passing’ and controlling his homoerotic desires.” Even though she finds “nothing to suggest that he ever had sex with men,” she nonetheless believes that his expression of those imaginary desires still existed but were somehow “confined to his art.” She envisions a "pattern of pedophilia" in Rockwell's images and in his recruitment of young models" yet fails to provide any evidence to support her suspicions.

Solomon's salacious conjectures were repeated by other publications, however, they were strongly challenged by others. On May 14, 2014 The New Criterion published a review entitled "Painting a false portrait" and further stated "Deborah Solomon's new book on Norman Rockwell grossly misrepresents the artist and gives us an opportunity to consider the contemporary state of biography."

Other reviews stated (Solomon's) "contempt for the illustrator, her campaign to mirror "the scathing condescension directed at Rockwell during his lifetime," is extraordinary. She is seemingly obsessed with the "complicated question" of whether Rockwell was homosexual, and embittered by her inability to catch him in the act." When asked if she thought Rockwell was gay, Solomon responded, "I'm a biographer, I am not a psychiatrist. I would never presume to say that someone is gay. But I do feel entitled as an art critic and an art historian to analyze works of art. And I do think a case can be made that some of Rockwell's paintings display homoerotic tendencies." The Oregonian went on to say that her response falls somewhere between disingenuous and intellectually dishonest."

Another reviewer wrote "Solomon has presented a dishonest picture of Rockwell's life--one that paints him as a pedophile who was so self-absorbed and withdrawn from his own family that he drove his first two wives (and one of his boy models) to suicide--and some critics are pointing out with clarity exactly where and how she goes wrong."

Rockwell's own family members and people who actually knew him reject Solomon's portrait of the artist. Garrison Keillor said, “[Solomon] does seem awfully eager to find homoeroticism — poor Rockwell cannot go on a fishing trip without his biographer finding sexual overtones.”

Thomas Rockwell, the artist's son, told The Boston Globe that “The biography is so poor and so inflammatory, we just had to respond.” He said "It’s being presented as the definitive biography and it’s so wrong, we just felt we had to correct the record.” By the time the article was published the Rockwell family reported finding "no fewer than 96 factual errors and omissions, and they ridicule Solomon’s claim that the artist painted mostly men and boys throughout his life." Eighty year old Thomas Rockwell concluded by saying “This is our last word. We are no longer going to participate in the drama Solomon has created,” the artist’s offspring wrote. “This book says a lot more about Deborah Solomon than it does about Norman Rockwell.” However, other members continue to defend the reputation of their most famous relative.

Personal life

Solomon is married to Kent Sepkowitz, an infectious-disease specialist and the Deputy Physician-in-Chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and frequent contributor to various publications She claims to be of Romanian descent.

Bibliography

• Jackson Pollock: A Biography, Simon & Schuster, 1987, ISBN 978-0-8154-1182-6
• Utopia Parkway: The Life and Work of Joseph Cornell, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997, ISBN 0-374-18012-1
• American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013, ISBN 978-0-374-11309-4

External links

• Interviews by Deborah Solomon for the New York Times
• Article on Deborah Solomon in Good Magazine, February 14, 2007
• Arthur Danto's review of Solomon's Utopia Parkway, Slate, March 26, 1997
• Interview with Deborah Solomon in the New York Times Book Review, June 13, 2010
• Deborah Solomon talking about art criticism on WNYC radio
• Deborah Solomon page at Farrar, Straus & Giroux
• John Wilmerding's review of Solomon's "American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell," New York Times, October 31, 2013
• In-depth interview with Deborah Solomon in Guernica Magazine, January 15, 2014.
• Deborah Solomon's television appearance on "The Colbert Report," on January 14, 2014