"For more than sixty years, since 1962, Tad has written incandescent profiles of the most significant figures in the art world: Marcel Duchamp, Georgia O'Keeffe, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Damien Hirst, Richard Serra, Jasper Johns, Cindy Sherman, Mark Bradford. In lucid and elegant prose, he has compiled in the course of his long career a profile compendium as rich in its way as Giorgio Vasari's "Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.""
"I mention it to bring your attention to the moving and hilarious diary he has kept all year. In it, Tad provides an unvarnished account of what it is to grow old, to confront mortality, to take pleasure both in memory and in everyday pleasures, particularly art and the love of his wife, Dodie Kazanjian. "Old age is no joke, but it can feel like one," Tad writes, noting that a life can be divided into three stages: "Youth, Maturity, and You Look Great.""
Calvin Tomkins was born on December 17, 1925, and reaches his hundredth birthday alongside The New Yorker. His diary, Becoming a Centenarian, records aging, confronting mortality, and savoring memory, art, and the love of his wife, Dodie Kazanjian. Since 1962, Tomkins has written incandescent profiles of major art figures—including Duchamp, O'Keeffe, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Hirst, Serra, Johns, Sherman, and Bradford—producing a compendium likened to Giorgio Vasari's Lives. He has also captured mastery in other realms, from Julia Child's kitchen to tennis with McEnroe and Federer. The centennial diary appears in the annual Cartoons & Puzzles Issue, overseen by Emma Allen and Liz Maynes-Aminzade. Readers can explore his collected profiles via the improved website search.
Read at The New Yorker
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