Bloomberg.com recently covered Katharine Kuh’s memoir, MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MODERN ART, saying, “The amazing range of Kuh’s acquaintances can be partly attributed to her crisp intelligence and sympathetic insight, which are evident on every page.” Read the entire article, as well as numerous other reviews here (or on the Bloomberg site).

ARTnews calls Katharine Kuh’s MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MODERN ART “exhuberant” and “a vivid tale of engagement with many of the artists and events that shaped modern art.” The reviewer concludes by saying:

Through it all, Kuh focuses a sharp, critical eye on the art, the artists, and the small, extraordinary world in which they all struggled and triumphed. It is invigorating to be by her side, discovering anew the revolutionary paintings stacked up in corners, piled under beds, or spread out on the floors of studios–works that today we can only view on the walls of museums. Kuh wrote this last book because she felt she had stories to tell and insights to offer that no one else could. She was right, and the story of modern art is richer for it.

Katharine Kuh’s MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MODERN ART recently added two lovely reviews to its collection.

Art in America writes:

…the book offers real contributions to one’s picture of a fascinating period in the art world. It is full of wonderful vignettes, such as the tale of Kuh and Franz Kline climbing through a trap door in Kline’s studio and over the rooftops to drop in on de Kooning’s studio nearby; or of Thomas Mann and his wife tut-tutting their way disapprovingly through a Klee show at the Katharine Kuh Gallery in the ’30s; or of Edith Farnsworth as an unhappy victim of her famous house, unable to afford curtains or proper Miesian furniture; or of Mark Tobey making his precise work amid the utter disarray of his house in Basel, and habitually carrying his favorite paintings around with him in a suitcase on his travels abroad. Such flashes of insight, both biographical and critical, make it a great pleasure to have Katharine Kuh’s forthright, intelligent and surprisingly timely voice back with us.

Sculpture Magazine praises:

Katharine Kuh’s A [sic] Love Affair with Modern Art, skillfully edited by Avis Berman after the author’s death in 1994, is a wonderful, thoughtful collection of personal essays about her life in art and the art of her contemporaries. Sculptors as important as Brancusi and Noguchi are discussed and remembered. In Kuh’s altogether biographical essays, she not only analyzes their work, but also, at the same time and in the same breath, explains the often intricate nature of her friendships and working relationships with them. She tells terrific anecdotes about her travels and studio visits during the course of a long and notable career that took her from dealer to curator, to art critic for the Saturday Review, and then to independent advisor. Kuh’s is a serious examination of artists’ lives and works that also discusses the people who surround artists, who not only inhabit their world, but also help to define and determine their individual values and practices. Kuh’s ideas and efforts are well worth exploring as something of a role model especially in as disjunctive an age such as ours. The simplicity of her language and the clarity with which she interprets and presents her subjects could serve us well as we continues to build libraries of historic and critical materials about our contemporaries.

The Chicago Tribune loved MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MODERN ART so much they decided to devote almost a full page of the Sunday Books section to the fascinating life of Katharine Kuh.

The reviewer calls the book “eye-opening and engaging,” praising Kuh’s “uncanny ability to concisely portray artists in all their emotional contrariness and creative fervor in finely crafted essays that are at once delectably anecdotal and keenly analytical.”

If you haven’t bought a copy for your favorite art lover yet, perhaps these closing remarks will persuade you:

“In sum, Kuh’s witty and reflective reminiscences preserve invaluable chapters in the complex and resonant story of modern art. And how ennobling it is to spend time with a woman of resilience and vision, a writer of clarity and ardor, and an avid and knowledgeable art advocate dedicated to making art an integral part of our lives.”

Critic’s are still loving MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MODERN ART. This weekend, The Economist, The Boston Globe and Newsday all praised Kuh’s memoir.

Newsday calls Kuh’s collection of essays “a thoughtful guide to the groundbreaking art she nurtured,” allowing 21st century readers “to profit from her intimate understanding of the 20th century art and artists she supported so ardently and observed so intelligently.”

The Economist finds Kuh’s tales of her friendships with artists moving, but says that her description of Mark Rothko’s troubled genius is particularly poignant:

According to Kuh, Rothko claimed an artistic kinship with Rembrandt, believing that they both sought what he called “a maximum of poignancy”. On the surface it is difficult to imagine two more different painters, but both poured their lives into their art and had the rare ability to connect to the human spirit. Katharine Kuh believed this was the key to great art. Luckily, she devoted her life to sharing it with others.

The Globe says the work is “a mesmerizing portrait of the genius behind the geniuses” and “exhilarating,” saying “this book does what Kuh always wanted art to do — it opens your eyes.”

You can read the entire reviews here.