Word: kirstein
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. LINCOLN KIRSTEIN, 88, author and arts patron; in New York City. If George Balanchine made American dance possible, Kirstein made Balanchine possible, bringing the choreographer to the U.S. in the '30s and co-creating the School of American Ballet and New York City Ballet...
Books: Impresario Lincoln Kirstein's gilded youth...
...first seem peculiar that Kirstein's autobiography, Mosaic (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 270 pages; $25), concludes just prior to his successful approach to Balanchine. But he has written other books (Portrait of Mr. B, Thirty Years: The New York City Ballet) about their long collaboration. This time the author, 87, tries to recapture the influences and experiences that led him to Balanchine in the first place...
...result is both eccentric and oddly endearing. Kirstein portrays himself as a child with "an inborn greed for artificed splendor," mesmerized by patterns and designs. One of the longest episodes in the book recounts his intense quest for just the right emblem to paint on his canoe paddle at summer camp. Citing an occasion when his father gave him a $20 bill, Kirstein remembers "the papery cash, its tough fibrous thinness inlaid with bits of red and green silk." The dreamy young man did not take much interest in academics, but he passed Harvard's entrance exam anyway. Once enrolled...
...Kirstein never lacked for accomplished or famous people in his near vicinity; Mosaic records the steady patter of dropping names, starting with his father's lawyer (Louis D. Brandeis) and running through most of Bloomsbury ("Maynard Keynes guided me to a show of Cezanne's water-colors at the Leicester Galleries") and a Who's Who of 20th century artists, writers and performers. This recitation seems forgivable. Kirstein recognizes that some of these big names were "glad enough to suffer rich idiots like myself," but he genuinely knew, learned from and helped many of the others. His own youthful dreams...