Stan and Gus - by Henry Wiencek

Book Synopsis

The celebrated architect Stanford White was a louche man-about-town and a canny cultural entrepreneur, the creator of landmarks that raised the stature of the American built environment. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, a sculptor and the son of an immigrant shoemaker, was a moody introvert and a committed procrastinator whose painstaking work brought emotional depth to American statuary. Over years of acquaintance, their relationship evolved into a partnership that defined the art of the Gilded Age.

In Stan and Gus, the acclaimed historian Henry Wiencek tells the story of a fruitful, complicated relationship. After pursuing their own careers in Italy and France, the two men met again back home, where they forged era-defining monuments, including White's Washington Square Arch and Park Avenue Armory in Manhattan and Saint-Gaudens's memorials to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw and Clover Adams in Boston and Washington, D.C., respectively. Over the course of decades, White helped sustain his friend's troubled spirits and protected Saint-Gaudens from impatient clients when he failed to complete projects on time. Meanwhile, Saint-Gaudens challenged White to take his artistic gifts seriously. But alongside the brilliant commissions were sordid debaucheries--and White's sensational murder in 1906.

Throughout, Wiencek sets White and Saint-Gaudens within the larger story of the era known as the American Renaissance, when a new upper class sought to fortify its ascendancy, and its aspirations and delusions of grandeur collided with new aesthetic ideas and two ambitious young men to yield work of lasting beauty.

Review Quotes

"In Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, a beautiful room can be a dangerous place . . . This paradox would have felt immediately real to Wharton's first readers in Gilded Age New York. Colonnades may have lost some currency, but the dichotomy still stands--and it's the kind that Henry Wiencek captures brilliantly in Stan and Gus . . . a bracing and masterful tag-team glimpse of two giants who helped make the turn of the century look so confident." --Walker Mimms, The New York Times

"In the historian Henry Wiencek's zesty new book Stan and Gus: Art, Ardor, and the Friendship That Built the Gilded Age, the robber barons may have had taste, but it was not their own. It was sourced to a cluster of aesthetes of the period, of whom the architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens . . . were two of the most prominent . . . Erudite . . . Readers might want at least a hundred more [pages]." --John Sedgwick, Financial Times

"Wiencek details a fascinating portrait of the exclusive world of the architectural and art society in New York at the time, drunk on their ambitions to remake New York as the most cosmopolitan, shiny city in the world. Even among the rich, the social structure of traditions of 'keeping up appearances' allowed men to have affairs and live separate lives outside of their marriages, and it was even expected among the moneyed 'guiled age' class. Yep, we've heard It all before as it repeats itself 150 years later in ever grotesque climaxes." --Lewis Whittington, Culture Vulture

"An intimate account of the professional and personal relationship between architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens . . . [Stan and Gus] offers a colorful, captivating window into a fascinating historical era." --Publishers Weekly

"Wiencek dexterously chronicles the fruitful thirty-year friendship of architect Stanford White and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, who designed grand buildings and public art and ignored sexual taboos, leading to lurid tragedy . . . [Wiencek] effectively contextualizes their work and depicts Saint-Gaudens in particularly memorable detail . . . A brisk, absorbing portrait of troubled artistic allies whose work embodied an era." --Kirkus Reviews

"The intertwined biographies of two Gilded Age artists reveal a complex relationship in electrifying, turbulent times . . . Highlighting his subjects' larger-than-life personalities, the imbalances of their relationship, and the glittery, careening mess of their era, Wiencek ultimately celebrates the artistic impact Stan and Gus' relationship would have upon New York City." --Booklist

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