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Tango The Art History of Love By Robert Farris Thompson Col. John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art at Yale University Master of Timothy Dwight College at Yale University.  Release date: September 20, 2005 From the introduction to TANGO “[Thompson’s writing] is incredibly knowledgeable, but more important to me—wildly enthusiastic. It reads as if Jack Kerouac were still alive and somehow morphed into a professor at Yale….Some years after coming across his book [African Art in Motion], I met Bob, dressed at that time to fit the role he plays—Yale professor—Brooks Brothers buttoned-down. It all belies the energetic subversion that are his lectures, which to me are more like performances. If he’s talking in your area, go. Even if you think you have little interest in whatever the subject happens to be, just go.”      —David Byrne, from the introduction to TANGO

From the Publisher

Read review and order your copy on Amazon.com
 

Praise for
TANGO: The Art History of Love
By Robert Farris Thompson

Thompson performs a fascinating dissection of tango, picking apart its history with an enthusiast's passion and a scholar's authority. Pulling references from poetry, painting, and most potently from African dance, he shows us tango as an ecstatic manifestation of life's emotional dynamics and inflames us with his reverence for the form." 
—Mikhail Baryshnikov

“Robert Thompson’s Tango indeed is an aesthetic history of that dance of heterosexual passion. The book has gusto, and its own deep song of eloquent erotic ecstasy and sorrow.  It will inform readers until they 
are wild with all regret.”
—Harold Bloom

"I was startled to find how interesting this subject can be.  
What a fine book."
—Norman Mailer

“In language no doubt inspired by the lyrics of its subject, this serious volume examines and celebrates the cultural history of the famed Argentine dance, conveying its real passion and the author’s passion for it. Thompson, the renowned Yale Africanist and art historian, convincingly evokes the often-obscured African roots of the dance, whose name comes from the Ki-Kongo word for ‘moving in time to a beat’.… Holloywood versions of the dance pale once Thompson beings to mine the riches of tango’s rhythms, lyrics, philosophy and steps…for fans of dance, music and cultural history, this is the real deal.”  
—?Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 
 
 

BIOGRAPHY Robert Farris Thompson is a world-renowned Yale art historian and author of the now-classic Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. He is also the author of, among other works, Black Gods and Kings and African Art in Motion. He has been a Ford Foundation Fellow and has mounted major exhibitions of African art at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. He is Col. John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, where he is also Master of Timothy Dwight College. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

PRESS RELEASE

Contact: Katie Freeman, 212-572-2685, kfreeman@randomhouse.com 

“Tango is timeless, mixing love and action in the motion of its people.”

TANGO
The Art History of Love
 By ROBERT FARRIS THOMPSON

"Thompson performs a fascinating dissection of tango, picking apart its history 
with an enthusiast's passion and a scholar's authority. Pulling references from 
poetry, painting, and most potently from African dance, he shows us tango as an 
ecstatic manifestation of life's emotional dynamics and inflames us with his 
reverence for the form." —Mikhail Baryshnikov

“Robert Thompson’s Tango indeed is an aesthetic history of that dance of heterosexual passion. The book has gusto, and its own deep song of eloquent erotic ecstasy and sorrow.  It will inform readers until they are wild with all regret.”
—Harold Bloom

"I was startled to find how interesting this subject can be.  What a fine book."
—Norman Mailer

“In language no doubt inspired by the lyrics of its subject, this serious volume examines and celebrates the cultural history of the famed Argentine dance, conveying its real passion and the author’s passion for it. Thompson, the renowned Yale Africanist and 
art historian, convincingly evokes the often-obscured African roots of the dance, 
whose name comes from the Ki-Kongo word for ‘moving in time to a beat’.… Holloywood versions of the dance pale once Thompson beings to mine the riches 
of tango’s rhythms, lyrics, philosophy and steps…for fans of dance, music and 
cultural history, this is the real deal.”  —?Publishers Weekly (starred review)
 

Tango: the word conjures up images of dark sensuality, lithe movements, dips and struts and long legs moving confidentially across a dance floor. Tango plays a role in a host of Hollywood movies, in ways both accurate and exaggerated—from Jack Lemmon tangoing in drag in Some Like it Hot, to a blind Al Pacino’s beautiful tango in Scent of a Woman, to Madonna as Eva Peròn in Evita. As Robert Farris Thompson writes in TANGO: THE ART HISTORY OF LOVE (Pantheon Books/September 20, 2005/$28.50), “It was the fabulous dance of the past hundred years.” 

Born in Argentine from a confluence of difference dance concepts, tango quickly became the heart of Argentine culture. A seven-story mural of the world-famous tango singer, Carlos Gardel, overlooks downtown Buenos Aires, a city full of “tangueros, women and men who organize their lives around the music, and milongueros, women and men who organize their lives around the dance. Strong in stance, sure in their motion, they gave the century a set of moves that spanned the whole globe and that are with us forever.”

TANGO is the definitive history and exploration of that dance. In Thompson’s hands, the complicated depths of tango come alive, exposing the emotions of love, loss, anger, valor and humor that define the dance. He deftly explores the dancers—African and Afro-Argentines, Spanish and Italian migrants, Euro-Argentines, and Argentines from every class—who gave birth to the steps, the lyricists who gave words to the motions, and the singers who gave voice to the music. In doing so, he reveals the ways in which tango is a culture and a philosophy, an art and a text, as well as a dance. 

“Danger and violence confronted the world across the whole of the twentieth century. The women and men of the tango kept going, turning outrage into song.” TANGO: THE ART HISTORY OF LOVE illuminates the tango as the defining feature of Argentine culture, which has permeated the world with its explosive strength and its passionate expression. 

TANGO: The Art History of Love
By Robert Farris Thompson 
Pantheon Books
September 20, 2005 / $28.50
ISBN: 0-375-40931-9
www.pantheonbooks.com 
 
 

About the Author

Robert Farris Thompson is a world-renowned Yale art historian and author of the now-classic Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. He is also the author of, among other works, Black Gods and Kings and African Art in Motion. He has been a Ford Foundation Fellow and has mounted major exhibitions of African art at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. He is Col. John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art at Yale University, where he is also Master of Timothy Dwight College. He lives in New Haven.