Reviews (2)

Great intro to Guston
Given most art criticism, which focuses on theory with polysyllabic intensity, this book is a perfect, easy to read intro to the artist and one that makes his work more accessible. Don't fear to immerse yourself in this fine, brief bio and its color pics!

Very good history
Philip Guston's long career had three distinctive phases. As a young man, he took up painting with the WPA artist program and made left-leaning, social-realist murals and canvases in many places around the country. By the late 1940's, he had moved on to abstraction, producing shimmering, painterly works that were somewhere between the dynamism of Jackson Pollock and the stillness of Mark Rothko. In the last ten years of his life, influenced by the restlessness of the 60's, he painted Robert Crumb-like cartoonish images that hinted at even darker comic nightmares than Crumb ever imagined (and, more occasionally, the uplifting power of love and idealism). This last phase may have been the best of all. Storr's great book is an excellent exegesis of all three of these hard-to-follow transitions, by an artist that simply did not make analysis easy. The mostly full-color illustrations complement the text almost perfectly. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Beyond the well-known, sometimes lurid, events of renowned painter Vincent van Gogh's short life lies a much more mild daily existence of meals with friends and neighbors. Van Gogh's Table presents a gentle and kinder look at the visionary's world. Authors Alexandra Leaf, a culinary historian, and Fred Leeman, the former chief curator of the Van Gogh Museum, offer a tale of the artist's life through the lens of his last home, the Auberge Ravoux. Van Gogh was a constant traveler who frequently boarded at small hotels and dined in cafés. During his few months at this inn, van Gogh produced numerous magical works. As a tribute to the incredible painter, and the café life that inspired him, Leaf and Leeman have brought together stories and images of the artist's life and work with menus from his days at the Auberge Ravoux. Try recipes like Warm Tarte Tatin with Crème Fraiche or Dark Chocolate Soufflé Cake with Crème Anglaise to experience the sweeter side of van Gogh's world. If you're a fan of the great painter or a lover of French cooking, then this book is a must-have. --J.P. Cohen ... Read more

Reviews (4)

It's wonderful
It's entertaining and educational. I really enjoyed. Great gift idea.

Van Gogh's Table
I have enjoyed reading the historical and personalized view of Van Gogh's stay at the Auberge Ravoux. The recipes appear to be ones that can be enjoyed. My husband surprised me with the chocolate mousse the other night and it was the best I have ever eaten.
Compliments to Alexandra Leaf!

A survey of recipes from Van Gogh's last home
Van Gogh's Table At The Auberge Ravoux isn't just an art book, though Van Gogh's paintings form its foundation - it's also a survey of recipes from his last home, providing an intimate portrait of his world and culinary appreciations. Recipes are from the cafe and boarding house where the painter lived his final days, and provide intriguing views of dishes and art.

A great Xmas gift!
This book has a unique combination of art and cooking. It is highly readable. It has lots of interesting facts about van Gogh in his last weeks, and about his relationship with food and drink. It has beautiful reproductions of paintings by van Gogh, but it also has many recipies that can be tried out. A great Xmas gift and a value for money! I really enjoyed it. ... Read more

Book Description

Now in Paperback~Jenny Holzer gained widespread recognition when texts from her Truisms series appeared on a vast electronic advertising board overlooking Times Square. Throughout her career, Holzer has intrigued audiences by placing her provocative messages in unexpected contexts, including posters, metal plaques, stone benches, electronic signs, television spots and Web sites. Her canny melding of the mediums of mass culture with an unadorned, emphatic language is perfectly attuned to an age of advertising slogans, headlines and sound bites. Yet despite the very public nature of much of her work, Holzer has also created more intimate pieces for display in galleries and museums. Her stunning installation at the 1990 Venice Biennale was awarded first prize and brought the artist international acclaim, proving that Holzer's art is equally compelling wherever it is shown--in a setting calculated to reach the masses or in the most rarefied art spaces. This book features a complete collection of the artist's writings, up to and including her 1996 text for a monument in Erlauf, Austria, accompanied by color photography of the entire range of her installations and projects. In an insightful essay and a lively interview with the artist, Diane Waldman traces the history of Holzer's series of writings and the varied environments in which they have appeared. The volume is rounded off with a chronology, exhibition history and bibliography. Essays by Diane Waldman and Jenny Holzer. Paperback, 9.5 x 11 in./144 pgs / 64 color 17 BW0 duotone 0 ~ Item D20391 ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Jenny Holzer- Protect me from what I can't see
Have you ever stopped to think how many times we are bombarded by truisms everyday? Get this book and you will get a clue. In the Truisms series over exposure to banality reveals how numbed out we all are. Take a cliche like "Children are the hope to the future" and place beside "Children are the most cruel of all". We say and repeat these truisms but do we really realize that they are empty in themselves ? Do we perceive the contradictions ? How we mold reality to suit our needs ? Truisms sooth us with the cushioned feeling of the "generally accepted truth". Jenny Holzer literally splashes intimate thoughts, truisms, activist slogans over the landscape. These truths, half-truths and huge lies stare out at us in billboards, park benches like a conscience made physical. This is art made on the very border of reality and language.

Fantastic coverage of a fantastic artist.
The book listed on this page, a monograph on Jenny Holzer by Phaidon Press, is fabulous. It contains information on Holzer's wide and influential art career, from her Truisms posters of the 'seventies to her electronic LED signs, carved stone benches, and virtual art pieces of the 'nineties.

This book is also unique, within the Holzer bibliography, because of the "Artist's Choice" section where Holzer provides excerpts from books and writings that have influenced her, along with explanations of why she's moved by them.

If you're interested in modern art, or women artists, this is a must-read ... Read more

Reviews (1)

The Violent van Gogh
I found this book very appealing.It touched on both his art and his emotional side. This might of been the happiest time of his life and it was all to breif.I tottaly recomend this book if you enjoy Vincent's works. ... Read more

Book Description

Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) is one of the most important figures of post-war American art, for both his own abstract paintings and his influence as the legendary teacher of generations of artists in Germany, New York, and Provincetown. ... Read more

Book Description

Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788) was one of the masters of 18th-century art. This stunning book, published to accompany a major international exhibition, covering the artist's entire career, reveals the sheer range, quality, and originality of Gainsborough's work, from his engagingly naturalistic landscapes and touching images of children to his sophisticated and glamorous society portraits.

In their revealing essay, Michael Rosenthal and Martin Myrone explore Gainsborough's dynamic involvement with the social world of his day, while other essays explore his subtle approach to the lucrative world of fashionable portraiture and the often pointed social commentary behind his seductive landscapes. This volume provides new and refreshing insights into Gainsborough as an artist who succeeded in creating an experimental and modern art for his own time, and whose works remain vital and rewarding today. ... Read more

Book Description

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres dominated French painting for much of the nineteenth century, from his emergence as the leading student of Jacques-Louis David and winner in 1801 of the prestigious Rome Prize, to his death in 1867. A champion of classicism and a devotee of Raphael and Poussin, Ingres's conviction that color should serve elegant line breathed new life into a century-old artistic debate. It was in drawing that Ingres established his legacy; he is considered to be one of the greatest draftsmen of all time. He was a staunch advocate of history painting, yet his genius is most evident in his sensitive portraits and luscious nudes. His intentional drawing "faults"-the ambiguous relationship of a mirrored reflection to a sitter, the inscrutable hinge of a shoulder to an arm, or an unlikely ruffle of fingers and cocked wrist-link Ingres's painting to some of the most audaciously expressive innovations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, inc!luding those of Degas, Cézanne, Matisse, and Picasso.

In this comprehensive, lavishly illustrated volume Georges Vigne examines Ingres's artistic life and brings together a staggering number of drawings, studies, and compositions. Guided by careful scrutiny of drawings and documents, Vigne reappraises deep-rooted assumptions and offers a wealth of candid insights on issues such as Ingres's faithful studio assistants, his official commissions that could weave in and out of political regimes, the legendary rivalries with Delacroix and the Romantics, and the curious motivation behind Ingres's seemingly endless line of copies and revisions of his earlier compositions.

Finally, as an indispensable resource to scholars, this volume reproduces, with Vigne's methodical transcriptions and annotations, the valuable pages of the notebooks in which Ingres listed and referred to his paintings.

This authoritative volume on Ingres is also the most complete monograph on any artist of his generation and a valuable chronicle of the man behind the last great studio in the classical tradition. ... Read more

Book Description

A new and profusely illustrated appraisal of this leading Spanish painter and graphic artist.

"As a draftsman and painter, Goya favors the human passions, whether uninhibited or suppressed, repressed or repressing." Thus does Werner Hofmann describe the essence of the vast oeuvre left behind by Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), pointing to the source of its vital energy, alarming immediacy, and striking modernity.

Discussions of Goya in recent decades have centered on his influence on nineteenth- and twentieth-century painters. Hofmann redresses the balance, focusing instead on the Spanish artist's profoundly disturbing imagery, and demonstrating that Goya's modernity derives from his lifelong investigation of what lies behind the world of appearances and convention.

Hofmann places Goya's paintings, drawings, and prints in a biographical context, revealing the specific character of each phase of the artist's life and work. He discusses "the glory and the pain of faith" evinced by Goya's early work, the artist's parabolic representation of the threat posed by the French Revolution, his dramatic documentation of the French occupation of Spain, his variations on cruelty in the Disasters of War etchings, and the religious faith apparent in his late work. Hofmann also relates the artist and his work to contemporary intellectual developments, drawing comparisons with writers, critics, and philosophers from Goethe to William Blake to the Marquis de Sade. 220 illustrations, 185 in color. ... Read more

Reviews (9)

A fire starter
These letters speak the truth of van Gogh. This book opens a window of knowledge on a man so misunderstood to the world. At 14, I absolutely am in love with this book. "Dear Theo" has ignited a fire in my soul, a burning desire to study art and the men behind the works.

Interesting and revealing
Vincent Van Gogh was a great painter, but not a writer. So these letters are of interest in terms of history and painting. The life of Van Gogh is better exposed here than it would have been in a "real" autobiography, because Theo, his younger brother, was the only real friend Vincent ever had. He was his supporter, admirer and listener, and in fact Vincent had an emotional dependence on his brother. People interested in the process of artistic creation and creativity will find this book of enormous value and interest, since Van Gogh speaks a lot about that process in himself, one of the greatest painters of all time. But it is true, as one reviewer said, that these letters include, each and every one, eternal whining and begging from Vincent to his brother. He was, of course, always out of money and, as a genius really disconnected from the common world, unable to make a living by conventional activities. So he depended almost entirely on Theo. I would like to insist in that, although by no means a literary accomplishment, these letters are worth reading, since they expose naked the soul of a great artist and an extremely sensitive man, certainly a tortured and twisted soul.

here's your unadulterated chance to see just how screwed...
here's your unadulterated chance to see just how screwed up van gogh was. letter after letter after letter sitting on the pity pot writing to his younger brother whining for money, crying for assistance, guilting his brother into supporting his art...his art habit...his art addiction. ya know, after reading this book my perspective on van gogh changed. he struck me as an ultra-martyr (in the icky sense of the word), so big into self-pity. now, having since read a little more of his history - screwy parents, etc. - i have some more compassion for the guy and for why he was so screwed up, but these letters are honestly nothing short of tedious. one after the other, whining for money, then waxing eloquent about his art, which actually struck me often as quite manipulative - like he was justifying his existence and his productivity to theo.

anyway, i still think van gogh is a wonderful artist, but what a messed up life - can't miss that from these letters. but god, i wish they'd been even more edited. and one other thing - irving stone (the editor) thinks van gogh is one of the world's greatest writers and philosophers of all times, in addition to being the honcho primo artist. well, as for philosopher, sorry irving, no. the guy was miserable and depressed and lonely, and seemed to philosophize in his letters to just keep contact with the world, but his philosophy gets under my skin.

Enlightening, tragic and inspiring.
The book provides an excellent cross-section of letters painting a vivid picture of Van Gogh's life. It is not an all-in-one biography, though, in that Van Gogh makes references to work that only curators and art historians can picture. It would have been nice to have a black and white thumbnail of the finished paintings as Van Gogh wrote of them.

Essential reading for lovers of art...
"Dear Theo" should be mandatory reading for all students of fine art today, as no modern artist injected a level of passion into their work equal to that of Van Gogh in 1880 through 1890. This volume is a sort of highlight reel of Vincent's comments on his life and art to his beloved brother Theo. I recommend "The Complete Van Gogh" published by Taschen to accompany "Dear Theo", as there are no visual examples of Vincent's art aside from the cover included in this book. No one who appreciates fine art will be sorry to invest in either publication. ... Read more

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Reviews (1)

Classical portraiture at its best
If you have the slightest interest in portraiture and/or classical art, this inexpensive book , along with others in the Dover art Library series, is a must for your collection. Ingres is arguably one of the greatest portraitist ever and the reproductions in this book are a testament to that. Unlike the works of many of his contemporaries , "Romanticists", Ingres was a Classicist in the strictest sense of the word, as evident in these drawings and especially in his paintings. Although i am more an admirer of the style of such painters as Sargent, whose looser approach is the anthisesis of Ingres' careful, detailed, deliberate, yet graceful style, i still enjoyed studying these masterpieces in this book of drawings. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

What Hollywood glamour was all about
Perusing this coffee-table volume is as close as most of us will get to flipping through a stack of George Hurrell's own prints. There is virtually no text, just a brief chronology of the photographer's life and career. But before reaching that, you will see examples from 62 years of his work represented in 140 12-1/4 by 9-5/8-inch duotone plates, many of them shots that created the world's image of Hollywood in the 30's and 40's. The book proceeds chronologically, so that toward the end are post-WWII shots revealing that not even Hurrell could evoke glamour without the right subjects and environment. And the last plate in the book is a Dutch angle of the master himself, still shooting but obviously nearer the end than the beginning. Technically, the book is well printed, with the duotone process enhancing the large dark areas Hurrell loved to create. For my taste, he tended to print his darks too dark and lacking in detail, although his compositions usually supported these big "velvety" areas. However, achieving that look with ink often leads printers to darken the lighter end of the grey scale, too. And in this book, some plates ended up looking a bit muddy. But this is probably a minor quibble for true seekers after Hollywood's lost glamour. ... Read more

Amazon.com

This paperback edition of the award-winning study of the life and work of Goya is filled with the same fine reproductions as the original 1994 hardcover. Goya was one of Spain's greatest and most controversial painters, famous for incisive portraits and the "black" paintings of his later years. Scholars have often attributed Goya's progression from producing light-hearted court paintings to creating somber images of the Napoleonic wars to the artist's serious illness of 1792, which left him deaf. Writer Janis Tomlinson's aim here is to show a continuity in his work before and after the illness. She sees in Goya's vast output--at least 1,800 works--a vital drive to explore and exploit his personal creativity, which was strengthened by the deafness that cut him off from all but visual communication with the world. With detail supported by formidable research, Tomlinson presents Goya's life chronologically, analyzing his work from icons like the Naked Maya to his Los Caprichos series of etchings with their biting social satire and supernatural imaginings of a world turned upside down. The demonic intensity of Saturn Devouring His Son and Witches Sabbath, painted on the walls of his "Country House of a Deaf Man" at the end of his life, suggest to some the work of an embittered madman. Rather, these disturbing paintings reflect Goya's profound empathy for the victims of a predatory and unjust society--empathy that a modern audience readily shares. --John Stevenson ... Read more

Reviews (3)

A thought provoking book... but come to your own conclusions
This was my introduction to Goya.The great thing about this book (and about all the books in Phaidon's Art & Ideas Series) is that it does an excellent job of putting the artist in historical context.I think this is really important, because Goya (like David in France) really is inseparable from his time, and we simply can't understand his images if we don't have any idea about what was going on in Spain and the rest of Europe at the time."The Disasters of War", for example, means so much more to me now that I understand what happened when Napoleon invaded Spain.I was also glad to see that pictures by some of Goya's contemporaries are included, pictures that would otherwise be pretty hard to find.

Some of the author's interpretations, though, annoyed me.Intellegent readers shouldn't have any problems drawing their own conclusions, but I'm a little more concerned about readers who aren't very good about questioning authors.For example, when talking about "The Second of May 1808" and "The Third of May 1808", Symmons says that the figure stabbing the horse in the first painting is the same man lying dead in the heap of bodies in the second one -- and then she says that repetition of figures like this is a major theme in Goya's works.It is, but apart from the fact that both of these men are wearing green coats, there's no way of saying they are the same man.Maybe Goya said they were, but if he did, the author hasn't pointed that out.Seems minor, but it isn't.Another quirk is the author's search for Goya's sources.I understand that artists borrow motifs from each other every now and then, but when Symmons tries to tie in a couple of Goya's images with political prints by James Gilray, for example, simply because some of Goya's poses (which really aren't that unusual) vaguely resemble some of Gilray's, I think she's going out on an awfully big limb.Maybe Goya did take them from Gilray, but he could have taken them from a thousand other places just as easily, and without more substantial proof of Goya's sources, I just don't see what the author is trying to accomplish.This is a very useful book, but leave room for forming your own opinion about Goya.

An eyewitness tour of Francisco Goya's artistic dualities
I was not sure how well the Eyewitness format would serve in a volume focusing on a single artist, such as Goya, as compared to looking at an art movement like Impressionism or an art form like Watercolors, but Patricia Wright makes this tour on the artist and his work quite enjoyable.The book ends up being structured by Goya's life, with key chapters focusing on the development and perfection of his artistic technique. For me, those are the most interesting chapters as I indulge in my little foray into art appreciation.

Goya is a complex figure because his art is defined by a series of key dualities: public and private, light and dark, beautiful and grotesque.Wright attempts to relate the changes in his art to Goya's life and the times in which he lived, and several connections seem fairly obvious.But it is still the changing course of his art, from religious art and tapestry cartoons, to fashionable portraits and royal commissions, to the "Black Paintings" of his later years that proves so captivating as Wright brings together biography and artistic analysis.This book works better for those who have some degree of familiarity with Goya's rather works, rather than serving as an introduction to the artist.

Yes, the art reproduced in this book is but a fraction of this artistic output, but the guiding rule here is to select works that represent a key development in technique or which show how Goya handled a particular subject.So we examine "The Parasol" for how it undermined the conventional traditions, the freedom he explored in his great fresco at the church of San Antonio de la Florida, and his fascinating "Self-Portrait with Dr. Arrieta."I prefer the more in-depth analysis of specific paintings more than I do the quicker looks at a half-dozen paintings from a particular period.Although the book is heavily illustrated with Goya's artwork, there are also examples of the tools with which he painted and the world in which he lived.

A very nice monograph on Goya.
Janis Tomlinson, the writer of this book, seems primarily concerned in showing that there is a continuity in Goya's work, that it did not suddenly change from light-hearted to dark after Goya went deaf. For the most part,I feel she achieved this end, I for one am convinced. I wish she wrote moreon Goya's technique and his personal life, both of which she does not gointo much. The 300 or so colour reproductions of Goya's work are excellent,and there are many good close-ups. Unfortunately, Goya produced around1,800 works, so it is disappointing that only a fraction of them are inthis book. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

nice art book
nice art book
contains a significant body of the author's work and someinteresting influencial peices of art and photographs that influenced gauguin ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description

Gabo was one of the inventors of constructed sculpture which arose out of cubism to be one of the major means of sculpture in the twentieth century.Gabo's adoption of metal, glass,plexiglass, and plastic in stereometric constructions made space and light his real medium.Gabo'sstudy of engineering, art and art history equipped him to consider the arts and sciences together. As Gabo refused to accept that art was subservient to politics, his time in revolutionary Russia was limited.But the conflict of art and ideology made him a perceptive and articulate theorist.He had increasing recognition in the West up to the late '60s.Since then much has been publicized on Russian artists who stayed after the Revolution (including Malevich, Tatlin, Lissitzky, Rodchenko, etc.) and Gabo has been shamefully neglected.He is due for reassessment.'

Much of his sculpture resides in museum in the US. ... Read more

Book Description

The first biography of Holbien in 50 years, revealing his involvement with the secret service surrounding Henry VIII. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

READABLE, OPINIONATED, NEVER DULL
The author attempts interesting 'symbolic' interpretations of some of Holbeins' more famous works in the visual context of the time. For example, Anna of Cleves' asymmetrical dress trim says "No social graces", to the initiated. One wonders why the King didn't see this if it was indeed common to include visual puns in paintings? I took issue with the author's rather silly descriptions of 16th century religious books as 'best-sellers', as if there was some sort of survey going on at the time. Otherwise, this is a very worthwhile addition to any Holbein fan's collection. It's written intelligently and attempts to place the artist in the various towns and countries with reason. And it will make you look twice at ALL the details in all the versions of a Holbein painting! ... Read more

Book Description

A sepia picture of an Anglo-Polynesian woman bought at auction by the author leads him to set off following the traces left by Gauguin of his travels round the globe. Who was the woman in the painting and why did Gauguin paint the face of her son, Atiti, on the day of his death at Papeete? He decides to go to the South Seas in search of the woman and her story. And so starts the author's reconstruction of Gauguin's life, an artist who thought he could find himself by escaping from reality, a man who reinvented exoticism, and finally lost his mind.Accessible and compelling, IN SEARCH OF GAUGUIN is a spiritual, human and geographical quest which takes in Holland, Brittany, Provence, Denmark, Panama, Martinique and Tahiti. Coatalem travels in the company of dead painters, patrons, art dealers, and the women of the south seas. Who was the true Gauguin? A businessman chasing sales of his work? A father of five children left behind in Copenhagen. A mystic? A genius? ... Read more