No comments about Chuck Close, a Flipbook.

5 comments about The Male Nude.

1. There isn't much else I can say that I didn't cover in the title of my review. This is a good collection of photographs divided into time periods, each of which is given a brief essay introduction by Leddick. Leddick, while not a brilliant art historian, is the best I've found on this controversial and often overlooked artform.



2. How could it not be, right? It's called 'Male Nude'. Well there are many nude men within its pages, but nothing I found spectacular or new in approach. It seemed this book was done with a gay tilt to it as well, which is fine if that's what one is looking for. Several of the images are of men together, hugging, admiring, etc. I hoped for more nudes on their own, instead of images provoking what happened before or what will happen after the photo was taken. Regardless, there are some nice physiques here, and the book is laid out in chronological order from the 1900s up to present day. The past pictures were intersting to see, but this isn't something I keep precious in my collection.



3. I must agree with the reviewer who stated that this book had a gay tilt to it. That's perfectly fine if that's your cup of tea, and I'm glad that gay men have books such as these to choose from. I prefer something with just photos of nude men by themselves. I guess I'll continue my search for such a book. I'm disappointed that there is so little out there for heterosexual women like me.



4. Nobody does a better job of collecting and publishing nude photographs of men than David Leddick. He adds here another fine volume to his several books on the subject. Leddick begins with photographers in the Nineteenth Century and continues to the present in chronological order. All the photographers you expect are here as well as some of the photographs we have seen many times before. (I'm thinking now of Mapplethorpe's infamous "Man in Polyester Suit.") In addition to Mapplethorpe, there's Thomas Eakins, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Cecil Beaton, George Platt Lynes-- for my money nobody surpasses him-- Bob Mizer, Horst and Herb Ritts. But Leddick also includes David Hockney, Duane Michaels, the incomparable Imogene Cunningham and one of my favorite photographs by one of my favorite photographers, a shot of Helmut Berger by Helmut Newton. I was also glad to see Leddick include the work of Nan Goldin and Pierre et Gilles, two unique photographers whom I admire tremendously. There's a good chance you'll find your favorite photographer included here and become acquainted as well with artists you didn't previously know.

   This little volume is beautifully printed and extremely well-priced.




5. I bought this book wondering about the quality and quantity of male picture included, but I am totally satisfied. The book displays a comprehensive sample of male pictures from late XIX century up to today. I think it will be useful for fine art students and other people who need a good visual source for the male nude.

2 comments about Chuck Close.

1. While in Chicago in the Summer of 1998, I happened across an astounding exhibition of work chronicling the life's work of Chuck Close at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This book is a catalogue of the traveling exhibition that is no less astounding and amazing. Chuck Close is an amazing human who focuses on portraits of human heads and most are executed on a grand scale. The book will take you through his life, via his work, chronologically. Not to be missed are the portraits, done in watercolor, that while inches away from the work, I could not tell it wasn't a photograph. The best thing about the book is that it catalogues every piece in the retrospective and is formatted in a scale that conveys the grandness of the paintings. It is a truly amazing and intriguing body of work that is not to be missed.



2. While at the MoMA I happened across the Chuck Close exhibit. I had heard of him, but had never seen his work. As I walked through the exhibit I thought to myself, "big deal, a bunch of 9 foot tall photographs." But when I notice the medium was acrylic I was astonded! This book captures the unbelievable talent of this amazing artist. It shows his the vast array of materials he used from paint, to pieces of paper. i would highly recommend buying this book! It is one of my favorites.

3 comments about Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something.

1. Beautiful portraits "in the raw" with comments from the artists'insight.



2. Lots of photobooks on the shelf and great images within. What is unique about this one is the layout and design.
   With the beauty of these images, and text which takes on its own life and shape, this has become my favorite book of 2006. The print quality is astounding to well represent the technique used in the photographs.Hasn't left the main veiwing area (coffee table) since it arrived.HIghly reccomended



3. Full-page black and white close-up portrait photos of notable personalities by Chuck Close pair with poems by Bob Holman in an artistic venture which concludes with a revealing interview with the two collaborators in A Couple of Ways of Doing Something. This piece represents the best in the world of text/photo interplays: artistic, striking, and revealing, it both visually and via written word offers some starting portraits and displays the power of collaborative art. A fine pick for any serious art library holding.

4 comments about Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration.

1. This book as described is about the prints, and talks very little about the paintings. There are very nice and clear pictures, but I really only found a few pages interesting, and the rest was just like one long interview about the materials he used and the stories behind who chipped what woodblock and how it got done, etc. Maybe some people will like this book but I only found it slightly interesting.



2. The first reviewer here is nuts. This is a book that was released when Chuck Close had a retrospective on his prints. This book has info on the prints and no paintings. what is great about 'Process and Collaboration' is the fact that it delves so deeply into Closes working habbits and how he pretty much invents his process from one small series of works to the next.
   
   This book gave me a huge boost in my appreciation for Close. I liked him before, but this added so much depth to my understanding of him as an artist. I now feel as though Close is as complicated as any other artist that I have knowledge of. Even though he has built a long and vibrant legacy based on nothing more than close-up head shots. This is a must have book and I only wish that every artists retrospective went into a similar amount of detail.



3. The illustrations of this book are very good for understanding the works of the artist and the process as well.



4. Hmmmm, how do I start. This is one of my favorite printmaking artists. Chuck Close does not work within any printmaking boundaries, he goes beyond them. His etchings extend the boundaries of how many plates can be printed prior to the paper deteriorating, his blockprints are absolutely mind bending and astounding, his reduction linocuts are masterful, and his creativity for paper pulp prints is freakishly genius. I love, love, love this book, and if you have any connection to works on paper or printed images then you too will love the interviews with Chuck Close, and the explanation of the process and collaboration. need I say more? buy this book!

1 comments about Close Reading: Chuck Close and the Artist Portrait.

1. Martin Friedman has written and composed a book about his friend and honored colleague Chuck Close that reads as a fine biography. Friedman, previously with the highly regarded Walker Art Center and now an important art historian and curator for other museums, began his 'conversations' with Chuck Close in 1969 and grew into a close personal as well as professional relationship with the artist and this relationship is evident in the quietly detailed information about Close's well known bout with paralysis and subsequent recovery to the point of continuing to be able to paint. The quality of friendship is palpable.
   
   But Friedman does not limit his writing to simply the personal issues that make Chuck Close a hero in the realm of overcoming tragic blows. This book, better than any of the other many volumes on this innovative artist, provides solid information on the development of Close's technique of producing vast canvases out of pixilated portions, explaining in fine detail how he approaches the portrait from inception through painstaking process, to completed work. No one has explained and illustrated it better.
   
   Once Friedman has shown us process he then shares some of Close's important portraits of fellow artists such as Francesco Clemente and Cindy Sherman and accompanies these experiences with valuable illustrations of the works in addition to Friedman's own conversations with each of the artist models in a way that only a man who has the depth in contemporary art that Friedman can make informational and rational!
   
   For this reader the most satisfying portion of this superb book is Friedman's discussion of the Self Portraits of Chuck Close, works that provided significant bridges between his struggle against physical challenge and emotional recovery. It is not only insightful psychologically; it is a true homage to a contemporary hero. Throughout the book the pages are filled with copious excellent reproductions of the materials discussed.
   Highly Recommended on many levels. Grady Harp, November 05

5 comments about Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan.

1. This book is an absolute treasure! Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan, is an illustrated and collaged journal of her travels--around the world, as well as around the city. One feels almost like a voyeur--the book is that intimate.

   The book is FILLED with pictures; photocopies of her travel journal, as well as assemblages and paintings from her daily travels around the city. It is beautifully put together--so much so that it evokes a great deal of emotion. I wish I'd had a chance to meet her!

   This book came from Jernigan's wish to have "proof that I had been there." There is some irony in this statement, because she died in 1991 at the age of thirty-nine, and the book was published eight years after her death.

   As much as I DON'T like to compare artists, Candy Jernigan probably isn't a familiar name to many people. Having said that, I'll add that her art is reminescent of Joseph Cornell, Robert Rauschenburg, and Jasper Johns--but from a woman's point of view.




2. How well do you remember your last vacation? Or a great meal? What do you do to record the beauty around you? Do you notice the horrors of everyday life to which so many people are oblivious? Ms. Jernigan was a consumate story teller. Her stories are not of the obvious, but of the things most of us overlook, ignore and wish we could remember. Absorb this book and you'll never take a trip again without thinking of her work. This book is a true delight. The visual content is wonderful, the text informative and reserved, and the book's design and construction is almost as unique as the subject matter. If you are an artist, traveller - if you are alive - this book should be in you library. More importantly, in you life.



3. This weekend I read and looked through "Evidence: The Art of Candy Jernigan." It's a fast biography with lots of pictures from Candy Jernigan's journals. It's an amazing and inspiring book.

   Jernigan's journals aren't pretty but they are witty and wry and artistic. Candy included smears of food from her meals, dust collected from the steps of the Parthenon, and crack vials collected from the streets of New York. Toward the end of her life, she chronicled lists of the medications and treatments she took to fight liver cancer. (She died in 1991 at the ripe old age of 39.)

   Candy's journals show that she LIVED and lived big. It's a pity she's gone but we're lucky she was here and left her wonderful journals behind.




4. This book has become one of my bedside companions, and certainly will make you reflect upon the world in a manner that is foriegn. It is nothing like you will have ever seen, and it is more wonderful than you can imagine.

   In Candy's world, everything; the smears of sauces, the crusts of bread, the crack vials found in New York, a crushed saucepan, a dead rat and the bottletop nearby Jim Morrison's grave, become worthy of attention and transformed into art.

   She will make you peer at the sidewalk, wondering about the origins of that dust, make you pocket that docket in the desire to transform into a collage of your day's events.

   While much of this book is her collected items, there is life to be found in her minute drawings of bugs and sausages, her tiny print and evidence of her personality is found within her dream based art.

   Contrary to the previous reviewer, I find this book marvellously and wonderfully beautiful. In the tiny collections and wry but subtle observations of Candy, her life is documented and her personality radiates to the reader.

   This book, seemingly a collection of food scraps and other tidbits, is evidence of her life, yes, but evidence of the beauty we can find within the seemingly mundane, the tiny, if only we give that bread crust, the leaves in the Pere La-Chaise and that dust a chance to be noteworthy.




5. This is a great book. Not only is it well-organized, it also shows a great deal of love and empathy for the artist. Candy's work grabs the viewer's attention like the work of few other artists.

No comments about No.1: First Works of 362 Artists.

5 comments about The Close-Combat Files of Colonel Rex Applegate.

1. As the founder and chief instructor of a system of self-defense training, incorporating both armed and unarmed self-defense techniques, I ve found the information in this book to be the most practical and realistic with regards to CQB, than any other publication. Col. Applegate utilizes practical, effective and efficient tactics and techniques with the handgun and knife for close combat encounters of a lethal nature. The point shooting technique is a reactive and reflexive method of a spontaneous shooting response, which has been scientifically proven as the natural response by a person under life endangering stress, a technique Fairbairn, Sykes, and Applegate knew 58 years ago. As a police officer of 20 years and an instructor of police officer survival skills, I know his techniques work. This is an excellent book for realistic close quarter combat. A must own book for self defense and police defensive tactics instructors.



2. This is not a book for the novice to learn basic self defense techniques. There are only two pictures on self defense. The rest is written. You have to already know the techniques to know what he is talking about, in which case you don't need this book. It is mostly a book about Applegate's days in the O.S.S. and how they trained. What I really don't like is the way it was falsly advertised as a book to learn the few basic techniques needed for self defense, when this is not the case at all. It is way over priced for the content.



3. Chuck Melson's book on the late Col. Rex Applegate should be read and absorbed by those in our military who are enamoured with the Asian martial arts and are trying to hoist them on our soldiers. Unfortuanately, these imports are based on fine motor skills, which are lost under the stress of combat, and will get our people killed. Instead, as the book demonstrates, we have a successful system developed by Col. Applegate whic is simple, effective and easy to learn. Applegate developed this system for our OSS and Melson's book not only documents the developmental process, but lays out Applegate's training syllabus as well. Instead of spending millions to develop "new" hand-to-hand combat sysytems, our military could save money, and provide valuable training by simply purchasing this book.



4. This book provides a great history of the development of close combat by Applegate and his contemporaries. It is a wonderful combination of original "lesson plans" with well-documented historical details and photographs about the people and events that lead to the ideas contained in those lesson plans. There is also some good follow-up on what happened to these concepts after WWII.

   This is a great historic document, however I think that the author could have done several relatively small things that would have added a great deal to making the book more "user friendly". First, a glossary would have been nice. There are many acronyms; I would have liked a central place to look them up and also read a few basic details about the related organizations (and people) that were not provided in the main text. Second, a time-line would have been awesome because it could have summarized the information in the book and could also have offered additional (brief) details on Applegate's life and/or the lives of his contemporaries. Finally, some minor editing could have removed some redundant material and left room for my previous suggestions.




5. An excellent book overall and a welcome addition to any library featuring special operations and espionage during World War II and/or the works of Col. Applegate. I found the vintage photographs of training in Maryland to be especially interesting. Overall, I would reccommend this book to anyone with interest in these areas.

4 comments about Chuck Close: Work.

1. This book is large! And it has excellent reproductions and bio of the life of this magical man. Chuck Close has made a career,while battling disabilities that would have stopped lesser men.Christopher Finch noted art writer,assists Close in making this book autobiographical and personal,like the unpretentious Mr. Close.
   The author and the artist together guide you through the evolution of Chuck Close noted modern portrait artist. You follow from air brush, to finger painting,collage disc painting, to the new color geometric masterpieces.
   Chuck personally supervised color choices in the lay-out and it is truly impressive. 95 percent of his major work is here. Self portraits,friends , his wife etc. are all vividly executed. Seeing Chuck in action shows the scale of the major works!The works are huge,and the pictures show the studio environment he works in.
   I was fortunate to attend his lecture,with both men ,and it Chuck says this is the definitive book!



2. Christopher Finch has done a wonderful job of revealing both Chuck Close the man and the artist. This one of the best art retrospectives I have ever actually 'read' and enjoyed.
   
   I too had a chance to hear both artist and author speak this week. While Chuck did say this is the definitive book on his work one can hope that he still has many productive years left to continue to awe and amaze his many admirers.



3. This really does not need to be that long. I am a huge fan of Chuck Close and have been so for years now. My personal library reflects this, with four other books and catalogs spanning his career. These books get brought out on a semi-consistent basis, as they all have something important to say about this mans art.
   
   "Chuck Close: WORK" is a definitive piece that fills in any small holes about the story of this artist that might be obscured in some out of print catalog, as well as talking heavily about his process. If you are in the market for a book that gives the full Chuck Close biography while supplementing itself with beautiful illustrations and plenty of dialog about his process, do not hesitate to purchase this book.



4. Excellent reproductions and very informative text. A good resource book for artists and students. Worth the cost to have this one in your collection.