1 comments about Drawing: Dogs (HT10).

1. Does what it says! My daughter draws and she really liked this teaching book.

5 comments about The Root of Wild Madder: Chasing the History, Mystery, and Lore of the Persian Carpet.

1. This is a brilliant read. The author's love of Persian Carpets is infectious. His book is full of colorful anecdotes and sympathetic vignettes about carpets, carpet sellers, bazaaris, caravanserais (which although I had read about them numerous times, I had not before had them described for me so well), of the carpet making of different regions, of the Quiraysh, the tribal regions, Isfahan, Shiraz, Islam, the sights, sounds, colours - the philosophy of carpets... The aura and magic of Persian carpets and Persia/Iran itself is wonderfully evoked by this fantastic book.



2. The Root of Wild Madder -- Chasing the History, Mystery, and Lore of the Persian Carpet definitely delivers that in the first half of the book. Sadly, the story begins to unravel as one pushes on to finish the book. Brian Murphy, who is clearly knowledgeable about carpets, modern Iran, and ancient Persia, cannot make up his mind how to conclude his book. We don't know if he intends to return to call upon the family of his mentor or will he swear off all future visits due to the recent downturn of affairs in Iran. His ambivalance left me frayed at the edges after reading chapter after chapter of his adventures into the cultural heartland of Iran and Afghanistan and the magic and poetry of their carpets.
   
   These weaknesses aside, the glory of Murphy's book is his ability to get the reader lost in the crevasses of Teheran's carpet bazaars and off the beaten path to where the most ancient of red dyes, madder, blooms. The reader travels over unpaved roads at lightnening speed only to discover the hidden tomb of Persia's greatest poet, Hafez. Murphy also provides a refreshing meditation on the art of the carpet as music being seen and poetry as weft and warp being heard. He also gains access to the women who create the carpets. With gratitude and candor he celebrates their contribution to a world that is made better off through their efforts.
   
   The Root of Wild Madder also provides a useful, if not excellent, introduction to the manufacture of carpets, including looming, weaving, dyeing and, finishing. While Murphy provides several excellent photos, an illustrated glossary of the dozen most important terms would have helped the book.
   
   He also regales the reader with wonderful descriptions of Shiraz, Isfahan, Mashhad and many other Persian places and this is where I found the book to be its most heartwarming. These descriptions of contemporary Iranian life is where the book is at its strongest and where I would most strongly recommend it to the would-be traveller to that region.
   
   While Murphy does not conclude his stories well, he certainly does open the door to a whole new -- and very ancient -- world that is beyond our experience. Read The Root of Wild Madder for its beginning if not its ending. He will surely reveal to you paths that you did not realize were there.



3. If you are hooked on oriental carpets this is a fantastic book. It is a journal of a man's travels through the old carpet weaving countries.



4. Brian Murphy's book begins rather slowly but then picks up in interest and even excitement. It is a rich and well documented history, replete with intricacies and exciting revelations. The author allows not to be a carpet connaisseur but he is quick to learn and has evidently done a lot of research to compensate his lacks. It is also well written and quietly evocative. I have two comments to add:
   
   The Qasqua'i (whose tribal carpets have captivated Mr. Murphy) begun their historical treck as Georgian-speaking tribes (see Suny RG, The making of the Georgian nation, 1994, p.4). The vagaries of history made them adopt, first a Turkish dialect and now, living in Iran, Farsi--another example of discordances between ethnic identity and linguistics. But the Qashqa'i carpets poetically and artistically commemorate their past and their history.
   
   A Christian Armenian was involved in the history of madder, but he is generally labeled "Iranian," since more famous cultures always obscure the contributions of lesser known ones. His name was "Jean Althen... [an] Iranian [!] who introduced the culti­vation of madder... into Southern France... [H]e was born in a village he spells "Chaouch." He lost his parents during the Afghan invasion and was taken as a slave to Kayseri in Anatolia, where he learned cotton cultivation and dyeing. In about 1736 he escaped to France, where he was received by Louis XV in Versailles...[I]n southern France... he began to cultivate Oriental madder; this proved so successful that madder soon became a main crop of the region... [I]n 1846... his efforts honored, by the erection of his statue on the rock of Notre Dame des Doms.(See http://www.iranica.com/ newsite /articles/v1f9/v1f9a005.html).
   
   There are two interesting asides to this story.
   
   One concerns the species of madder that he brought into France. Was it Rubia peregrina L., or R. tinctorum L.? I believe its the latter (whose root is also known as "racine d'Armenie), found more commonly in the Orient and the source of red madder.
   
   The other is the fact that Dominican monks from Smyrna probably encouraged and helped Althen to escape from Kaiseri, carrying madder seeds with him, to introduce in France a product that a monopoly of the Ottoman empire up to that point, with Oriental punishments awaiting those caught "stealing" it.
   
   In any event, read this book. It is an almost magical introduction to the poetry of Oriental carpets. On second thought, I'll give it four stars and a half.



5. This book is low-brow and poorly written. It could have been such a wonderful narrative, but Mr. Murphy fell so short. His knowledge of carpets is minimal, and his views on the region are myopic.

5 comments about Style by Saladino.

1. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this book. Saladino's design book has beautiful illustrations and he describes how to see in a way that is so soothing and gorgeous. his writing style allows you to understand how he visually conceptualizes a room. Consequently how you view the world is changed; for the better, because you are able to see and create more beauty.



2. John Saladino's book is packed with design concepts and inspiring ideas. The book is full of beautiful pictures of his interiors, so majestic and practical at the same time...by far the most inspiring book I've read about interior design.



3. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in good design both interior and exterior. As an Interior Designer I have always liked the style of John Saladino and this book presents his work beautifully. A wonderful source.



4. As a budding designer, I purchased this book in order to gain a more intimate look at one very gifted man's inspirations and approach to design. This book delivers the goods on two levels. Saladino's insights are personal, insightful and educational, and the accompanying photos are spectacular. There aren't any "tricks of the trade" here, but what you will find are the foundational principals behind Saladino's definition of good design. Be forewarned - Like any great artist, Saladino has some strong opinions. But that is exactly why I bought the book. I was looking for his thoughts and his opinions - I was not looking for a "Design 1-2-3" book. His book has helped me further advance my own personal design approach (which is not a clone of Saladino's), and take my art to a new level. I would recommend the book to those who either love Saladino's look, or those who want to explore some deeper issues about style, design and inspiration.



5. John Saladino is often referred to as the "designer's designer" and I have followed with pleasure his designs from the 1980s through until today. I have also had the pleasure of visiting more than one Saladino interior and showhouse room on multiple occasions, as well as his showroom in New York, and can say with certainty that the images in the book don't begin to capture what they are in reality and how important the quality of light is on the materials selected. While I was a little disappointed with the way the images appear in this book (the paper stock doesn't seem conducive to showing the interiors at their best compared to glossy magazines), I have seen many of the same rooms in truly glossy publications many a time and they are stunning and always refreshing for their bold and assured mixing of antique and ornate with simple and modern (and if the negative reviewer below read the text he would know that Mr. Saladino appreciates objects for their beauty no matter their pedigree -- even simple things that aren't expensive mixed with long time precious treasures [one of his design signatures found again and again, for instance, is to use scientific volumetric flasks used as long-necked vases with a single delphinium -- total price, about $13-$26, including the flower]). Thumb through and enjoy the pictures, but also read the text and you will get an education in design like nowhere else, and be able to apply it to your own space and life and even the way you see. I was somewhat underwhelmed with the images (again due to the dullish paper stock) but the text was wonderfully informed (and didn't come off as snobbish at all to this reader). If you can find old issues of Architectural Digest (in which Saladino NEVER appears anymore for years and years, probably because he didn't kiss up to Paige Rense and often shows his interiors in competitors House Beautiful, House & Garden, etc.) you are in for a treat, but better still, in this book you're in for an education.

5 comments about Notes on the Synthesis of Form (Harvard Paperbacks).

1. Certainly, this book has produced a great impact on various fields related to design and architecture. The author tells us about the most amazing process in human life -- the conscious process of creating things. He has a good mathematical background and is very practical in his hypotheses.
   
   I bought this book because I heard that his theories led to the concepts of design patterns in programming. As a software developer I think that every modern program is a design problem even if it is a pure server-side software. You have to take into account a huge amount of factors and analyze lots of third party components before you come to a relatively optimal solution. Talking in Christopher's terms, the software is a form which we have to synthesize. And his ideas are still actual after more than 40 years.
   
   If you are a real software developer, you'll certainly be delighted in reading this book. It may even change your life.



2. A deep and nuanced analysis of patterns in design failures and successes - the author clearly has astounding comprehension of the modern design situation. I found the "unselfconscious design" vs "selfconscious design" analysis fascinating (although to be politically correct it should be something like "self designer" and "delegated designer" instead). The determination and use of (relatively) independent sub-systems to prune the overall design space is profound.
   
   Part 2 (chapter 6, page 73) is a highly structured "program" for design. I found this section of the book much less compelling, and I'm not sure how it necessarily falls out from Part 1. For me, Alexander's biggest insight is that a good design process involves iterative periods of change and stasis - specifically, designing by modifying single (or small numbers of) factors individually and allowing the design to reach "equilibrium" before making additional changes. From this standpoint, designing a whole village at the beginning (as is started in appendix I) may not ever be a good design approach - even with Alexander's "program"



3. Tip: Start by reading Appendix I. It is an example of the technique that the author spends the whole book explaining. In fact, Appendix I may be all you need to get the gist of the technique.



4. Alexanders 'Notes' anticipates the paths that major sciences would take decades after its publication.
   
   This is no mean feat for a work of science but here youre dealing with a book on architecture- or better, on what architecture could and ought to be.
   
   readers with scientific interests will notice Alexander inventing- from purely architectural phenomena - such models as
   fitness landscapes, adaptation measures according to 'gene' frequency, evolutionarily stable strategies.
   
   The general system of analysis in the book serves as one of the best guides for understanding cellular automata and the startegy of isolating variables anticipates the justly famous work of Dawkins on selfish genes.
   
   Alexander had almost nothing to work with in the early sixties apart from some pioneering formulations in early AI and a very acute insight into the paradoxes of optimisation strategies.
   
   His foresight is best witnessed by reading the footnotes to the book which are in themselves an uncanny selection of what would come to dominate epistemology, evolution and modelling decades later.
   
   People teaching history and philosophy of science should prescribe this book as the pre-eminent case study 'consilience'
   
   On the strength of this one book, Alexander joins C S Pierce, Boole, Babbage and Minsky as one of the greatest pathfinders in the recent history of knowledge-- too bad that architecture as a discipline hardly rose to his challenge and is now drowning in couture (and more credit to the software makers who have kept this unmined treasure in print).



5. Design is a difficult process that is often associated more with art than science. With principles of style, concerns about how design works.
   
   While many wring their hands about this, Alexander breaks the problem down, organizes it and then provides a framework for design that is relatively design neutral. That is a feat in deed.
   
   By thinking about how one structures a problem space and the bias that creates -- Alexander give the practioner a powerful tool for setting up the design process and scope. He then goes on to discuss the design process and he makes important distinctions between concious and unconcious design.
   
   Notes on Synthesis and Form are the foundation for Alexander's work on design patterns. This is the must read book before spending time on these other works.
   
   For the practioner, this book provides a powerful and applicable framework for addressing problems in multiple disciplines.

5 comments about Hirschfeld On Line.

1. "OVER 400 HIRSCHFELD DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS MANY NEVER BEFORE COLLECTED
   Essays by Whoopi Goldberg, Arthur Miller, Mel Gussow, Kurt Vonnegut, Grace Mirabella, Louise Kerz Hirschfeld, and Nina!
   
   Commentary by Hirschfeld Throughout.
   [from the book of the back cover of the jacket]



2. What a joy of a book. Not just the great grafics but very interestng information about the Great Hirschfeld



3. Here is the indispensible Hirschfeld book - a must for any fan of his work, or of line in general. From his earliest pieces, all the way through his long career with New York theatre, his work is showcased - and done so through his eyes. Each piece is described by this great artist - his inspirations, methods, and thoughts. I cannot imagine a better way to present his wonderful drawings, and I am so very, very thankful that this collection was printed before his death. Although, yes, the work would show just as beautifully without, his commentary alongside each piece just opens up an entirely new viewpoint. This is a truly timeless book, and I highly recommend it.



4. Al Hirschfeld rose above titles like "cartoonist" and "illustrator", and every other tag specifically applied to visual artists who inject design and humor into their work. His intelligent blend of the caricaturist's eye and the designer's sense of the beauty in flat forms add up to an entirely unique contribution to twentieth century popular culture- and a highly influential one. His recent passing at age 99 marks the end of the century that he witnessed and commented upon so wittily and so stylishly. His legions of admirers (and imitators) will be well served by this 1999 book, assembled by the artist himself, with an excellent selection from his career, his invaluable commentary, and a fairly satisying selection of his amazing (and less celebrated) color work. The reproductions are fine here, and the volume is designed and presented well. It can only be hoped that more comprehensive releases and reissues of earlier books are in the near future.



5. I really enjoyed looking through this book. I am absolutely in love with theater and I love seeing how he depicts all of my favorite shows and actors. He's been through the "Golden Age" of theater and has also done so much work for modern entertainment. I also have tons of fun looking for all the hidden "Nina"s. Just in case you might not know what I'm talking about, let me explain. After his daughter was born, Hirschfield began hiding her name in his drawings. The number by his "signiture" indicates the number of "Nina"s in the drawing. "Nina" is also written all in caps. Because of this, this book is not going to be just some ordinary coffee table book that only his fans might check out. It could also be a great deal of amusement for those who like to play the kind of "Where's Waldo" games.

4 comments about Old Master Portrait Drawings: 47 Works (Dover Art Library Series).

1. A great - and affordable!- collection. Offers a great range of artists, mediums, and time periods. Recommended for any student, like myself, to work from (mastercopies) or simply reference. A must-have for fine artists!



2. The book came in very good shape. The portrait drawings are beautiful, just what I was looking for.



3. Nice series of books, these Old Master Portrait Drawings from Dover Art Library. Good material if you want to study portrait drawing. Good reproductions of the drawings. No text, only a short introduction from the publisher and titles with the drawings. The drawings say it all.



4. As an art instructor I found this book to be a great resource for beginning students of portrait drawing. The variety of style and technique shown is excellent. A few of the portraits were less useful. An excellent value for the price.

4 comments about The Highwaymen: Florida's African-American Landscape Painters.

1. Great book! Such talent needs to be recognized and applauded.



2. In 1994, art aficionado Jim Fitch assigned the name "Highwaymen" to a loose association of young, mostly untrained black artists (including one woman) from the Fort Pierce area who created thousands of Florida landscapes and marketed them from the backs of their cars for about $25 in the 1960's and `70's. Theirs was an unabashedly commercial venture, and the artists collaborated to create and sell works as quickly and cheaply as possible. Dismissed as "motel art" at the time, these intense, lush and at times otherworldly depictions of an idealized Florida have become a subject of renewed interest and critical attention in recent years. Consequently, many myths and vague tales have grown up around the group.
   
   As part of his research, author Gary Monroe interviewed many of the remaining artists to bring the story to life, presented here in a 26-page annotated essay. In analyzing the art, he insists that the speed with which they worked was far from a detriment: "By unintentionally bastardizing the canonical pictorial strategies...they created a new form of fantasy landscape painting." The artists found their strength as colorists, and the emotional hues capture the essence of Florida (or at least, as we imagine it.)
   
   As a northerner who visited Florida twice as a child in the pre-Disney days, I must confess that the 63 glorious full-color reproductions here gave me goose bumps of fond memory, real or imagined.
   
   A followup: This book launched an explosion of interest in The Highwaymen. Surviving members no longer need hawk their wares, since collectors now come to them and new works sell for as much as $18,000. The were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2004.



3. This book highlites a special group of amateur black artists who lived in Florida in the 1950's. The story is well presented with wonderful details that make their artistic journey come alive. The paintings are wonderful. The only drawback to this book, as I see it, is that the vivid hues of the paintings did not come through in this book. I happened to read a magazine article, full of rich colorful pictures of some of the paintings, which sparked my interest, and led to my purchasing this book. Unfortunately, it seems that this printing process could not represent the original brilliance of the paintings. This is a fascinating peek at a little know bit of Florida art history.



4. An all-inclusive journey through the lives and souls of African American painters from days gone by. These creative souls painted breathtaking beach landscapes... Many of their works still survive today, and sell for [a small fortune]. (I know, I have one in my living room.) A great buy! Just be warned; one look through it's pages will draw you toward Florida's shores lke a child to the smell of cotton candy!

No comments about Whitney Biennial 2008.

3 comments about Art and Photography (Themes & Movements S.).

1. Notwithstanding the promise of its title, "Art in Photography" is simply a survey of avant-garde photography of the last half of the twentieth century.
   
   The book is divided into three parts: an essay by Campany, photographs and other works, and documents consisting of excerpts of articles, interviews and statements. The essay is divided into sections with titles like "The Urban and the Everyday" with similar sections of the photographs and documents. Each essay section makes a few general comments about the new in photography and then discusses in a sentence or two the particular photographers whose works appear among the photographs.
   
   The essay's principal thesis is that while other plastic arts moved away from content toward form in modern times, photography has generally moved away from form to content. At the same time, the goal of either set of movements was always self-referential, although it seemed as if photographers were deliberately subverting the form to show its inadequacies. (The author ignores the main stream of photography during that same period, when there were many portrait, fashion and landscape photographers who clung splendidly to the combination of form and content, using form to explicate the content.)
   
   The essay is often supported by thumbnails an inch and three-quarters high, but it is difficult to see much at this small size, and the reader may be further confounded in the effort to relate the picture to the text by the fact that the captions for the thumbnails are printed vertically in small type, requiring one to rotate the book 90 degrees and then look closely to confirm the relationship of the picture to the text.
   
   The pictures themselves are difficult to understand out of the context of a particular photographer's work, although occasionally an image will arrest one's eye, like the photograph of a single woman's face turned toward the camera in a sea of black-cloaked praying Moslem women, or Chuck Close's painting of Philip Glass. For the most part the pictures, out of context, are enigmatic. Campany acknowledges that it is difficult to draw any consistent theory of photography from the pictures.
   
   The documents vary in interest from insightful articles to artistic double-speak. It pained me to see Walter Benjamin's seminal article "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" abridged to a short excerpt, but it does add the flavor of the work to some understanding of the pictures presented.
   
   Survey books are always difficult for me because they can never go into enough detail to comprehend larger movements. Still, for the individual interested in a collection of representative works of avant-garde photography, this book may fill the bill,



2. The book starts with a 35-page survey written by the editor does a very good job of covering photography's use in the arts. This is then followed by some 150 pages of photographs. The next 80 pages cover the documents, writings on and by the artists using photography in their practice. The book concludes with artist and author biographies and a decent bibliography.
   
   Both the photography and the documents are organized into rough thematic groupings. These are:
   * Memories and Archives
   * Objective Objects
   * Traces of Traces
   * The Urban and the Everyday
   * The Studio Image
   * The Arts of Reproduction
   * `Just' Looking
   * The Cultures of Nature
   This organizational structure works quite well, in that rather than overwhelming you with a whole book worth of imagery and commentary, it is divided into more manageable chunks that still allow contemplation of the whole but also allow a tighter consideration, as needed. The work and documents cover the whole time range from the 60's to the early 21st Century (2003 to be specific, the year of publication). So the book is an excellent survey document.
   
   Anyone who is serious at coming to grips with the use of photography in contemporary art practice should have this book handy. It brings together in one great resource not only great examples of the work produced but also, through collating the writings that are included, bringing together the thoughts, criticisms and analysis of the major artists, critics, theorists and analysts of the time. Very highly recommended.



3. The front free endpaper of this book says "Art and Photography is the first book of its kind to survey the presence of photography in artistic practice from the 1960s onwards. The photographic image is central to contemporary art and the debates that surround it, yet it took most of the last century for it to acquire this status. Despite the extensive exploration of photography as an independent art in the Modernist era, it was not until the late twentieth century that artists, museums and galleries began to explore its social roles as a medium of representation. This volume provides a comprehensive survey of photography's place in recent art history, further contextualized in the Documents section by original artists' statements and interviews, together with critical and theoretical reflections on the photographic and the art of the photograph."
   
   Does the book live up to this hype? I think it does. It's a handsome 304-page tome, with the first two-thirds printed on white semiglossy paper (for the "Survey" and "Works") and the last third on cream-colored uncoated paper (for the "Documents," biographies, bibliography, and index).
   
   The "Survey," "Works," and "Documents" parts are arranged into the same eight sections: "Memories and Archives" on "public and private histories"; "Objective Objects" on photos' "apparently direct relation to the world"; "Traces of Traces" on "photography as a record of the real and its effects"; "The Urban and the Everyday" on "contemporary city life"; "The Studio Image" on "fine art's traditional space of making"; "The Arts of Reproduction" on "works that reflect upon the way mass culture is experienced as fragments"; " 'Just' Looking" on "the social structures of vision and the place of the gaze in the formation of our identity"; and "The Cultures of Nature" on "how the current understandings of the natural are formed and reflected through contemporary representation." This organization is unique to my knowledge; most books on art are arranged chronologically or by artist.
   
   The "Survey" essay by David Campany places the Works and Documents into historical context and explains in some detail the eight categories. It's illustrated with small reproductions of art and photos. I found it enlightening.
   
   Within each of the eight sections of "Works," from pages 46 to 205, the photos are presented in more or less chronological order, with the earliest works dating from the 1960s. Of the dozens of photographers, the ones who have more than one photo (from different series) reproduced in the book are John Baldessari, Victor Burgin, Gregory Crewdson, John Divola, John Hilliard, Joel Meyerowitz, Gabriel Orozco, Richard Prince, Gerhard Richter, Martha Rosler, Thomas Ruff, Allan Sekula, Cindy Sherman, Thomas Struth, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Larry Sultan, Jeff Wall, Andy Warhol, Gillian Wearing, and William Wegman. I detect no significant errors of omission or commission in the choice of artists. The specifications of media (e.g., "tinted black and white photographs") and dimensions, and the lengthy captions, are valuable.
   
   "Documents" contains excerpts of writings by photographers (including ones with only a single photograph in "Works," e.g., Yve Lomax and Robert Smithson) and non-photographers (e.g., Roland Barthes, Jacque Derrida, Craig Owens, Marcel Proust), as well as interviews with photographers. These "mostly left-brain" texts complement the "half-left-brain, half-right-brain" Works.
   
   If I had to improve anything, I would say to editor Campany and publisher Phaidon only "Lay off the fancy typography, like the 'decreasing font size' effect from page 14 to page 17, and the full-page treatment of brief quotations on pages 221, 226, 235, and 283! While it makes the book visually attractive, it distracts from the book's main messages and wastes space." Buy this excellent book from Amazon.com!

5 comments about Interior Graphic and Design Standards.

1. This book is out-of-date, poorly written, poorly organized, and a complete waste of one's money, time, and effort. The graphics are inconsistent and poorly done, and it is a nightmare trying to make sense of technical information provided by Ms. Reznikoff.
   
   This reference has been eclipsed in light-years by Maryrose McGowan's book "Interior Design Graphic Standards", which is now considered THE reference book of choice and the Gold Standard in its class. Use your money wisely and opt to purchase McGowan's publication instead of this one.



2. This book is a necessary staple for every Interior Designer's book collection



3. I recently purchased this book while taking a Commercial Interior Design course as part of my Interior Design degree. I found the book to be very helpful in many aspects of commercial design and specification. Also, my boss, who is a licensed Interior Designer and has been practicing for about 10 years has a copy of the book that she used while in college; she refers to it as her design reference Bible, haha. Although some of the material (such as codes) may be out of date due to the everchanging laws and standards, overall this book is filled with valuable information. A must-have for all interior designers!



4. A great book for interior designers. Serves as a great refrence. A must add to any library collection!



5. A very informative and usefull book for all designers.