5 comments about Star Wars: The Magic of Myth (Star Wars).

1. Ms Henderson has taken from many, many sources to present a succinct analysis of myths from the past, works by many scholars, and today's world in order to show the need for all of us to have myths in our lives. Beginning with George Lucas' journey to creating Star Wars, moving into the cultural milieu in which the films were made to the that which the audiences brought and continue to bring, the author gives us the "reasons" for the motivation and then success of the 3 and later 6 movies done by Lucas. The book is well-illustrated with scenes from the movies, storyboards of its development, and art representing other myths, stories and legends of many cultures and times. A fantastic book for anyone looking for the core ideas of Lucas and his greatest work.



2. If you enjoy any of the books by Joseph Campbell and are a Star Wars fan, then this is the book for you. It covers everything from Greek mythology and Zen Buddhism to the Cowboy archetype and the uniforms of World War 2. Most of the artwork is incredible (many pics from the "Art of Star Wars" books), and there are tons of detailed photos from the Smithsonian tour, which I was lucky enough to catch at Houston's Museum of Fine Arts many years ago. I only wish they had waited a few years until the entire Prequel Trilogy was completed before they published this book!



3. Within this book I would say this incredible look into the mix of Mythology, History and Star Wars that I have ever seen. A great companion Book to the "Magic of Myth" exhibit.. and it would make a great companion book to the Joesph Campbell books "The Hero with a Thousand faces and "The Power of Myth."
   
   Basically giving the impression of the origin of the Star Wars Films. How Lucas was influenced with all these ideas and made the films what they are today. How timeless the story really has been. Also available is some of the pre production artwork from the Classic Trilogy.



4. Excellent book with amazing pics of the props and unusual images from the movies from the OT. Fantastic!!



5. If you've been lucky enough to see "The Magic of Myth" in one of its many permutations, this book is a great supplement to and a wonderful reminder of just how cool that exhibit was. If you haven't seen the exhibit, this book is still great to have for it's back-story on the origins of the trilogy.

   I'm not the most well-read person around so it was a lot of fun to learn how Lucas' characters and story were shaped by (or copied from) myths and legends of other times and cultures. Reading this book has led me to explore some of the material that Lucas borrowed from in creating Star Wars. I'm a big SW nut, but it's nice to get my head out of the SW universe and out into other forms of art and literature.

   If you don't feel like reading, this book is also full of GREAT photos from the trilogy.

   I keep this one on the shelf next to Joseph Campbell's "Power of Myth." It is a nice complement to Campbell's book.

No comments about The Painting of Modern Life.

2 comments about Los Caprichos.

1. This book is phenomenal. The only thing I could say against it is it's a bit small, but I believe the images are actual size, so of course there's not much to be done. A good hardcover edition would show these off very well. These Dover art books are a great, cheap way to get access to images like these if you can't commit to a fine edition or, should you be so fortunate, one of the original prints themselves.
   
   Goya one-upped Surrealism, Expressionism, and much more, a hundred years before the fact. These prints take you on a dream journey through some startlingly original imagery that scrutinizes human social engagement with an unsparing eye. Cynical would be too soft a word for some of the images, but somehow it's hard to disagree with Goya's positions. You feel like people were often that empty in Spanish society of the time. And what about today?
   
   As for the formal side, the etchings are technically inventive, uninhibited, masterful, confident, and often understated. Goya is content to let a few lines and a dark mass of aquatint evoke a whole interior, alleyway, or landscape.
   
   In a way, these prints also relate to Edward Gorey, Tim Burton, and many more. In fifty years you'll be able to rack up a new breed of descendents. Their influence, I'm sure, will be timeless.



2. Goya aparently did this book to show how silly the superstitions of the common people were, and still are.

1 comments about Landscape of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art.

1. As is my habit with art books, I leafed through to view the images before reading the text. The bucolic scenes transported me back to a genteel time, when American was young and rich and full of promise.
   
   Which is precisely the dilemma of plantation art. Typically hung in the landscape section of galleries, it reinforces the seductive myth of the Antebellum South as paradise lost. But in reality plantations were slave labor camps, and mostly absent from the paintings are the slaves upon whose labor the plantation rested and who, when depicted at all, are merely quaint accents or contented pets of benevolent masters.
   
   LANDSCAPE OF SLAVERY serves as a companion to a traveling exhibit of the same name organized by the Gibbes Museum of Art and the Carolina Art Association. It explores the complex and incompatible experiences of plantation life represented in works by diverse artists, from picturesque painters such as Thomas Coram through Winslow Homer (who, as Michael D. Harris writes, appears to have been "more sensitive to different notions evoked by the word `plantation'") to Hale Woodruff whose work is full of rage.
   
   All of the essays provide thought-provoking commentary on this complex dynamic. "Picturing the Plantation" provides an overview of the landscape tradition and its idealizing vocabulary, while "Identifying Spaces of Blackness" explores the African aesthetic found in rituals, ceremonies, dance, music and art created by slaves as a means of resistance and survival. "The Most Famous Plantation of All" about the politics and painting of Mount Vernon sent me to the internet where the web site of the Mount Vernon Estate and Gardens offers this rationale for why the Father of Our Country owned human beings:
   
   "George Washington was born into a world in which slavery was accepted."
   
   Of course, the "acceptance" of slavery depended upon one's vantage point. Ditto "nostalgia." I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in American art in general, and Southern history and culture in particular. It will definitely enrich your next visit to the landscape gallery.

5 comments about Dirty Little Drawings: The Queer Men's Erotic Art Workshop.

1. Dirty Little Drawings is a wonderful book full of erotic drawings featuring the male body in every concievable way. The erotic poses are wonderful! If you are considering buying some books of illustrations, some of the artists have books of their own, so you can kind of preview their work to see if you want more.
   
   I would hardly call this a little book, as it weighs in at 322 pages! Also, as you turn the pages over a period of time, you seem to discover more and more little nasty things you missed the first time through...YUM!



2. When purchasing the book, I was not aware of the background of the process of how the artwork was created for a show. Turning the pages of the book is like walking through a gallery. A small portable gallery of Male Erotic Art.



3. Aficionados of male figurative art come in many shapes and sizes; Dirty Littly Drawings will appeal to all of them. For those tired of the same old insipid, slick, hackneyed photo spreads in the stroke mags, Dirty Little Drawings is a welcome departure: this little book will kick-start your libido like a juiced-up set of jumper cables. Even the looser, sketchier, more abstract pieces radiate an intense sexuality, the boldness of their lines and headiness of their colours imbuing the images with more sensuality than most photography can muster. Whether your fascination is for fine art in general, super-charged erotic imagery, or something to "hang over the sofa," this book has something for you.
   
   One of the greatest assets of this collection is its enormous variety of subject matter, styles, and media. In its 320 pages, Dirty Little Drawings houses a stable of 291 images, created by 72 artists, ranging from delicate, slender, coming-of-age youths to improbably muscled and impossibly endowed muscle gods to down-and-dirty leather daddies and their slaves. Dirty Little Drawings also pulls no punches in the action its images depict, with vivid representations of just about every scene imaginable (the only acts missing are those of the yellow- and brown-stripe variety). Providing a point of context, some of the drawings even depict the models in situ, giving the viewer a privileged glimpse into both the Queer Men's Erotic Art Workshop's clandestine, underground lair and the process itself.
   
   In terms of artistic styles, DLD contains a wide range: Max Ernst-ish pen-and-ink caricatures, Old Master-style charcoal and pencil studies, delicate French Academie/Prud'hon-like compositions, Fauvist crayon abstractions, Expressionist/Egon Schiele-inspired watercolours, and photorealistic coloured pencil pieces. Some funky images decorated with metallic ink scrawls even call to mind Keith Haring's work. Although very few of the pieces could be considered masterworks (limited primarily by their requisite small size), the general level of craftsmanship is high, and many of the artists are clearly at the top of their game here.
   
   The majority of the pieces are done on coloured armatures, from delicately hued pastel papers to Bristol board laden with op art-intense acrylics, but the black-and-white images are no less striking. Tai Lin, the artist whose work graces the cover, achieves an incredibly striking, luminescent effect with an extremely limited chromatic palette of pastels on black paper, while Enrico Gomez creates works of sublime sensuality and ethereal vagueness using lines of graphite and charcoal smudges nibbled away by kneaded eraser on cream-coloured Strathmore paper. Other artists, such as Chuck Nitzberg, achieve an extraordinary effect by combing the two methods, working for the most part monochromatically, with a few accents of colour - bright orange cock heads, blazing-red nipples, etc. - to highlight the points of interest. Although oil paint as a medium is absent (canvas loaded with oil paint being too heavy for the exhibition's hanging requirements), some of the pastel images do attain a painterly quality in their play and blending of colour and looseness of strokes.
   
   My only complaints would be that Tai Lin's hauntingly arresting portrait, which graces the cover, is not reproduced anywhere within the book - on the cover, it's obscured by the title and list of artists' names. It also would have been nice if the artists' names were reprinted in list form inside the book as well, along with contact information for purchasing and commissioning purposes - one can only get a complete listing of the artists by combing through the index pages in the back. Also, the lack of page numbers or artist names beneath the full-size images makes it difficult to find one's favourite pieces. While it is arguably preferable to have the reproductions cover the entire page as they do here, thereby increasing their immediacy, it does make it difficult to identify the pieces (an index at the back of the book reprints each as a thumbnail in the order it appears in the book, along with the artist's name, but since the pages are not numbered, the viewer can only approximate where in the book each piece appears based on its order in the index). Finally, while Dirty Little Drawings was clearly created with exceptionally high production values, with a heavy, rock-solid cover and thick, glossy paper stock, the slight sheen on the pages makes it a little difficult to get a clear view of the artwork - one has to tilt the book just so to minimize the glare.
   
   Despite these minor flaws, though, Dirty Little Drawings is an incredibly eye- (and zipper-) opening treasure trove of newcomers to and icons in the gay erotic art scene that perfectly captures the phenomenon that is the Queer Men's Erotic Art Workshop. In purely sensual terms, the book has a satisfying heft to it, the relatively small size makes it feel personal, private, even covetable, the cover and pages have a sumptuous texture (almost naughty, like satin sheets), and the quality of construction and artwork contained therein make it feel like it's worth a good deal more than Amazon is currently charging for it. It makes a great gift...just make sure you get an extra copy to keep for yourself!
   
   (Note: To keep this review short, I have appended it in the Comments section with detailed information about the physical aspects of the book, as well as a brief history of the Queer Men's Erotic Art Workshop and background information on the exhibit from which the book's images were drawn - hope it's of use!)



4. Don't let the compact dimensions of this erotic art book fool you. Inside, each individual page is filled with a stunning slice of erotic imagery. The whole concept of this book is wonderful and exciting in itself...when you look at this art, you can just imagine the atmosphere in the studio where real men posed in these explicit positions, surrounded by a group of artists who splashed across a page their own interpretations of the fantasies frozen before them.



5. The book DIRTY LITTLE DRAWINGS is an artwork in itself. Measuring about 6 1/2" by 6 1/2" it not only contains some superb art but it also serves as a catalogue for a project from a unique event that began in December 2000. Harvey Redding hired an adventuresome model and posed for a group of fourteen artists, each of whom sketched and drew from the model's input 'to expand the boundaries of academic nude figure drawing,' - 'full out, rock hard, unapologetic, sexual posing: nothing held back, nothing sacred.' The result was a collection of gay erotic art that became an exhibition of art works identically sized and priced. The exhibition and sale was so successful that there have been subsequent shows creating a collectors' dream and a new New York art scene.
   
   This book may be small in size, but the artworks are vigorous, erotically charged and visually stunning. They range from simple head portraits to S and M influenced scenes, sex acts, and coupling and solitary pleasures. The variety of art types ranges form the hastily sketched pencil or crayon outline to fastidiously detailed drawings. The quality of the works may vary in degree of craftsmanship, but this selection of richly colorful works has one thing in common: the works are full of sensual energy.
   
   The book and the concept are the work of Harvey Redding, Robert W. Richards, and Rob Hugh Rosen, the three directors of the Queer Men's Erotic Art Workshop in New York. The book is produced with finesse by Bruno Gmunder Verlag Gmbh. This is a fine art collection that started out to be a reaction to academic art. It is a superb little book! Grady Harp, December 07

5 comments about Biltmore Estate: The Most Distinguished Private Place.

1. While excellent new quality at reasonable discount from new at Biltmore gift shop, this book had a little too much construction detail which somewhat redundant of what covered during Biltmore tour and less general information on the Biltmore Estate which would have been more appealing.



2. Biltmore is like some grand Loire Chateaux, that was transplanted in the Smokey Mountains, it is an unusual juxisposition. This book does a nice job getting at the history of this grandest of the Gilded Age Estates and the photographs are vivid, but somehow I felt slightly unsatisfied, maybe it was the lack of exterior photographs of the mansion or maybe it was that the book felt incomplete somehow. I will say that as far as I can tell this is the best book out there at the moment on Biltmore, and it is a nice book, it just somehow does not do this amazing estate justice. I would have like to have seen a more thorough book with more pictures and more comprehensive text, but as it is I still recommend it if you have an interest in this mansion or just Gilded Age splendor in general, but just be aware that this is not the definitive book, that has, alas, yet to be written.



3. This book is a very nice book on the background of the Biltmore Estate, however, I think it should have went a little further and included more photos and information of the other rooms. It was interesting to see shots of the blueprint details, such as the front and back elevation, a shot of the first floor plan (albeit very blurry and almost impossible to read without some knowledge of what rooms exist in the space), and details of the exterior. To be honest I found the same information and more surfing the net. The best book I have found is "A Guide to Biltmore Estate" (1994) by Rachel Carley. Beautiful shots of many interior rooms, floorplans of all 4 levels with many of the rooms included (similar to the brochure given to visitors of Biltmore Estate). Overall this book is good (but fast) reading and I would recommend it to Biltmore fans.



4. I found this book on George Washington Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate in Ashville, North Carolina, to be extremelly through. This book includes sketchs of many of the considered facades for the home, and what their floorplans would have been.

   Pictures of all of the beautiful rooms in the house are included in this publication. Also included are sketchs of the many details of the home, included are the east facade, the Gate House, the gates that set next to the house, the Biltmore Village Church, and sketchs of many of the statues from Biltmore's gardens.

   Also included in this book is the histories of many of the principal players in Biltmore's creation, including Fredrick Law Olmsted the landscape designer, Richard Morris Hunt the arcitect, and of course George Vanderbilt the home's owner.
   Included is many of the landscape designs of Biltmore's gardens, and beautiful pictures of many of them. Pictures of Biltmore's Conservatory are included which sits in Biltmore's Walled Garden, to the north of Biltmore House.

   All in all, this book is great, and a great companion to a day long visit to Biltmore! If you loved Biltmore Estate, you'll love this book, I garentee it!




5. I enjoyed the story, don't get me wrong, but as for the pictures, yes it had numerous colors, but mainly black and white. I was surprised. Even pictures that weren't historic were in black and white.

   When I purchased this book, I had hoped for a good floorplan of the home, instead I got a little sketch that could hardly be read with a magnifying glass.

   Overall, very factual. It makes you realize just what went into the building process. Even if the paragraphs are a little too wordy.

1 comments about Catalog: The Illustrated History of Mail Order Shopping.

1. This is a trip, in all the right ways. It a hoot. It's also a trip down memory lane, a voyage through history and a graphic journey into the heartland of Americana. Ms. Cherry writes with style and wit and the illustrations she has chosen tickle my memory banks. I'm buying extra copies to give as gifts. This book is meant to be shared.

2 comments about Andre Kertesz.

1. I have seen recently some of the master images made by Andre Kertesz at the Paul Getty Museum. The quality and presentation of the images in this book are as close as you can view the original prints. The text in the book effectively illuminates and enhance each image. I strongly recommend this book.



2. This is a superb collection and a true tribute to this incredible photographer.

4 comments about Vermeer and the Delft School (Metropolitan Museum of Art Series).

1. This may not be the book with which to start a Vermeer trek. But it is one to savor mid-way on the journey. And it's a fitting coda for the many books on Vermeer published since the wonderful Washington/The Hague exhibition in 1995-1996. Walter Liedtke comprensivley and colorfully provides context for Vermeer's style, technique, and themes. For all his erudition, however, Liedtke doesn't explain Vermeer's genius, which is sui generis. The combination of painterly skill, scientific observation, poetic insight, and musical/theatrical nuance all seem perfectly coordinated in this Delft Master. That Vermeer made rather extensive use of the camera obscura to inform his work is without doubt (see Philip Steadman's Vermeer's Camera), although Liedtke continues even now to insist he did not. Nonetheless, as Liedtke exhaustively details, Vermeer could not have been Vermeer without the cultural milieu in and around The Netherlands in the seventeenth century.
   
   The quality of the hundreds of illustrations included in the book, especially those which reproduce Vermeer's paintings, is extraodinary; the cover reproduction of Vermeer's Art of Painting is alone worth the price of the volume. Note particularly the pairing of The Girl with a Pearl Earring and the Study of a Young Woman (making a good case for pendant status), as well as perhaps the best reproduction ever of The Girl with a Red Hat (although it is somewhat over-sized).
   
   Liedkte also generously provides a trove of bibliographical citations, more than enough to keep scholars busily productive well into the next generation. No serious study of Vermeer can proceed without reference to this book. Yet, it is a good read for anyone with a reasonably sophisticated knowledge of European history of that era, and will reward amatuer art historians of the Baroque period with its pinball-like associations.
   
   Lovers of Vermeer will make this book a centerpiece in their library, returning to it again and again for information, clarification, and, most of all, aesthetic pleasure. Liedtke's opus is the next best thing to visiting the several handfuls of museums in the USA and Europe that hold Vermeer's 36 known works.



2. Bravo to Walter Liedtke for his sense of humor, see below. The fact that 17 out of 24 did not understand his subtle comments on himself, he did write most of the book, is testimony as to lack of discernment of those who read these reviews. I have heard his lecture on the exhibition and all he says is absolutely true. Actually, his comments on himself are rather modest.



3. Words cannot describe the impact this weighty volume has had on me. From the moment I held it in my trembling hands, I was hooked. The rich, carefully crafted prose is a delight to the eye and the imagination. Its author is undoubtedly a man of breath-taking vision who has reconstructed the 17th-century past with unique skills of research and analysis. His character shines through in every page and the reader cannot help but conjure up in his or her mind a dazzling image of a dark tall handsome curator with beautifully slick and greased black hair, a whiff of moustache, and sparkling gold-rimmed glasses. Every inch a man of learning. I could go on - and I will.



4. This is a catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition "Vermeer and the Delft School" held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, from March 8 to May 27, 2001 and The National Gallery, London, from June 20 to September 16, 2001. It is written by Walter Liedtke, Curator in the Department of European Paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York with contributions from eight other art curators and historians. This is a hefty book reflecting this monumental ehibition which includes 15 of the 35 known works attributed to Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) who spent his entire life in Delft. Other prominent 17th Century artists include Pieter de Hooch, Gerard Houckgeest and one of my favorites, Carel Fabritius, who was killed in a munitions explosion in 1654 at the age of 32. The catalogue is 640 pages containing 526 illustrations with 225 colorplates. The quality of the colorplates is good. The history of Delft and the development of "The Delft School" is thoroughly researched. In addition to the artists mentioned there are many beautiful paintings by artists who are relatively unknown. This is a catalogue where the interested reader will spend the rest of his life perusing. There is much to be mined here. The exhibition is worth a journey.

No comments about The Artist-Gallery Partnership, Third Edition: A Practical Guide to Consigning Art.