1 comments about Caravaggio, 1571-1610 (Taschen Basic Art Series).

1. Notorious bad boy of Italian Baroque painting, Caravaggio (1571-1610) is finally getting the recognition he deserves. Though his name may be familiar to all of us, his work has been habitually detested and forced into obscurity. Not only was his theatrical realism unfashionable in his time, but his sacrilegious subject matter and use of lower class models were violently scorned. Caravaggio's great work had the misfortune of enduring centuries of disrepute. It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that he was rediscovered and, quite posthumously, deemed a great master. He is now considered the most important painter of the early Baroque period; without him there would have been no Ribera, Zurburán, Velázquez, Vermeer or Georges de la Tour. Franz Hals, Rembrandt, Delacroix, and Manet would have been different. In this new book you'll find over 50 of Caravaggio's best paintings; we think you'll agree that he was a genius beyond his time.

5 comments about Freaks!: How to Draw Fantastic Fantasy Creatures (Fantastic Fantasy Comics).

1. My son enjoys a lot working with the book. There are a lot of tricks that are helpful when you draw your favorite creatures.



2. ...But NOT for beginner artists:S
   
   The book itself is pretty cool with lots of characters and pretty pictures to look at. That alone, is ALOT of inspiration:)
   
   BUT.... And this is the bad part about the book... I'm not learning much from it:( There are very little hints on HOW to actually draw something. I'm not advanced enough for this book as i need step-by-step guides, wich this book does not contain much of. Sadly:(
   
   It's probably a really great book for the more advanced artists, but i cannot recomend this book for beginner artists like myself... I'm sorry. I also cannot recomend any other books as i haven't bought that many yet. But by all means, if you really WANT this book, the pictures in it makes it worth buying:) Inspiration is also an important part on your way to becoming a master artist:) And besides, the more people who buy it, the bigger the chances gets for a follow-up book:) Wich will probably be better for us non-professionals:p



3. What a great book! I do furry art and needed some pointers on how to draw animal people forms. This is the only book I've ever seen that explains how to do it. Easy and precise instructions on all types of animal people, cats, dogs, turtles, bears, etc. You name it, it is in here. It teaches anatomy and really helped me with animal type legs with three joints. I like Steve's art, but Brett Booth is the master! Book was worth it just to stare at his fabulous characters. Please, please, please, do another book just like this one, but with more cartoon furry type art.



4. When I found this book I was overjoyed at its subject matter and I was soon whisked away by the beautiful pencil and colour renderings of the wonderful anthropomorphic folk. However I was soon placed right back down where I had started and I soon realised that this book hadn't in fact taught me anything as a skilled artist.
   
   This book has huge potential, the subject has massive scope, but this book doesn't. Its woeful attempt at what should be the biggest part of this book, the anatomy (human AND animal), left me feeling like the author had missed the point. I was expecting to be shown some detailed examples of how to build up the shapes of animal faces (a tricky subject), I was expecting to learn how to easily construct paws, claws, fur and scales but they too were all given minimal coverage. Maybe I was expecting too much? Although books like "Drawing & Painting Fantasy Figures" by Cowan manages to meet high expectations and is brimming with ideas.
   
   When you get past the comparable pictures in this book you will find the writing poor and uninformative towards the artwork, and its ability to teach you how and why to draw the characters this way, particularly slack. I would suggest that any amateur artist should fill their head first with knowledge from Hogarth's Anatomy books, and to study and learn how to draw animals as well (which this book remarkably neglects to suggest you do!!) Other than the excellent artwork, which I must compliment, this book was very disappointing.



5. I bought this book and refer to it continually when I need ideas or inspiration. It is not a traditional how to draw book in that there isn't step by step instructions on how to draw each "animal head person" in the book, but guidelines. The expectation, I think, is that the reader will practice putting together the basic shapes and learn from the abundance of illustrations. This would be a good book to pair with another drawing book. A lot of the poses are superhero style.
   
   There isn't a huge focus on basic drawing skills; for younger readers, Lee Hammond covers these well in her drawing books. Older readers might want to check out "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain".

No comments about Painting as Model.

3 comments about Sponge Painting: Fast and Fun Techniques for Creating Beautiful Art.

1. While this may not be a book designed for the serious artist or for artists who prefer a lot of detail in their images it's a great book for collage artists who want quick, easy, and fun backgrounds for their collage work.
   
   Could more effects using a spong be shown? Of course, but this wasn't written for the serious artist but for the hobby artist. At least that is my opinion of the book.



2. It only offered a very few basics. Those were good but nothing that really was worth buying the book.



3. A fun and interesting book. Easy enough for a beginning painter but different enough from the usual brush and palette knife to spark the more advanced artist to try a new technique.

2 comments about Manet and the Painters of Contemporary Life (World of Art).

1. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in Edoard Manet. Although T. J. Clark's masterful THE PAINTING OF MODERN LIFE is the most essential study of Manet in English, it functions better as a theoretical treatise on politics and the philosophy of art than as an introduction to Manet's art. But Clark's work keeps in sight something that Krell's work never achieves: a sense of the overall point of Manet's art.

   I find overall that Krell discussed quite well various specifics in Manet's work. He is especially good at covering at an introductory level many aspects of particular paintings, and was outstanding at articulating the response of Manet's contemporaries to each work. Like many recent art historians, Krell does a great job of informing the reader of where each major work was originally shown. Previous generations of art historians ignored the context for the public debut of paintings, as if all work was created in an ahistorical vortex divorced from the real world.

   What keeps me from giving this book five stars is the lack of any kind of overview of Manet's greater historical significance, and specifically how he helped change the history of art (and change it he certainly did). From reading other works one will learn that Manet was a key figure--in fact, one of the key figures--in moving painting from historical and allegorical subjects to every day subjects. But Krell hardly alludes to this, although its having been the case underlies nearly everything he writes about Manet. There is furthermore absolutely no effort to distinguish Manet from the Impressionists and the painters who followed in his wake. He might cover the way that Manet treats cafe life in contrast to Degas, or he might allude to the fact that Manet rarely painted in plain air unlike the Impressionists, but all in all he does not do an especially good job of explaining what made Manet unique. On the other hand, I found his frequent allusions to the social alienation of the characters in Manet's paintings to be very helpful. Although I was previously familiar with Manet's paintings, I had never before been made aware of the degree to which the various individuals in his paintings fail to interact with one another. Manet emerges not merely as the recorder of social life of his time, but witness to the social alienation inherent in modern life.




2. This book is very brief -- about two hundred pages, but only about one-third of that is text -- but it accomplishes what in my view a book of this sort should do: it makes clear, on an introductory level, why Manet is an important painter and what his innovations were. Many books of this sort dwell on insignificant trivia surrounding the artist and his work, without engaging in any real analysis. This one doesn't do that; the basics of Manet's significance as an artist are made clear. It is also very readable and unpretentious.
   
   Having said that, it does have some flaws. It tends to lose focus toward the end, and to meander somewhat. Discussion of Impressionist artists, ostensibly for purposes of comparison with Manet, seem excessive and tangential at times. And a bit more discussion of Manet's relationship to Realists such as Courbet would have been welcome.
   
   Nevertheless, a worthwhile investment of time and money. Some good reproductions as well.

3 comments about Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings.

1. Help! Someone please refund my money on this book! Better yet...the time I wasted reading it.
   
   Elkins is a fine educator and writer, but this book does not fall into either category. This is 250+words of over-intellectualizing on "why" certain paintings move people to tears.
   
   As a professional painter for over two decades, a former Arts Ambassador for the USIA, as well as a world traveler with a love for art, allow me to save potential readers from wasting $19.95, and to give Prof. Elkins' brain a rest.
   
   "I have seen fabulously created art that does not sell or hold its viewers, and poorly created art that does both. Whether a painting brings you to tears or to purchase, it is because the energy the artist held while creating that work stays in that work forever. If the artist was angry at the world, no matter how perfectly that work may be to the trained eye, its energy will be angry and repel its viewers. Joy, loss, and deep spirituality, when held in the heart during creation, is what will bring a viewer to tears." Uriel Dana



2. This book is beautifully illustrated with paintings by Caravaggio, Greuze, Bellini (Giovanni), Bouts, and Friedrich along with a picture of a chapel designed by Mark Rothko.

   As the blurb states, it is a "strange and wonderful investigation into paintings and the emotions they conjure."

   The book is eloquently written by the author James Elkins who is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has also authored "How To Use Your Eyes" and "What Painting Is".

   This is a highly affecting book and will give hours of pleasure to those discerning readers who have the privilege to read the author's opus.

   Timothy Wingate from OTTAWA CANADA




3. Jame Elkins has written a book that should be in the librairies of schools, art historians, incipient and experienced art lovers. In a winning conversational style of writing Elkins makes the case for subjective response to paintings, both past and present. And in doing so he gives a brief course in at history (he is an art historian, actively teaching) that is less a chronological evaluation of politics and sociology and techniques of painting than it is a survey of how people have responded to paintings through time. His precis: we are in this century prevented from "experiencing" paintings, so immersed are we in swallowing the opinions of scholars and critics and our own spiritual aridity. He examines why certain people are able to cry in their encounter with paintings, others are moved to physiologic reactions, while others speedily walk past image after image in their need to huury past another obligatory check point in claiming cultural awareness. In many ways this is a sad treatise on the fact that we have arrived at a time when we don't embrace our vulnerability, don't admit that something so apparently inanimate as an old master painting - if given the quantity and quality of time to absorb it - can touch inner secret caves and cause us to light up our souls and our existence by responding with unfettered eyes and heart.

   Elkins investigates the various responses (including his own) to the Rothko Chapel, to Giotto, to Renaissance paintings, to the Romantics, to Friedrich, and to Picasso's "Guernica". These are in the form of summation of letters written to him in response to his question "Have you ever cried at paintings?" sent to previous students, art historians, and friends. His findings show that art historians in general have encouraged us to examine paintings as examples of technique, of historical settings, of schools of thought in the past: such academic dissection has replaced the individual response to the visual image. And fortunately for us the author concludes that the visceral response to paintings is more important than the cell of academic cold shelter.

   For those of us who have committed our lives to bridging the gap between the painter and the public, encouraging everyone to go to the museums, galleries, schools, and churches to experience the indefinable majesty of emotional response to art, this little book is a godsend. Buy it, read it slowly, break down your own barriers, open your mind, and you will find validation of your inner artist. This is a "beautiful presence" of an artistic expression and we are indebted to Elkins for his courage in writing it.

No comments about Insects and Flowers: The Art of Maria Sibylla Merian.

2 comments about Hot Pink Flying Saucers and Other Clouds.

1. I thought the idea of this book was interesting, after seeing it on Martha Stewart. I purchased 2. Was quite dissapointed with the size. It was so tiny......This would make a great coffee table hard cover book. It was soft cover and small, could not get the full effect of the photos being that small. All in all, I would not purchase it again for a gift in this format. Pictures were pretty though.



2. Would have been nicer if the format of the book, which is all pictures, had been larger and on a better quality paper stock.

1 comments about Paintings in the Musee d'Orsay.

1. The concept of this book is very good: minimum text - maximum pictures. All art monographs should follow the same principle.
   The book is split into the chapters dealing with dominant artistic trends of the time, and subchapters dedicated to the most important artists within each trend/movement.
   The brief introductory essays are well written and help understand background behind the movements or artistic groups whose most representative works are displayed on the subsequent pages.
   
   If one hasn't seen d'Orsay's magnificent collection in person, they'll be amazed by this lavishly illustrated monograph.
   In most cases there is one plate per page, sometimes two and very seldom three. However, what I don't understand is 2 inches wide margin around the reproductions (???) Why? Why they were not printed at least an inch larger at all sides?
   
   Besides, though even the best repros can't do justice to the original, many pictures could have been much better. Don't get me wrong - majority of reproductions is of good quality, but there are those (I'd say one third of the total number) which are considerably lighter than the originals and/or have rather compressed values - Manet's Olympia being the most obvious example. (I've visited d'Orsay two months ago and the paintings are still vivid in my memory).
   
   However, these remarks shouldn't stop you from purchasing the book, since monsieur Lemoine in this monograph included works of many great but usually neglected artists, those which one can very rarely (or never) see in the books on art of the 19th century. There are enough books on Impressionists to fill all the world's garbage landfills many times over (and thousands upon thousands more are printed every year), yet it is so hard to find one monograph on the likes of Cabanel, Delaunay, Fromentin, Bonnat, Laurens, Carriere, Levy-Dhurmer, Hammershoi etc etc.

5 comments about Harley Brown's Eternal Truths for Every Artist.

1. Mr. Brown's Eternal Truths is the kind of book I have picked up again and again. Not so much for the artistic advice, as for the cheerful inspiration that fills every page. It inspires me to actually head to my art table and begin painting, which is much more than most books. And, most especially, Mr. Brown approaches everything (his paintings, his advice, his life) with humor and joy. A lesson to us all.



2. This book is an amazing compendium of technique infused with insights that will inspire artists to rethink what, why and how they paint. Set up casually with plain talk, it belies the great book design and wonderful artwork. I highly recommend this book to all artists who aspire to do better!



3. Fantastic book, and highly recommended for anyone wanting to get inside the "meat" of an art instructional manual. Harley has a wonderful sense of humor, and an easy way of explaining his procedures. I have read it through cover to cover, and use it to reference repeatedly.
   Next purchase, is Harley's newest book.



4. Brown's book is excellent for intermediate or advanced artists. I think beginners will find it confusing and beyond them (Brown presumes some drawing and painting abilities are in place). His book will help you "bust loose" and get to the next level. His advice and side-comments are entertaining, anti-establishment, anti-artsy-baloney and generally right on! Enjoy.



5. I wish this book had been called, "Eternal Truths for Every Artist Who Works in Two Dimensions." It's about flat art. A very few points are relevant to sculpture, but not many. Could easily have saved the money I spent on this and have NOT earned the purchase price back in increased sales yet.