1 comments about First American Art: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection of American Indian Art.

1. The 3 stars are for the superb photography, the impeccable book design, and the exquisite material in the Diker Collection.

   Otherwise, rather meaningless essays that may tickle the ears of some gallery-hopping audience, but they hardly connect with the objects in the collection. If writers have to trouble philosophers such as Hegel or artists such as Kandinsky in footnotes to make their choice of words understood, they probably don't know what they really talk about and hope that no reader will see through the "emperor's new clothes."

   The curators/writers try very, very hard to lift the objects from the "primitive" to the highest levels of "Art writ large" which is a perfectly legitimate goal. But then, a buyer and reader should expect a better and more carefully done documentation, and not one that is full of errors and that lacks almost all important information. Where captions seem too poor and too meagre, they are blown up with meaningless ballyhoo and arty bla-bla.

   Dimensions often are given incorrectly which may be a minor aspect; but it DOES make a difference if a blanket strip is 3 millimeters (0.3 cm) thick or 3 centimeters as given in the book! Another example of careless documentation: Catalogue number 22 on page 78 features a magnificient blanket strip perhaps made by a Nez Perce or Cayuse woman. The yellow rosettes employ the rare technique of horsehair coils wrapped with colored porcupine quills, sewn down to a hide foundation with each wrap of the quills! This important horsehair is not mentioned at all which makes me think that the writer of the captions had no idea of what she was writing about! From the rosettes' centers buckskin thongs hang down, carrying little brass hawk bells. Probably "brass" was too mundane for the writer so she pepped it up to "copper alloy" -- is that the sort of information that should help broaden the viewer's/reader's understanding of American Indian art? No, it does not add one iota more of information than "brass" would do, but this ethnocentric gallery and museum chic arrogance helps to deceive the buyer of this book.

   If you have "Native Paths", the first catalogue that was published about the Diker Collection in 1998 and has a lot of the same photographs, you won't need this book. If you don't have, buy "First American Art" and enjoy the beautiful objects. But you better turn off your inner ears and let not spoil your visual feast by arty and meaningless gobbledygook!

   And let's not forget: the shirts and the moccasins and the bags and the baskets did serve some utiliarian or ceremonial function when they were still owned by their makers -- the Nez Perce boy shirt with the flamboyantly beaded strips and rich fringes, hanging in the stark whiteness of a Bauhaus style living room, can never be pure, functionless art, as a Mark Rothko painting or Calder mobile is. I had a chance to see that boy's shirt in such a setting and it struck me more than any Rothko would!

2 comments about Hot Shoes: One Hundred Years.

1. Having ordered by catalog three copies of this title before it was released, I was truelly disappointed when they arrived. An expensive book, it suffers greatly from amateurish and often out of focus photographs as well as poor design. The photographs are badly set up, with distracting superfluous props which obscure the object of interest - the shoe. Given that this is primarily a picture book rather than a textual history, it is ironic that the photographs are so inferior. Where shoes are modeled, they often appear ill fitting, or are shown in inexplicable full figure shots where you cannot see them well, detracting rather than adding to the allure of what could be fabulous shoes. The inexpensive books on the same subject by Linda O'Keefe or Pattison & Cawthorne stand far above this recent addition .



2. I pretty much agree with the former reviewer. I didn't find the photos to be out of focus, but indeed some of them are shot eg. with such bad lighting and bad composition that they can't be made out at all. Others don't even come close to matching their captions, and the inexplicable big black boxes on several pages are just weird. The neverending use of obscure French terms (some of which aren't even in the glossary) comes off as rather pretentious.

   Why does a book whose cover says "With Values" include so many that are valued as simply "Special"?

No comments about Carnival Glass Collector's Price guide.

No comments about Home Sweet Home: Works From The Peter Fay Collection.

No comments about Collecting American decorative arts and sculpture, 1971-1991 / introduction, Jonathan L. Fairbanks ; contributors, Edward S. Cooke, Jr. ... (Exhibition Catalogue).

1 comments about Affordable Art Deco Graphics (Schiffer Book for Collectors).

1. A very good general overview of Art Deco paper items. The photography is good and the little introductions to each chapter are interesting and informative. (Prices are a little low for the West Coast, though)

No comments about The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine, and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism.

No comments about A Life of Frederick, Prince of Wales, 1707-1751: A Connoisseur of the Arts.

No comments about Original Comic Art: Identification and Price Guide (The confident collector).

No comments about COLLECTING ART.