2 comments about David Hockney Portraits.

1. Generally the portrait images were too small to really study his painting style. That is my only complaint. Interesting stories in the section describing all his sitters, famous or not. What a productive maniac he has been. 41 portraits of his dogs!!!



2. David Hockney is an artist whose works are familiar to everyone, whether from exposure to his many museum shows, his paintings and drawings included in every major survey of contemporary art, to his magical sets for operas such as The Magic Flute, Die Frau Ohne Schatten, The Rake's Progress, Tristan und Isolde, etc.
   
   This current book DAVID HOCKNEY PORTRAITS is, for this reader, the most sensitive presentation of Hockney not only as an artist but also as a tender, feeling, caring human being. The book accompanies an exhibition soon to travel and includes over 250 examples of Hockney's view of his family, himself, his friends - famous and not so famous-, lovers, and pets. The result is a survey of Hockney's people-oriented works over the past fifty years.
   
   Included are early pen and ink drawings from the 1950s, gentle and simple line portraits of his mother and father and himself, and progresses to the development of his large-scale paintings of life size portraits of family, lovers, and self-portraits. Many of the people depicted in these works are no longer alive and there is a sense of memory in some of the works that barely hides Hockney's sadness at their parting.
   
   The book also opens the door to Hockney's experimentation with photography as an art medium, with several of his multiple view Polaroid collages of a single 'sitting' telling more stories than a movie. And after Hockney's excursion into that medium the portraits turn to painting his subjects from life.
   
   Most of the works in this book have been published in other volumes or have become familiar to the public by other means, but it is the curatorial hand that makes his survey so fine and so immediate, a success not easily accomplished with an artist as private as Hockney: the collection is under the encouraging guidance of the artist. This is an excellent overview of a very special artist whose works continue to capture the imagination of viewers and fellow artists alike. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, April 06

No comments about Dore's Dragons, Demons and Monsters (Dover Pictorial Archive Series).

No comments about The World of Ancient Art.

No comments about Cuba Represent!: Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures.

1 comments about Full-Color Picture Sourcebook of Historic Ornament: All 120 Plates from "L'Ornement Polychrome," Series II.

1. When I first looked at this on the Amazon web site I was not sure about getting it because the pages you can see look to be designs from Egypt and I wanted more then that. I sent for it anyway and it has wonderful designs in full color plates from China, Japan, India, Russia, the Renaissance, Medieval jewelry designs and others. It has just a little bit (a few pages) of everything from ancient Egypt to 18th century France.It will be more then helpful in helping me decide what I like. I am sure this will be one of my most used books and as always I am happy with Dover for making it at a price I can afford.

3 comments about The Art of Arts: Rediscovering Painting.

1. Reed: No question, this is an interesting book for us Eyckians and lovers/conservators of old pigments. But for us non-academics/editorialists, it's tough love. It is laborious because of the over-ornamentation with trivia, digressions, and references that physically intrude on, and insinuate the text. It's hard to tell someone far more-educated than I to take a writing course, but there it is. Maybe the exhaustive Teutonic method, exhausting nonetheless.
   The real value for me, ever-trying to portray the ethereal in this dysfunctional digital/photographic world, is the nearly-unique collection of clues and views about how and why the [Flemish Primitives] were able to put us in undiminishing communion with their subjects, to help us backtrack and do the same for ours. As the gangrenous/social/spiritual/artistic wounds of the last century slowly heal, works like Albus's can help artists and artlovers mirror, maybe catalyze, another age of deep empathy for others. So buy this book, put on your best red turban, nibble some Flemish chocolate, and start with your self-portrait, taking the Niederlanders' enormous care to appreciate the beauty of the image, and thus the person, in front of us. This time with just the hint of a smile as the warmth of dawn flows into the studio...



2. This is a book that is required reading for my Renaissance art history class. As such, I approached the book with enthusiasm after initially thumbing through the pages. Visually, it is beautiful. There are many full page color illustrations and interesting typeface. However, I was soon disappointed by her disjointed writing style and over 700 footnotes. I labored through this one, only to find out in the end that she finds contemporary art soul-less and lacking. Her conclusion is disappointing!



3. I have recommended this book to several people and now it is available in paperback! It contains many nuggests of information a traditional oil painter will treasure. For example, the lapis lazuli-based pigment used by Van Eyck in his paintings contained tiny flecks of stone which added richness and sparkle to the paint. It was also irregularly ground and refracts light differently than the modern homogeneous synthetic "ultramarine blue" pigment available today. It was precious in Van Eyck's time, but today lapis lazuli ultramarine is more costly than gold per ounce. Albus devotes much of the book to historical pigments and shares recipes for making them.
   My complaint with the book is that it is a strangely-shaped volume (it is extremely narrow and tall) and is uncomfortable to hold. Still, the early chapters on Van Eyck's paintings and the historical pigments will entice painters interested in effects not possible with modern pigments.

4 comments about Authentic Shirley Temple Paper Dolls and Dresses (Paper Dolls).

1. This beautiful Shirley Temple paper doll and wardrobe is made so much more special because you are holding a piece of cultural history in your hands. Reprinted from a set of 1936 paper dolls, they are exquisite in color and design.
   
   This a must for any Shirley Temple collector or fan. And if you are too young to yet know about America's favorite child star, you will be dazzled by Shirley none the less.!



2. I love the drawings and the color. It is so lifelike.



3. If you love Shirley, the cutest child star, you will definately want this in your collection. This would make a great gift too. I enjoyed this book and the outfits are great. You can dress Shirley in the outfits that you have seen her in. Remember the pink dress? She can wear it forever. Children who are two young for Shirley's time will still enjoy this product. Dress up is always fun to play...this way you don't have to clean up all your clothes from your childs room!



4. If you love Shirley, the cutest child star, you will definately want this in your collection. This would make a great gift too. I enjoyed this book and have read it many of times.

1 comments about Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C.-A.D. 315 (Joan Palevsky Book in Classical Literature).

1. "The glory that was Rome" has become proverbial. But John R. Clarke, a professor of the history of art, argues that the monuments of that glory, like the Arch of Constantine and the portraits of emperors, are not the full story. There was other Roman art, like wall paintings and mosaics, which, especially if they were decorations in ordinary houses in Pompeii, were not previously regarded as art within art history. When Clarke first began studying Roman art, these were objects of study in the everyday life of Romans. This has changed, and "everyday" art of the Romans has become a respected target for academic study, not only for itself but for what it can tell us about the majority of Romans. In _Art in the Lives of Ordinary Romans: Visual Representation and Non-Elite Viewers in Italy, 100 B.C. - A.D. 315_ (University of California Press), Clarke lays out the importance of art made or commissioned by such lowly ones as slaves, former slaves, and freeborn workers. Emperors and the wealthy represented themselves in artwork carrying out official and prestigious practices that would demonstrate their importance. Non-elites tended more to want to depict ordinary acts, working, drinking, even brawling. It isn't surprising that the "unofficial" art could tell us more about daily Roman life.

   Clarke does begin by discussing how non-elites viewed the official art of the emperors, and then proceeds to the art that non-elites produced. There are many examples here of art in domestic shrines, business-advertising, status boasting, and humor-provoking. Clarke speculates, for example, that a painting from Pompeii previously thought to depict a man selling bread is actually a man giving out a bread dole. There is no evidence of commerce; the receivers of the bread are exultant and do not themselves give up money. The painting comes from a small house, not that of an elite citizen. Clarke says that most likely this is the house of a baker who was prosperous, decided that at some point he would give bread away, and wanted to be depicted in his act of charity. Viewers of his painting would have been reminded of the event, and the baker's prestige would have risen. A completely different commemoration of a particular event is the painting from another house of a riot in the Pompeian amphitheater. This depicted a real event arising somehow from hooliganism during games between the home and visiting teams, an event that caused Rome to forbid all gladiatorial shows in Pompeii for ten years. The owner of the house went to the trouble of having an event that might be thought of as shameful commemorated on his walls. Clarke gives evidence, from the placement of the picture and the subject, that the owner was a gladiatorial fan, who honored the gladiators by putting on display a commemoration of a riot held in their honor, perhaps a riot in which he himself took a glorious part. Unlike the citizen who wanted people to remember the honorable act of giving out bread, the fan (and his buddies) liked remembering how the Roman social order could be disrupted.

   Clarke's book is a serious academic tome, complete with scads of footnotes and a huge bibliography. It is, however, written in an engaging style. Clarke is careful to state when he is speculating from incomplete evidence, but even when he does speculate, the evidence is good, and his argument is convincing that art commissioned by these commoners is not a trickled-down version of the works of their betters, but something vibrant and significant to be appreciated on its own. The book is beautifully produced, on glossy paper with, as is fitting, many illustrations. The wealth of the patron, and the skill of the artist, may have put limits upon these works, but they show enormous creative breadth and, in Clarke's interpretations, surprising utility.

No comments about Roman Art In Context: An Anthology.

2 comments about Sotheby's:: The Inside Story.

1. "The venerable Sotheby's auction house and its former chief executive pleaded guilty Thursday to fixing commission prices and fees with rival Christie's, admitting they had ripped off clients for years. Sotheby's, which controls virtually the entire $4 billion worldwide auction market along with Christie's, admitted to an antitrust conspiracy uncovered during a three-year investigation by the Justice Department. Former CEO Diana D. Brooks, the first woman to head a major auction house and one of the most powerful figures in the art world over the past decade, faces up to three years in federal prison when she is sentenced Jan. 5."

   The three paragraphs above were from last weekend's New York Times. If not bringing an end, it will close at least one chapter, and at least give collectors some period of time when they will be treated with respect and integrity. There have been several books about these auction houses and the way they conducted their businesses. Mr. Peter Watson published this book at the end of 1997; perhaps recent events will bring it back into print.

   Mr. Watson's book sparked several stories including a feature on 60 minutes. This specific story relates how Sotheby's routinely broke international law as part of their day-to-day business. Many Countries wish to control art they feel is part of their heritage, and protect archeological sites from being destroyed for the pieces collectors will buy.

   What struck me as I read this book and others on the topic, was the monumental arrogance of those who directed these crimes as a matter of company policy. Their arrogance seemed to stem from the value of what they traded in; they seem to behave as if they were a one of a kind treasure for which the laws did not apply. The only other flaw that matched their arrogance was their judgment. The painting that was illegally smuggled for sale in New York could have been sent legally!

   A woman who may not have been popular with those who had to work for her, was nevertheless one of the more influential persons in the International Art World. Now at the age of 50, instead of enjoying decades of continued success, she will on January 5 head to a Federal Prison where she will stay for years. The saga is not yet over as she insists the Owner of Sotheby's was aware and condoned her actions. If that is the case, a very distinguished businessman will, as he has said, "diligently defend himself".

   This book is not just about art. It is about the greed that allows individuals to conduct themselves without respect for the law, and the heritage of the Countries they blithely destroy. But it needs to be mentioned that without collectors willing to pay whatever the cost of admission to collecting is, are also as guilty as the purveyors. Sotheby's may have "laundered" art, and many buyers may believe they were buying items they had every right to buy. However after reading what I have, the illicit nature of the Art World is part of the appeal. It is at least part of what makes the genre of books involving the theft, the fraudulent reproduction of artwork, and associated crimes so appealing to readers.




2. Long-time art world journalist Peter Watson takes us undercover to follow the trail of illegal excavation, theft, smuggling and trade of unprovenanced antiquities that eventually find their way into the catalogs of the world renowned Sotheby's auction house. This well-documented investigation begins with an undercover effort to illegally export an old master painting by Nogari out of Italy for an upcoming London auction held by Sotheby's to the theft of religious antiquities from a remote village in northern India. With the help of documents kept by an ex-Sotheby's employee and several undercover investigations Peter uncovers the auction house's blatant disregard for the laws protecting antiquities from the appraisers all the way to the top chain of command. This book makes interesting reading for anyone who enjoys reading about real-life international intrigue, smuggling, and unscrupulous business practices.