4 comments about Mona Lisa: Inside the Painting.

1. I bought this book for art research purposes, to paint my own Mona Lisa perhaps with less cracking :) , but was blown away by the amount of information presented for a single painting, albeit one of the most famous and valuable. You get full information on the support itself (which has shrunk a bit) , the cracks, the pigments and composition, and even the retouching it has undergone due to conservation, or worse, attacks by vandals. There are photos of the painting in various wavelengths of light, including infrared, uv, radiograph, and more. This is combined with digital analysis in various forms, showing the topography of the support, cracking and other. In between all this are very fine views of a painting which is usually found shown elsewhere as badly lit or overly contrasty.
   
   The book is very high quality and large enough to almost feel as if it is large as the actual Mona Lisa. There is only one flaw I feel which is mentioned by another reviewer and that is the lack of a digitally 'restored' version of the painting with the varnish removed and colors enhanced to their likely original appearance. The example at the author's site is too small and mostly useless for reference or just basic viewing on today's monitors. I would hope that any future edition of this includes such a final work, as it would reveal the original in a new splendor, and give yet more purpose to all the work and photography that is this book. Despite the omission currently, this is a great book you should be glad to own, and you can't beat the price.



2. This oversized coffee table book will delight all art lovers, particularly those who are into art history and restoration.
   It deserves 6 stars, actually, but I gave it 4 because for some reason authors chosed not to include Mona Lisa photo with digitally removed varnish. It can be seen on this link
   http://www.lumiere-technology.com/Pages/News/news3.htm
   and I had hoped that this book will feature it also, since one of the main advantages of this new technology is virtual removal of darkened varnish without touching or damaging the paintings.
   However, there is LOT of photos and large closeups in this book and I would recommend it to everyone interested in visual arts in general and Leonardo and renaissance painting in particular.



3. This book is absolutely a must-have for any fan of the Mona Lisa. The scientific breakdown of the painting, the intricate images and graphs, the descriptions of the colors and form all combine to create a intriguing and gripping look at one of the world's most famous paintings. If you are fascinated by art restoration and the use of technology to analyse paintings then this book is an essential resource, but even a casual dabbler like me will find hours of entertainment within its pages. Everyone who has opened the book at my house "just to see" has been lost to the party, and several have picked up their own copies for more in-depth perusal.



4. There's no other word for it: simply fabulous! Any art historian, student or just anyone interested in Leonardo's paintings will want to have this wonderful work. It peels away layers of varnish and paint like an onion and reveals Leonardo's technique in all its wonders.

2 comments about Scrimshaw: The Whaler's Legacy.

1. This book is beautiful. The quality of the printing, paper, photos, etc., are all outstanding. There are fine pictures of an old whaling ship. Then there are some nice pictures of some buildings in New England. There are lots of pictures of carvings, inlays and tools made of ivory and bone. And finally there are some pictures of scrimshaw.
   
   Most of the scrimshaw represented is that of whalers, sailors or folks scrimshanding in the era when whaling was a major industry. Then there are a few pictures of some beautiful work done in modern times. There is a scanty and almost passing glance at the tools and technique of the various scrimshanders.
   
   The photos of scrimshaw in the book show something of a history or evolution of the art form. For instance, the sailor who indulged in scrimshaw used the tools and materials available to him. The actual etching of the image was typically done by making scratches or even cutting in lines. The use of stippling was not unknown as a technique, but was apparently not used extensively. I run the risk of being considered a bit sniffy when I show my preference for works done almost exclusively by stippling. I just think it looks better. But I am willing to consider other techniques, and a sampling of a range of techniques is what I had hoped for, but did not find, in this book.
   
   Maybe the author is among the 'purists' who feel the art must be done on ivory or bone to qualify as scrimshaw. Since the use of those materials has become illegal (and some think immoral) there has been a lot of fine work done on alternative ivory-like substances and I think it a shame not to represent it as scrimshaw. I ask why the 'purist' does not make the same distinction when it comes to the pigments used which range from lamp black, rust, ink, paint and even shoe polish.
   
   Although the author does not claim that the subject must be nautical to qualify as being scrimshaw, the array of examples given do convey that impression. I for one will roll up my sleeves, spit on my hands, and prepare to do battle with anyone suggesting that my deer, elk, eagle and portrait of Napoleon are not legitimate scrimshaw.
   
   I am not a collector and I do not sell my work. What I had hoped for in this book was a broader representation of styles and techniques of a variety of scrimshanders. I could care less about what collectors want or are willing to pay for.
   
   It's a very nice book to decorate a coffee table.



2. This book covers it all! With over 400 beautiful color photographs, meticulous research, and chapters covering a broad spectrum of topics, Martha Lawrence's book makes fascinating reading. Every aspect of the art of scrimshaw is covered: whaling ships (with wonderful photos onboard the Charles W. Morgan), the process of scrimming, the tools used, whale's teeth, scrimshaw in the home, themes and techniques, and modern day artists. Highly recommended!

No comments about Munakata Shiko: Japanese Master of the Modern Print.

2 comments about Fallen Angels: Paintings by Jack Vettriano.

1. For people that love Vetttriano, any book which exhibits his paintings is appreciated. This one does more; it's a compendium of paintings with stories and poems that complement and paint word pictures to go along with his film noir vision of the world. I didn't give this a Five Star rating for two reasons: The small format does no justice to the paintings, which seeem claustrophobic in this size, and the selection of paintings featured did not exhibit any of his less seen works. Quite worth the money, but it could have been so much more...



2. This book is a must for any one who enjoys Jack Vettriano's paintings. It includes around 40 reproductions of his paintings, including the famous 'The Singing Butler'. (Did you know that this painting is the World's favourite poster ?) To add to the images are stories, poetry, and song lyrics written by a host of Scottish writers. Vettriano's upbringing in the Italian quarter of Glasgow is very evident and really adds to the mood of his paintings. It works as a coffee table book, and for those who want to understand the culture that Vettriano identifies with. My only complaint is that it is a small paperback, and screams out to be a large hardback edition, but at its current price is an absolute bargain.

No comments about Patio and Pavilion: The Place of Sculpture in Modern Architecture (Getty).

5 comments about Seeking Truth: Living With Doubt.

1. I had hoped for better. The two authors of this book, Steven Fortney, a gifted writer, and Marshall Onellion, a highly respected physicist, are quite obviously both men who share a passion for the truth and a healthy skepticism regarding ideological thinking. Their work promises and promotes conversation among three human disciplines that all search for meaning and truth: Science, Art and Religion. The proposal and the title of the work itself promise much.
   There is much in the book that is thoughtful and thought provoking.
   The authors ask that devotees in each of the truth-seeking disciplines they name be open to those in the other disciplines and exercise healthy skepticism -- doubt -- about their own preconceptions and prejudices -- certainly wise advice. They offer paradigms from which each can consider the connections to the other. They offer visions of mutual understanding and hope.
   All of these are worthy and worth while and of obvious interest to the authors and to readers.
   However there is even more in the book that is simply not clearly thought out and provocative.
   An essentialist analysis of what they call the "Levantine Religions" (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) was, by the nature of such an approach highly inaccurate. They could have benefited from input from a historian or a theologian. The Christianity, for instance, they describe is one that I have not encountered. They would have benefited from a differentiation between "Doctrinal" and "Doctrinaire", between "Idealistic" and "Idealogical", between "Dogma" and "Dogmatic". They appear to regard most theistic religions as simply ipso facto false, thus dismissing at least half of their possible readership. More often than would be wise, sarcasm and reductionism are employed in their dealing with the 'Levantine Religions.' While they do allow for the mystical strains in each, their clear preference is that these things be, finally, freed from their theistic chains.
   I was disappointed. These men could have done better. I hope they consider the possibility of a rewrite and look at their own dismissal of theistic faith with the same healthy doubt they ask of the reader. What could have been a valuable book for those within and outside of the faith communities, most unfortunately, would more likely be used to reinforce the prejudices of each side regarding the other.



2. In true academic form, Fortney and Onellion compare and contrast three major routes that people use to understand the world: Religion, Science, and the Arts. With religion they focus on the dogmatic western religions meaning Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Those religions are seen as old and invalid ways to find truth and real understanding. On the other hand Eastern and mystic style religions which focus on self-awareness are praised for their expansion of the human mind and their ability to help lead individuals towards an enlightened understanding. As for the sciences and art, the book focuses less on the specifics of their subgroups and doctrine but generalizes the similar goals of finding meaning or truth as oppose to discovering simple facts.
   
   The themed chapters of Seeking Truth Living With Doubt begin by breaking up the history and basis of the different ways to seek truth and what is the guiding principle behind their goals. They continue on to the areas where they all search for truth, i.e. mind and body, the world, and consciousness. The book concludes with a look at the social impact and the outlook for the future for these paths to understanding.
   
   My one caution of the book is to those members of those aforementioned religions who lead a faith based life. To discount dogmatic religions as a valid path to understanding contradicts the open minded point of the book, to not discount different ways to understand the world. Not to say that Seeking Truth Living With Doubt discounts the idea of absolute truth but perpetuates the belief that we have not yet found it.
   
   This book is praise to independence of thought and those who base their life around their own abilities and strive to improve their lives and minds with their own wisdom. This book is meant for students especially for the younger crowd, this book reads much like option reading for an undergrad Religion class. It asks more questions than it answers. I would recommend this book to anyone who believes that the human heart, not a doctrine, contains the path to understanding and ultimate truth.



3. Seeking Truth: Living With Doubt, examines the human nature to seek truth, the human nature to ask, "why?". The way in which people seek truth is broadly broken into science, dogmatic religion, introspective religion and art. All of these approaches are explored in surprising detail with great examples of each of their successes and failures. The underlying premise, which is well-illustrated, is that all ways have failures which tend to be more catastrophic when people follow one particular system without questioning it. This book has great depth which represents the authors' combined knowledge; all of the examples are well-documented with an exhaustively complete set of references and informative appendices. The depth of this book prevents it from being a quick read, but it is well written and reading it is a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I would recommend this book to anyone that is concerned about religion, science, and their impact on humanity. This book not only provides a fresh take on this debate but it also introduces examples of problems that we will face in the 21st century to illustrate why this debate is important.



4. Bertrand Russell says in one his essays that the capacity for
   doubt is one of the traits he most admires in human beings. For a person
   like me who was taught in Catholic schools that faith is a virtue and doubt is a
   sin, that sentence came as a revelation. I read it 35 years ago,
   and it has retained its resonance through the years - my favorite
   apostle has always been doubting Thomas.
   
   Seeking Truth, Living with Doubt, by Fortney and Onellion, is the first
   book I have read that takes doubt as its single central theme. There
   are certainly other works that come close, Popper's The Open Society, for
   example, and Hoffer's The True Believer. (In fact this book is the obverse of
   The True Believer, in a way.) But Seeking Truth, Living with Doubt is the first book I
   have seen that makes the argument, as broadly as possible, that doubt
   is good, that all authentic efforts to find truth will always involve
   doubt, and that doubt is the characteristic that, across religion, science,
   and art, is the only clear signature of honest striving for insight
   into the world. Following from this is the idea that ethical behavior
   is connected with doubt: the humility associated with doubt spills over
   into right conduct, while the arrogance associated with faith leads
   to an indifference to the sufferings of others.
   
   The role of doubt in science is not that complicated, it seems to me.
   Knowledge in science may be thought of as three concentric circles with
   doubt increasing as we go out from the center. The innermost circle
   contains those truths of which we are quite certain: the sun will come up
   tomorrow, natural selection drives evolution. Just beyond that are the
   topics of current research. It contains not certain truths but hypotheses:
   dark matter consists of weakly interacting massive particles, cloud formation
   will significantly slow global warming. Varying degrees of doubt attach
   to all such hypotheses. In the outer circle is ignorance: what happened
   before the Big Bang?, what is the organism that would result from an arbitrary
   base pair sequence of DNA? We just have no idea.
   
   The point that Fortney and Onellion rightly make is that working
   scientists (such as Onellion) inhabit the intermediate zone and
   thus live constantly with doubt. In this way scientific
   discovery is intimately and necessarily associated with doubt, and
   all great scientists acknowledge this.
   
   The role of doubt in religion is of course much more contentious. If truth is
   revealed by God, not discovered, then what use has doubt once the
   revelation has been recognized by the individual? The answer to this
   question in Christianity has been an uneasy and often-violated truce
   between reason and faith since the 17th century. One of the best parts
   of Living with Doubt is the description of the corresponding situations in Judaism, where
   doubt and flexibilty in faith are more tolerated than in Christianity,
   and in Islam, where doubt is less tolerated. The authors point out
   the consequences: Israel is a remarkably productive country in the sciences;
   the Islamic countries are remarkably unproductive.
   
   Fortney and Onellion give a way to reconcile faith and reason:
   reject doctrinal religion and embrace mystical religion. In their view,
   mysticism and doubt are perfectly compatible, and they give strong arguments
   in support. They further assert that doctrine and reliance on
   'inerrant' texts is not compatible with doubt. I won't comment here,
   except to say that this seems to me to be a rather original, persuasive,
   and certainly very simple solution to one of the central intellectual
   conflicts in Western culture.
   
   The book has the virtue that, in this respect, it goes beyond Western culture.
   Buddhism is a religion that relies more heavily on mystical insight than do the
   three monotheistic religions above. Fortney is a Buddhist (or atleast is
   Buddhist-influenced) and is able to make the comparison. The assertion is that
   doubt is regarded as almost natural in Buddhism and the conflict of faith and
   reason is not felt as sharply as it is in the West.
   
   Lastly, the role of doubt in art is treated fully. I enjoyed this
   part of the book since it contained juxtapositions of ideas that had
   never occurred to me at all. The claim is that doubt is an essential
   component of artistic insight. I was not 100% convinced by this. The
   romantic conception of the artist as outsider suggests that the argument
   is right, but that is not the only kind of artist. I can see the works
   of Picasso as arising partially from doubt, but what about the cathedral
   at Chartres? In any case, the sections on art were one of the most
   stimulating parts of the book, and contained many ideas that deserve
   further development.
   
   The organization of the book is loose - rather than trying to make
   a single coherent argument, the authors have put together a collection
   of short essays, anecdotes, arguments, observations, and ancillary material
   (there are 22 appendices!). This is perhaps a consequence of the book
   being a collaboration rather than a single-author book. I found this
   format to be rather refreshing, and it is certainly one reasonable way
   to treat such a huge topic in a short 300-odd pages. If I have a
   criticism of the book, however, it is that there are digressions in which
   this reader lost the thread.
   
   All in all, there is much that is original and valuable in Living with Doubt
   and most readers would benefit from spending a little time with these two
   Thomases.
   
   
   



5. To my mind this book constitutes a valuable part of the on-going science vs. religion debate. Its central thesis is that rational inquiry and mystical (though not conventional) religion, with an assist from creative artistic endeavor, are closely allied in their essential empiricism, as well as in other ways. This is a novel, provocative and useful contribution to the current discussion. The breadth of knowledge behind the thesis is truly mind-boggling, and the lists of readings and references provided by the authors offer interested parties several lifetimes' worth of additional research.
   
   "Seeking Truth" analyzes the insights of science, mathematics, art, and religion concerning the highest realities. That topic will not be explored again in the depth achieved in this volume for quite some time. The authors made the right decision to enter deeply into certain sub-topics by way of appendices. For me, these were a vital part of the book, and I feel it could be recommended based on their strength alone.
   
   I admire Fortney and Onellion for the new twist they give to the modern notion that conventional religion and science are not compatible. But despite their impressive bibliography and the passion of their argument, they did not convince me. Many people live quite comfortably with both, and in the last analysis, it is perhaps only extremists (of all stripes) who cannot.
   
   While I was reading "Seeking Truth," I was also reading "Finding Darwin's God" by Brown University biologist Kenneth R. Miller. He is a devout Catholic without (he feels) compromising his scientific credentials in the least and, to be honest, I think the two books argued one another more or less to a draw.
   
   But you should decide for yourself. Expect to find in "Seeking Truth" both a bracing new addition to a long-standing debate about which Darwin himself felt terribly conflicted as well as a challenging call to do some deep thinking of your own about a difficult and vitally important topic.

No comments about Sudden and Solitary: Mount Shasta and Its Artistic Legacy 1841-2008.

No comments about Drawing: Wildlife with Gene Franks (HT231).

5 comments about Max Ernst: A Retrospective (Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications).

1. Max Ernst was always one of those painters who resided on the periphery of my consciousness, who I never bothered to fully investigate. Probably because I put him, mistakenly, in the same category as Magritte, a painter who I know was important in the annals of art history but didn't reach me on a visceral level. As I am interested in art and artists in general I had the "Max Ernst" DVD on my Netflix list and one Sunday afternoon, having nothing better to do, I decided to watch it. I immediately fell in love with his paintings and was fascinated by his life. I searched Amazon and this book seemed to contain the best representation of his work. I was a little disconcerted with some of the reviews regarding the quality of the images. But as another reviewer stated, images in a book will never match the original art. As I have not, unfortunately, seen too many any of his paintings up close and personal this is not a problem for me. I find the quality to be quite adequate. Since acquiring the book it has become bedtime reading for me and I am thoroughly enjoying it. The first half of the book is an overview of his life and work, the second half is the catalog of the exhibit.



2. The reproductions in this book are every bit as good as those in a similarly-priced volume from Thames & Hudson (isbn 978-0500976586) in terms of color fidelity, and far superior terms of selection and size. Additionally, reproductions are much better than in cheaper volumes from Taschen (978-3822813881) and Phaidon (978-0714828664). Maybe the reproductions in the monumental Oeuvre Katalog are superior, but at $2500 most of us will never aspire to own a copy.
   
   Don't let other reviewer's gripes about color fidelity dissuade you from owning this marvelous volume.



3. This book is the most comprehensive collection of Max Ernst work. Having read the other reviews, I was concerned the print quality would be less than stellar. I find the print quality and color reproduction to be fine. No art book ever captures the full impact of the actual art, and color correction is one of the more problematic aspects of printing. MOMA and the Yale University did a good job with this book. This is a good collection of work and I wouldn't hesitate buying it again.



4. I just saw the retrospective a couple of weeks ago as well and agree with the other reviewers: the exhibition is great, but the quality of the plates in the catalog is miserable.



5. Having just seen the exhibit today (June 6 2005), and having perused copies of the book available at the exhibit, I concur that the color reproduction negates the highly informative text of this book.

1 comments about The Fantasy World of Josephine Wall.

1. I love the artwork, and I can think of multiple stories to go with the pictures. You can look at these for AGES and not get bored.