1 comments about Challenging Graph Art.

1. Order came on time and in the condition stated/

4 comments about Selling Art 101: The Art of Creative Selling (101).

1. SELLING ART 101: THE ART OF CREATIVE SELLING deserves ongoing recommendation as one of the few art marketing titles to cover all the details needed to sell art. What differentiates this from other 'how to sell titles'? Chapters cover studio selling, topics specific to appealing to art buyers, taking notes during conversations discussing needs, and more, offering sidebars of first-person insights to supplement art-specific selling ideas.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



2. This book was a total disappointment. The information provided was very basic and contained information most people should already be aware of. I would have returned the book had the price not been so low. I imagine the author simply sat down one afternoon, for an hour, and wrote it when he nothing else to do. I read it in less time and threw it in the trash.



3. Robert Dvorak's insights into selling art are not bad, but not new, either. Much of what is in this book repeats "tried and true" techniques for artists interested in making contacts, extending visibility and taking advantages of opportunities.
   
   However, effective marketing is not the same thing as selling. Marketing involves a thoughful understanding of your core purpose, a sense of values, and a sense of precisely what the intended consumer of your product might reasonably expect to get from your work.
   
   In this case, very little is said about this necessary activity. Instead, much is assumed about the artist's self-knowledge as it relates to whoever might buy the work, and this assumption is not the most effective.
   
   It's a good book, but there is still a great, gaping need for more in this field - where sales and marketing might still be perceived as "evil."



4. if you gotta play the biz game, then this one is worth reading...for those of you who already have your medici's, hats off to you...

4 comments about Counterpoints: 25 Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts.

1. The New Criterion is the most highbrow of conservative publications and one of the most intellectually rewarding and in these pages only the best of their best is on display; for the mind this is an inspiring feast. A myriad of themes are developed but the one most ubiquitous is that western civilization is in serious decline and it is impossible to know how much further it will deteriorate. In 2007, the radicals are no longer at the gates; they have melted them down and turned them into loud speakers. They have tainted the west's intellectual inheritance with one of their many interlocking isms, and the young have been persuaded that war, slavery, and dehumanization are our main cultural achievements.
   
   It is here, upon a blistering and torrid battlefield, that The New Criterion asserts itself. Their purpose is in keeping the immortal words of George Santayana that "the best men in all ages keep classic traditions alive." A standard motif of every issue is to rehabilitate verboten cerebrals or those who do not fit into the sound byte parameters of our society. This volume resurrects a great many figures. The title of a composition by Brooke Allen asks "Who Was Simon Raven?" but readers will no cause to echo her after once they are finished. The same can be said of other unfashionable personages like John Buchan, Leigh Fermor, Milton Avery, F.R. Leavis, and Donald Francis Tovey.
   
   Every person and idea that the journal places into our consciousness acts as a partial antidote to the neurotoxin of political correctness, and builds an infrastructure upon which we can better understand our world. Nowadays, unfortunately, truth exists almost entirely outside the purview of the race, class, and sex Commissars infesting our universities.The New Criterion does more than commemorate and enshrine. It also counterattacks which it does in an entertaining and lethal fashion. Its artful and erudite tone does not diminish its impact. This should not surprise us as Evander Holyfield also fought like a gentleman, but woe to the fool who stepped into one of his combinations.
   
   In these days of insane educational inflation, the most important question to ask in regards to this book is how many college courses is it worth? Five? Ten? Fifteen? I guess the answer depends on the particular university and how "engaged" their professors happen to be. When the search for truth has been abandoned and truth itself has been demoted to one of many competing "perspectives," the fruit of this journal is one of the few ways in which the young can discern veritas.



2. Twenty-five years ago The New Criterion set out to challenge the orthodoxies current among the gibbering classes. Counterpoints is a collection of the journal's choicest essays and reviews dedicated to that end.
   
   Fifty years from now this volume will be read as an indispensable primary source for the cultural history of our times. My hope is that some future historian will compile a companion volume of the most drivelsome reviews and essays published in the leading orthodox organs of the same period. To be done properly, this companion work would have to stretch back at least far enough to incorporates such forgotten capi di lavoro as The Greening of America, since the imbecilities of the last twenty-five years evolved well before The New Criterion began its work.
   
   The editor of the proposed compilation will have to burrow laboriously into a huge midden heap of discarded intellectual trash. Happily we can dispense with such grimy and sordid sifting. This collection provides a more than adequate overview of the cultural pathologies of our times, and does so elegantly. There is not one awkward or obscure sentence in its 484 pages, and a good many gems of critical panache and wit.
   
   Its most satisfying feature is the way it combines demolition and affirmation.



3. The New Criterion, Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball's journal of culture and the arts, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. To commemorate the occasion, Kramer and Kimball have put out a new anthology of essays from the magazine, Counterpoints. This is not a work of poetry, but in fulfilling Horace's dictum it is both delightful and instructive.
   
   The aim of The New Criterion, the editors tell us in their short introduction, paraphrasing Eliot, is to "foster common concern for the highest standards of both thought and expression" and to "discharge `our common responsibility...to preserve our common culture uncontaminated by political influences.'" In an era when Western culture is constantly under attack from within by relativists and from without by recidivists, and art has descended to little more than political propaganda by other means, this mission is more important than ever. The essays chosen for inclusion in this volume distill TNC's work splendidly.
   
   Most of the great political issues of the past quarter century are discussed in Counterpoints. Are you concerned about Islamic jihadists? Read Mark Steyn on demography and David Fromkin on Turkey. Has immigration got your goat? Roger Scruton examines Enoch Powell, the British politician whose career was lost when he riled up an early PC mob. Care to revisit the Cold War? Roger Kimball and David Prcye-Jones discuss the gulag and the West's useful idiots, respectively. Keith Windschuttle battles anti-Americanism by exposing the hypocrisy of Noam Chomsky and Mordecai Richler shows us the rest of the world's warts with Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad. The academic left is excoriated in Heather Mac Donald's examination of the Smithsonian institution and James Franklin's essay on scientific irrationalism, while Robert Bork decries the judicial power-grab in this country. And there's more.
   
   Much more than just politics is discussed, however. The New Criterion's culture warriors also do battle on the artistic plains. The poetry of Frost, Eliot, and the New York School is considered, as well as the criticism of Yvor Winters and F.R. Leavis. The writing of Simon Raven, Paul Valery and Lord Acton is lauded while Ralph Waldo Emerson and French writer Michel Houellebecq come in for some harsh treatment. There are essays on art (though not as many as you might expect from a New Criterion anthology), music, the theater, dance, and even architecture. Theodore Dalrymple's examination of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and its possible effect on our society is a particular pleasure.
   
   I found this collection enormously edifying, and the only very small quibble I might make is that none of James Bowman's excellent media criticism or Jay Nordlinger's writing on music found its way into the volume. Still, Counterpoints has a little something for everyone. It can be enjoyed in its entirety or taken off the bookshelf to lightly read an essay or two. Recommended.



4. COUNTERPOINTS: The New Criterion celebrates its 25th anniversary with this collection of essays by some of the most influential critics in the English language.
   The mere fact that a conservative journal of cultural criticism not only survives but thrives after 25 years should earn The New Criterion first place in the pantheon of great achievements. After all, TS Eliot's Criterion survived only 17 years in a much friendlier cultural milieu. Separating beauty from dross, right from wrong, good from evil has been the forte of TNC. This is not an easy accomplishment in a culture where "anything goes".
   The monthly arrival of the journal brings anticipation, excitement, and obligation. It is not possible to read these articles without a sense that something has been amiss in one's education. Regular readers know the responsibility felt after a new edition introduces them to authors and artists and controversies which, if not unknown to the reader, were at least unappreciated. Thus the obligation...to read more, to learn more and thus savor life more fully.
   Above all, this sort of criticism requires judgement...a philosophy that some things are indeed better than others and it is the former that should be promoted and the latter identified and decried. The contributors are the kind of people with whom one would want to share a glass of port: Mark Steyn, Robert Bork, David Pryce Jones, Roger Scruton, Heather MacDonald. Joseph Epstein, Theodore Dalrymple, Gertrude Himmelfarb. The best and the brightest of our time. Hilton Kramer and Roger Kimball are to be congratulated for their editorship of this excellent journal. And all of us should buy this book, pull a chair up to the fire, and sip that port.

No comments about Looking At Art (Trade Version).

5 comments about The Art of Spirited Away.

1. I purchased this book thinking that it would include detailed sketches and concepts for the creation of Spirited Away. While, the book did have these elements it had far fewer than one might suspect from the cover. In fact most of the art work were stills from the movie.
   
   
   Which, to me came as a great disappointment. If I wanted to see the final art of the movie I would watch the movie. Buy this book if you really love the quality of the animated scenes. Don't buy this if you feel you can gain great insight into how it was made.



2. This book is beyond amazing! I love the "Spirited Away" movie and the art in this book is gorgeous and the screen clips are beautiful. Once I decided to purchase this I also picked up the "Spirited Away" soundtrack. This is a must have if you are a true Miyazaki film fan or even just a big fan of the movie itself!



3. It's Hayao Miyazaki again. What can I say. One of the most amazing animated film ever. And book explores so much of the movie. Amazing learning and reference book. Every animation/comic lover must have it.



4. The reson why I purchased this book is because of the art inside. It brought me back to the movie Spirited Away.. I ordered the book with a hardcover.. That's nice to have. The product is such fine quality. I am proud to have it and share the Art of Miyazaki with others. I know more about Miyazaki after purchasing this book.



5. i dont know what to say aside from the fact that miyazakisan is an incredible artist/storyboard creator. and bravo to everyone at studio ghibli

No comments about The Prentice Hall Rock and Roll Compilation: Volume 1.

1 comments about The Art of Rebellion 2: World of Urban Art Activism.

1. it is a great book to check what is going on in the street

No comments about Art and Science of William Bartram.

5 comments about Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh.

1. The value of Van Gogh's letters is not disputed. More the pity that the publisher of THIS edition chose to put these three volumes together the same as a mass market paperback, pages just glued in. There are no longer any color illustrations. All the many drawings are reproduced in poor quality, worse than a Xerox machine. Buy a used 1st edition instead.



2. I first read this set back in the late 1980s while in college, and I've long wanted to own a set for myself. With the recent discovery of a possible actual portrait photograph of him, I happily purchased a set to refresh my knowledge of van Gogh, who has long been my favorite artist. This collection is unique in the art world, starting when he was about 17 -- well before he started on his career as a painter -- and continues on until his death. It offers an infinitely fascinating peek into his motivations and his thought process.
   
   It is also infinitely heartbreaking to read, since, as all personal letters, van Gogh never conceived of having such fame that all his personal thoughts to his beloved brother would be seen and read by people all over the world. Reading such things as Vincent asking Theo for some money so he can buy some new underwear, because his current set is falling apart, makes me feel like an eavesdropper -- how hard it must have been for him to write it, and how embarassed he would feel to know others can read it so easily. Such inimate things happen over and over again in this collection.
   
   If you are fascinated by the creative process, by van Gogh, or are a student of art history, this collection is for you. It is a testament to Theo's belief in his brother that he saved all these letters, and that he helped fund his brother's passion for painting for ten years. This collection is beautiful, and well worth the price.



3. These are "THE" books to read by anyone who truly wants to know Vincent. He writes about his life and the people in it in great detail, and writes about his thoughts and desires on almost every imaginable subject. These books are a treasure to own.



4. Other Amazon reviewers have related to the three volume complete letters, with introduction and memoir. I will relate only to the letters of Van Gogh themselves , and that portion of them which I have read. They are surely one of the great documents for anyone interested in the connection between literary and artistic creation. They certainly too are a moving and frightening document of the inner life of a tremendously tormented soul and great artist. There is aside from this focus on Vincent the feeling given in the correspondance of what a considerate, helpful, wonderful brother he had . Just to listen to the rantings of a madman genius which often tend to repeat themselves and which however brilliant must often upset and throw one off one's equilibrium, is a great act of kindness. The friendship of the brothers is a great theme of this work. As for Van Gogh how tormented his soul how rich his creation.Those wavy lines those deeply clear eyes seem to express a kind of horror and fear no other artist can match.



5. This beautiful set of Van Gogh's letters starts with an introduction by his nephew (Theo's son) and a biography of Vincent Van Gogh by his sister-in-law , Theo's widow. It is a special set of books. The boxed set is very beautiful and I have it on display in my living room. I was fortunate enough to have seen the Van Gogh exhibit in Amsterdam ..., (and to have seen the Van Gogh exhibit when it came to the U.S. over 30 years ago. ...). I feel the artist's extraordinary family did so much to bring his art and writing to us, including this lovely book set. I thought the ... price was most reasonable considering what I got, and it made my trip to Holland even more special!

2 comments about 50 Artists You Should Know (50 You Should Know).

1. Presented chronologically and covering the last 700+ years, this book focuses exclusively on painters from Europe and the US, so those interested in non-Western artists (e.g., Hokusai) or other forms of art (e.g., sculpture, pottery, etc.) should look elsewhere. Each of the 50 artists is granted a 4-page layout, with the first left page being prints of the artist's most well-known paintings and the right facing page a written description of the artist, along with a small portrait of the artist. The following two pages have either a larger two-page spread of a single painting or a couple of smaller photos. While the chosen paintings are representative of the artist's most famous works, the written descriptions are sometimes lacking in the kind of information I consider most useful.
   
   Note that I don't object to the brevity of the information, but to the content. For example, I would prefer a brief description of artist's life, along with a description of each painting and why it's significant, much like a docent would on a museum tour. However, most of the content focuses only on the former, with descriptions of the latter appearing only infrequently. This is really disappointing to me because these descriptions are so good when they do appear (e.g., pointing out the reflections of the King & Queen of Spain in the mirror in Velasquez's "Ladies-in-Waiting" painting). Put another way, this book tells you about 50 artists you should know (as the title suggests), but not WHY we should know them!
   
   On a positive note, one of the best features of the book is the timeline across the top of each two-page spread. The timeline places each artist within the context of his/her artistic peers (Michaelangelo with Titian & Raphael), the relevant artistic period (e.g., the High Renaissance), and other important world events occuring at the time (e.g., Magellan circumnavigates the globe). I really like this aspect of the book because it accomplishes something none of my history teachers was able to do - help me see the big picture to better understand what was happening around the world synchronically rather than in a disconnected, linear fashion.
   
   All in all, if you want a brief biographical description of important European and US artists over the past 800 years, this book is for you. If you want to learn more about other types of art, artists from other areas of the world, or explanations about why particular pieces of art are noteworthy, you need to take a look somewhere else.



2. As a grade school art teacher (part-time) I always have to search and look around for some famous art pieces to inspire my students. I usually go on google or if I am in a real jam I look through some old artist's catalogs and find what I need. Sometimes the art is good but the artist is a little hazy with history and story. Remember that these are kids that are 10-14 years old. I have to get their attention. I try to pick some interesting paintings yet I have to censor some of the more adult themed ones. I teach at a Catholic Grade school.
   
   I finally found the book I needed and wanted. This is 95% of what I was looking for. Lots of history, lots of pictures and plenty of give to make copies and not break the book. Granted there are some paintings that are not appopriate for children but for the most part they are pretty good. Plus there is a snapshot of what the artists look like as painted by themselves, so that was neat too.
   
   My only qualms for not being a 5 star rating is that it was originally printed in German and the language is a little stilted. Also the binding is a little loose and could wear out in time. Plus the few paintings that are unmentionable because of unmentionable themes (ahem). Remember I teach kids. Do you want your son or daughter really getting the whole scope of Bottacilli's Venus? Alrighty then.
   
   So it is a good and sub-par great resource book and I recommend it to all art teachers!