No comments about Architecture without Shadow.

No comments about The Stamp of Fantasy.

2 comments about Picturing Iran: Art, Society and Revolution.

1. It was quite informative, as modern Iranian art is somehow unknown, and is trying to find a character of its own. But also I have to disagree with the other comment , that Art in Iran is smehow quite different from the rest of the middle east, and it does not portrait the modern "Islamic Art" at all, and to understand Iranian art one has to consider so many other factors, such as the Persian art, and pre-Islamic art, and if you are interested in the art in middle east in GENERAL, then you should buy a book about art in middle east in General!



2. Since there are so few books on modern Islamic art, this book is an amazing find! It is filled with beautiful illustrations of posters, photographs, and paintings. Though scholarly, the essays are readable. The book shows how art can serve as a fascinating insight into the politics of the contemporary Middle East. Anyone interested in Iran or the Middle East will learn a lot from this book!

No comments about The World's Greatest Erotic Art of Today - Volume 2.

5 comments about Anselm Kiefer (Venezia Contemporaneo).

1. Kiefer is one of the most easily recognized contemporary artists. This book is what I would call the definitive collection. Awesome value to anyone who follows the artist.



2. An extraordinary tome, with a scale befitting the artist, his ambition and the size of his works. The reproductions are excellent, and many are necessarily spread over two pages without diminishing one's viewing pleasure. Size and fragility preclude many of Kiefer's works appearing in retrospectives, so it is remarkable that this particular overview includes a tremendous array of his unique works of art. I hesitate to use the word 'paintings', simply because Kiefer's current endeavors include a variety of materials with paint being only one component.
   
   The text consists of a number of enlightening interviews with the artist over the years. All provide insight into the work itself and the man who makes it. For detailed analysis of the art, Daniel Arasse's monograph is a better bet. Kiefer's output is prodigious, and from year to year it is difficult for those interested to keep pace with the new work, so any and all books about this artist are welcome additions to one's library. I heartily recommend this recent addition to the catalogue. Mind you bend at the knees before lifting, and handle with care....!



3. This is a deep, thorough and comprehensive look at much of Keifer's oeuvre. It covers different periods of his work and reveals the shared threads of each phase. This book is one of the better ones that I've physically seen, as it has many pages of well-printed photographs and documentation. The text is well written and cogent.
   
   As for the artist, he's compelling and profound. What more can be said?



4. There is so much pain and desolation in Kiefer's paintings... while this is an outstanding book, with a comprehensive and balanced collection of paintings, the genius of Kiefer can only be genuinely experienced by seeing his art at a gallery, in person. His paintings are enormous and overpowering and wring true poetry out of their dual chrome palettes. Buy the book to get a taste of this masterful artist, find the nearest gallery with his paintings and go there. This man dwarfs Picasso and Dali.



5. This is a beautiful book which covers some of Kiefer's best work in painting as well as his photo-montage and book making activities. A small and eloquent tribute and forward leave adequate room for many full color reproductions (some double-paged) of paintings, large black and white photos taken by the artist, photos of installations and performances and reproductions of selections from his book makings. The reproductions are bright and clear and attempt to give you an adequate view of the texture and matter that Kiefer paints with. Kiefer is one of the most prodigious and poetic artists of our time. He stands out individually in our present, sometimes cynical art atmosphere in the age of post-modern theory. These are magical paintings that contain deep myth and meaning. A truly beautiful book on beautiful and revealing art that can change your view of the world.

1 comments about Jan Steen, Painter and Storyteller.

1. This painter was an amazing combination of excellent artist, sarcastic and humorous person, and historian -- he painted what he saw - and each tells a story. This book helps guide you through it and points out things in his paintings that I would have missed.

1 comments about Color Woodcut International: Japan, Britain, and America in the Early Twentieth Century (Chazen Museum of Art Catalogs).

1. In his seminal 1915 work, "Chats on Japanese Prints", Arthur Davison Ficke lists five periods of development in Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints starting from roughly 1500 and ending at approximately 1850, just before the arrival of the Peary expedition in 1850. He then proclaims the end of the tradition of the classical Japanese woodblock print. This volume essentally corrects Mr. Ficke and tells the fascinating story of the Japanese woodblock after it left its homeland. It can very much be described as a sequel to Mr. Ficke's work, but it is better seen as a major advance in art history on its own merits.
   
   In December of 2006, the Chazen Art Museum of the University of Madison-Wisconsin held an exhibition of the Van Vleck print collection. This collection documents the renaissance of woodblock printmaking in the West around the turn of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This volume is the print guide to that showing and most of the works contained are from the Van Vleck collection. There are also important essays on this period by renowned art authorities.
   
   Following the Peary expedition, there was an outpouring of trade and information exchange between Japan and the West. This allowed Western artists and collectors to see and study Japanese artforms and creative techniques for the first time. The result was an explosion of interest in and influence by Japanese art on the West. The resulting cross-currents of influences on the Japanese print from English-speaking, Continental and indigenous sources resulted in an International Style of color print that was a tremendous influence on the art and aesthetics of the twentieth century that continues into the twenty-first.
   
   In common with Japan, traditional woodblock printing in the late nineteenth century was on the wane, ill-suited as it was to modern print technology. It was William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement he helped found that revived woodblock printing as a means of creative expression. Perhaps the greatest English woodblock printer is Frank Morley Fletcher, whose synthesis of Japanese influence and the traditional English landscape can be best seen in such prints as his "Mt. Shasta, California". Among the other fascinating artist personalities profiled in Nancy Green's essay is that of Mokuchu Urushibahara, who was trained in printmaking in Japan, emigrated to Great Britain and subsequently trained British artists, becoming an important link in the cultural interchange between East and West as well as an accomplished artist in his own right.
   
   In America, the American Arts and Crafts movement was largely led by Arthur Wesley Dow. Here, the traditional woodblock met American innovation in the Provincetown or white line print that revolutionized modern art printing. Andrew Stevens' essay reflects on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of the American print, introducing us to such topics as the Provincetown artists' colony in Massachusetts and the Printmakers' Society of Los Angeles (later the Print Makers Society of California).
   
   The massive reception of Japanese prints and print-making rebounded back to its country of origin in the form of the soseku hanga (art print) and shin hanga (new print) styles that tried to re-introduce the print. Many of the artists cited are obscure and hopefully more attention will be given to them in future. Kendall H. Brown's essay tells the fascinating story of these movements and their efforts to gain recognition both in their homeland and abroad.
   
   Among the British artists whose works are presented are Frank Morley Fletcher, Ethel Kirkpatrick and William Nicholson. American artists include Arthur Wesley Dow, Bertha Lum and Frances Gearhart. Japanese artists include Yoshida Hiroshi who later immigrated to the USA and Tsuguharu Foujita who later was a prominent part of the Paris art scene in the '20's.
   
   Finally, attention is also paid to Continental, particularly French, artists such as Henri Riviere, Gustave Baumann and Paul Jacoulet.
   
   For those persistent students of art who aren't satisfied with textbook descriptions of 'Japanese influences on modern art', who would rather see, touch and feel the passion, the personalities and the hard work that made these trends possible, then this volume is a worthwhile investment. No doubt, the modern viewer and reader will also be taken aback by how views on inter-cultural relationships expressed today echo those of a century ago.

3 comments about Man Ray: Photography and Its Double.

1. The book was originally published to coincide with a major exhibition of Man Ray's photography at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris in April through June 1998. It is composed of several essays about Man Ray and his work as well as a large selection of his best photographs. It very much resembles an exhaustive 260-page catalogue of the exhibit. Some of the essays are much better than others, but they do give some interesting insights into Man Ray and his methods of working.
   I was surprised to learn about Ray's "modus operandi." In fact I was so surprised that I immediately ordered a copy of his autobiography "Self-Portrait" in order to read the photographer's own descriptions of his work and thinking. A self-taught photographer Man Ray didn't follow the common photographic practices of his era and in many ways that was his genius. Most of the photographs included in this book were contact prints that Man Ray made himself. He then used markers or folded the contact proof to show his printer where and how to crop the image. He seldom made his own final prints justifying that fact by saying he was too busy to do everything himself.
   Some of the techniques he employed are explained as being necessary to make the grain of the final photographs show up and soften the image. Some of the final cropping of the pictures use only a small portion of the entire image. That's fine, but it makes the viewer wonder if the photographer only discovered the essence of the final image long after the picture was taken? Using only a tiny portion of the total photograph fits in fine with the over-all philosophy of Surrealism so the photographer may not have been telling "little white lies" like he sometimes did in order to keep his secrets. One advantage of seeing the total negative, along with the cropping instructions of so many of his works gives the viewer a good insight into the workings of a pioneer photographer's vision.
   This book is excellent for a person who already knows something about photographic techniques and processes as well as Man Ray. There are others that would probably be more interesting for the reader and viewer unacquainted with Man Ray's work. Aperture's "Masters of Photography Series" includes "Man Ray" with an Essay by Jed Perl and is one such book. It provides a shorter, easier-to-read introduction to the work of Emmanuel Ranitzsky (Man Ray's birth name) and samples of a wider selection of his photographic work. He is sometimes called the "Father of Fetish Photography" for good reason. He is also a fascinating man, which doesn't come out in this book or the Aperture volume. A better biographical portrait of the man can be found in sections of "Lee Miller: A Life" by Carolyn Burke.



2. I bought this book expecting an immense variety of photos true to Man Ray's hodgepodge style. What I got was a series of very nice photos that were not quite what I expected. The length of this volume belies it's lack of variation. Most of the book is female nudes, which are very well done, but if you are looking for a book which includes photos of Parisian street life in the 1920's or the campy world of drag queens and surrealists, this is not the book for you. There are some photos of dancers and the like but most of the photos are pretty straightforward nudes who are in arty positions that get dull after a while. This not the book for newcomers to Man Ray nor is it one for those who would like to see truly weird looking pictures. There are some really cool photos here, like Meret Oppenheim in the Erotique Voile series and the rayographs featured. But a substantial portion of the book is devoted to showing works in their original form and how they were cropped and tinkered with to produce final, polished images. This is neat for famous images such as Les Larmes (Tears), but otherwise can get boring. Overall, this is an excellent book for Man Ray experts as it does show many previously unreleased photos, but maybe not the right choice for the rest of us. I enjoyed it though, and I'm still glad I bought it.



3. This book is an extroidinary collection of Man Ray's photographic work. His use of light, composition, and solarization is one of the best.This book allows the reader to understand Man Ray's direction and motivation.

No comments about Barry Frydlender: Place and Time.

1 comments about Historic Spots in California: Fifth Edition.

1. Revised by historian and political scientist Douglas E. Kyle and presented as an expanded fifth edition, Historic Spots In California is an immense, traveler's companion and reference to famous sites in this great state, from landmarks of the stagecoach days to sacred Native American burial grounds to camps that once housed Chinese miners. The collaborative effort of Mildred Brooke Hoover, Hero Eugene Rensch, Ethel Grace Rensch, and William N. Abeloe, Historic Spots In California categorizes lists of noteworthy places by county, and devotes a columns of text to explaining the historical significance of each of the many listed locales. Enhanced with a twenty-six page biography and a comprehensive index making for easy cross-referencing, Historic Spots In California (also available in a hardcover edition for... is highly recommended for school and community library California History reference collections as an impressive, exhaustive, thorough and unusually informative guide.