No comments about Sculpture Woods: Studio Grounds of Ann Morris.

No comments about Prints Of Rufino Tamayo, The (Artes Visuales Turner).

2 comments about Hip Hop Immortals: The Remix.

1. As an avid reader, fan of hip hop music, and frequent purchaser of photography books. I found Hip Hop Immortals the remix, to be both amazing and frustrating. Amazing in the fact that it was able to compile such a wide spectrum of Hip Hop's biggest legends. Frustrating, because the writing, and font's in this book make many of the passages unreadable. There are whole pages dedicated to what seems like just two paragraphs of writing, written in huge blocky fonts, that literally run into and all over each other. Who ever the graphic designer was on this book, should take a long vacation on the next one. The artist' bio's are lackluster at best, with no new insight, or creative spin placed on the writings. I found myself wanting to get in a time machine, track down the publisher, and force them to let me edit the book myself. While Hip Hop Immortals managed to achieve its goal in capturing the diverse essence of the culture from a musical stand point. The writings, graphic design lay out, and execution of the book as a whole. Would force me to suggest its purchase, if only you were getting it for a bargain.



2. If you have the original version of this book do not buy the remix as it's hardly any different!
   But...having said that...it's a great book great photos and if you don't own either then get this one as it's a must for any Hip Hop fan.

No comments about Potter's Brush: The Kenzan Style in Japanese Ceramics.

1 comments about Traditional Textiles of the Andes: Life and Cloth in the Highlands.

1. I bought this book to learn more about the Andean textiles I began collecting while working in Peru and Bolivia. The photos are beautiful and the info is pretty good-good for a beginner but probably not as helpful for a collector with more expertise. There are not many books on this subject and I'm interested to know if anyone has found a better one.

No comments about Breakout: Chinese Art Outside China.

2 comments about Edvard Munch: Signs of Modern Art.

1. When I first saw this book I was immediately won over. The plates are large, many if not most are full page. There is much of his graphic work, the color is very good, even the text is large and very legible. Art historians have ruined the art book. They believe that their words are more important than the reproductions of the art. The art book is our only real museum, the only way most of us will ever know the great, and not-so-great, art in the world is by reproductions in art books. I will never have the money to tour London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Tokyo, etc. Books are the only way most of us will know these creations. I hope Hatje Cantz will continue this format, large, beautiful plates, and large, spare text.



2. Images are good, but some of them are very small. They are not page size. The biggest are 26x19 cm, and the smallest 13.5x10 cm.

No comments about Women Artists: Works from the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

1 comments about Waiting for Food: More Restaurant Placemat Drawings, 1994-2000.

1. Friends, acquaintances, and his wife Aline have remarked on R. Crumb's habit of withdrawing to his sketchbook when he's in large crowds, distancing himself mentally if not physically from loud and bustling situations. Probably some of this is a defense mechanism, a retreat into a safe, inner place. Some of it, as he says in the very brief preface to Waiting for Food #2, is motivated by boredom. But surely the main reason is that Crumb is fascinated by the world around him and, like all artists, wants to capture some of it in his chosen medium. When his sketchbook isn't handy, he uses paper placemats at restaurants. And now that he's relocated to France, where spending long periods at restaurants is part of the culture, he's got lots of them. Hence this second volume of placemat drawings.
   
   The unnumbered pages in this collection reproduce a wide variety of Crumb's doodlings and sketches. Some of them are whimsical and goofy: "Dopey Dawg" or a hilarious (but, in typical Crumb fashion, also ominous) scene in which aliens are preparing to give a human captive a rectal probe. Others are sketches of musicians, not unlike the trading card series that Crumb created a few years ago. Still others are simple sketches of folks he sees regularly: Aline, the waitress at his favorite pizza joint, friends. There are one or two slaps at contemporary culture (for example, "Capitalism on the March" and the delightfully sneerful "The French Mouth"), and one incredibly revealing self-portrait: Crumb, Sisyphus-like, is lugging a huge boulder toward a heap of other boulders and groaning, "I gotta pile up these rocks!"
   
   But for me, what's most stunning about this collection are the sketches of strangers Crumb observes at restaurant tables. They're not aware of being watched. Their defenses are down. Their faces are totally honest, totally transparent, staring off into space as they drink their coffees and smoke their Gauloises. So many of them have the vapid, blank, quietly desperate expressions that one associates with those eerie cast-plaster, life-size statues by George Segal. "Anorexic French Girl," "At the Micocoulier Restaurant": these people, perhaps like Crumb himself, are listlessly anxious. They're waiting for more than just food. Their waiting, as Beckett suggested in "Waiting for Godot," is a waiting for deep meaning in their lives (a theme which Crumb admits interests him more now that he's in his 60s and feeling his mortality). Crumb's sketches of them are studies in existential anxiety--as, in fact, is his self-portrait on the book's cover.
   
   Highly recommended. Readers interested in the existential side of Crumb might also want to look at his recent Kafka, as well as his not-so-recent comix featuring Sartre's Nausea.

4 comments about The INDIANA DUNES REVEALED: The Art of Frank V. Dudley.

1. This book is a wonderful history of the saving some of the Indiana Dunes for our use today. Dudley's pictures were used in the early days of trying to get the dunes set aside for future generations. It also is the history of landscape art in the late 1800's to the mid 1900's. The paintings are beautiful landscapes.



2. Frank Dudley was a gifted artist who became passionately interested in the grass-roots campaign to save the Indiana dunes from predation by Northwest Indiana's steel mills, other industrial encroachment, and pollution. For years, he captured the wild beauty of the region on canvas and, as his fame spread, so did his message. His painting of the 1917 Indiana Dunes Pageant, a sweeping outdoor presentation that attracted over 25,000 viewers willing to trek across sand dunes to see it, remains one of the only eyewitness paintings of the event still extant. This book chronicles Dudley's development as a painter and his life in the dunes; the plates are superb, and if you were unable to view them at Valparaiso University's recent exhibition, this keepsake volume will be the next best thing to seeing his original works firsthand. As an aside, I went to the Dudley exhibit at Valparaiso University, where the book was selling at list price. A few mouse clicks later, I had ordered the book at a deep discount at Amazon.com. Three more days, and it was in my hands. It doesn't get much better than that!



3. This book is a testament to the fact that, contrary to public opinion, there are more things than cornfields in Indiana. Indiana is home to a diversity of unique landscapes and habitats not the least of which are the Lake Michigan dunes. Reproductions of Frank V. Dudley's brilliant impressionist paintings bring this glorious landscape to the fore in this scholarly tome. We learn from "The Indiana Dunes Revealed" that Dudley's work stretches far beyond artistic endeavor. He was also one of the leading U.S. environmentalists during the first half of the twentieth century. The only thing better than this book is viewing Dudley's many sumptuous paintings or actually standing on the sand overlooking the lake. Dudley convinces this reviewer that I am actually on an Indiana beach feeling the wind blow against my face and the surf move beneath my feet.



4. The Indian Dunes Revealed: The Art Of Frank V. Dudley is written and edited by James R. Dabbert (Senior Lecturer in English, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago) with the assistance of J. Ronald Engle (Professor of Social Ethics, Meadville Theological School of Lombard College), Joan Gibb Engel (an activist and writer on Dunes ecology), i9ndependent art historian Wendy Grennhouse , and William H. Gerdts (Professor Emeritus of Art History at the Graduate School of the City University of New York). Frank V. Dudley (1868-1957) was a native of Wisconsin who studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and eventually established a long exhibition record while dedicated more than forty years of his professional life as a landscape painter to the promotion and preservation of the Indiana Dunes - a unique geographical region enjoying state and federal protection while providing ecologists with a unique and truly 'living laboratory' for their studies. "The Indiana Dunes" is a team project that superbly showcases Dudley's life and work including 150 color reproductions of his paintings and another 70 black-and-white images. Because of the continual conflict between development and preservation over the decades, some of Dudley's paintings are the only record we have left of lost dunescapes. Also available in a hardcover edition, "The Indiana Dunes Revealed" is a splendid addition to academic library American Art History collections, and particularly recommended for supplemental reading lists in the areas of environmental studies and American Midwestern history.