5 comments about CLAMP North Side.

1. when i was first leafing through the north side book i wasnt even much of a Clamp fan and only CCS from all thier works, however i was in awe (especially in the clover section) .i strongly recommend both north and south even for those non clamp fans . trust me youll be converted.



2. Clamp North Side is a beautiful collection of art from some of clamps most beloved works. It also contains short manga strips you won't find anywhere else and a very interesting interview with the creators. I'd say this is a must have for any CLAMP fan.



3. It's mostly pictures and there is an interview.
   Contents:
   Clover
   Magic Knight RayEarth
   Sohryuden
   Legend of Chun Hyang/Shin Shunkaden
   Clamp Newsletter(laboratory,News)
   CLAMP in wonderland
   Early CLAMP works in some publishers, now discontinued.
   CLAMP interviews
   Interviews are about CLAMP's experiences, I recommend you to buy this with MKR and RG Veda artbooks.



4. I absolutely love this book! It's amazing! Don't think you can just get the pics off the net, because it's so much better seeing the pics in real life, and it really makes a difference. It's worth every penny, and Amazon seems to have it on a permanent sale of twenty rather than thirty dollars. You can't get it any cheaper. Believe me, I looked everywhere. Great quality book, beautiful art and lots of it. The full-spread pics that cover two pages are the only setback, and a minor one.
   Now for the contents:
   
   1. Clover: the biggest section. Clover, like fine wine, needs an acquired taste. (I always wanted to say something like that) The art may not hit you at first, but once you get used to the art, you realize how beautiful it is. Clover is so beautiful, and I love the way they draw her hair blowing all over the place. I also love the futuristic mechanical theme and gorgeous, brilliant colors. And Kazuhiko and Suu are the cutest together. Not to mention Ai and Gingetsu. And there are a few stunning pics of Oruha, who I love! Plus all the cover art pics of the four Clover volumes. And a boxed set of Clover should be coming out this August (2005) so I'll finally be able to read another CLAMP masterpiece.
   2. Magic Knight Rayearth: Well, I have to say I was disappointed. Of course, there already were two volumes of artwork, so you can't expect to have that much left in this book. Most of the pics were the characters drawn chibi-form. I'm not that crazy about CLAMP's chibi guys anyway, so I wasn't so happy. Magic Knight Rayearth is one of my favorite CLAMP titles so far, so I was expecting more. The good thing was the full-color manga that wasn't included with the tankoban I got and had some crucial info in it. Where do they sleep? What do they eat? And what are there families like? The only problem was that the four pages of each section were squishd together in one page, making some small letters kind of hard to read. Still, there were some gorgeous pics, like the two posters with Emeraude-hime, Lantis and Zagato.
   3. Legend of the Dragon Kings: Love the art!! The four boys are so cute. There are the four of them as kings, and a napping series, and a tuxedo series and everything! Kawaii!!!!
   4. The Legend of Chun Hyang: Exuberant, energetic and colorful artwork. Chun and her hottie Yumeryu are the stars of this section, with one pic of Chun's mom and one of Chun as the cutest little girl y'ever saw! The full-page spreads of Chun on yellow and the other on red are so beautiful. I've been studying all the pictures of this book for ideas and tips to incorporate in my own drawings, the reason why I bought this book in the first place!
   5. CLAMP in Wonderland, CLAMP Campus Web Subschool, Others: the final art section. This section has group pics combining characters from all different series together, from Tokyo Babylon to x/1999 to RG Veda, plus pics with characters you have never seen before. This section also had the only nude picture of the book, a girl taking off her shirt and not wearing anything underneath. Nipples and breasts drawn explicitly, with full color. But it's only the one, so you can rip the page out if you like. Actually, there are a few not-quite nude pics in Clover and MKR, where the breast is not seen clearly, and no nipples are drawn. But don't worry; they're PG rated.
   6. Princess Mokona in CLAMP Country: A cute, short manga, very silly, drawn entirely in chibi-mode.
   7. Interview: The interview wasn't very personal; it was more facts than anything. The handwriting wasn't really THAT small, like other interviews say. There are also little pictures and footnotes that are useful and fun. But it was fun to read, especially the part on Chobits, the CLAMP series with the best artwork and cutest character!!
   8. Comments: Thumbnails of the pictures with comments. Unlike Naoko Takeuchi's comments on her artwork, CLAMP never really personalized the comments. Naoko-sensei (who created Sailor Moon) is a lot like me; she had problems drawing, disliked work after she made it and really loved her stuff. Anyway, the comments were fun.
   
   This book is great! I loved every page of it. Well, some of the pics at the end were ugly to me, but anyway...buy it now!!! If you want series like Legal Drug (ahhh....I just love Kazahaya-who doesn't??) Shirahime-syo and others, check out CLAMP South Side, which has a how to draw section, less extras, but more pics. BUY IT NOW!!!! (Highly recommended)



5. I am in love. I'd give it 6 out of 5 stars if I could.
   
   My friend had preordered this artbook and showed it to me when it arrived yesterday. I gushed over every single page of it. The artwork was exquisite - pages after pages of beautiful lineart with superior coloring (I can now understand why this had to be printed in Japan). I am ordering it right now!
   
   The first major category was Clover, and the illustrations were even more beautiful than in the manga - the coloring definitely boosted the beauty.
   
   The next section was Magic Knight Rayearth, including a few pieces of artwork drawn for the OVA (Princess Emeraude looked stunning). A minor complaint I have for this section is that the little strips of MKR mini-manga dialogues were already in print in the Magic Knight Rayearth I Box Set Memorial Book. Then again, the box set was limited edition so it could be considered a plus.
   
   As you might've already read from the artbook descriptions, this artbook also includes Legend of Chun Hyang and CLAMP in Wonderland as well as many little extras (I love the index of the artwork in the back with small explanations of each), so I won't make myself redundant.
   
   Just one thing that might slightly turn some people away from this artwork is that in the CLAMP in Wonderland section, one (and only one that I've noticed) page portrayed explicit nudity (specificially: realistic coloring & shading of the female topless body). I doubt any long-time anime/manga fan would mind this very much, but I'm mentioning this here just the same in case it matters to some people for any reason.
   
   A note about North Side versus South Side is their major difference: The artwork in North Side is from mangas published by Kodansha, while South Side includes artwork from mangas published by Kadokawa Shoten. I personally love the series from North Side a whole lot more, but make sure you check out both artbooks if you're interested!
   
   With that said, if you are a CLAMP fan, this is a MUST have for your collection. Even if you are not familiar with CLAMP, I feel that this artbook is in many ways superior to others due to the high quality of print and artwork. What can I say? This is worth the $30 - and as I am typing this, Amazon has it on sale for $20. It'll be worth every penny! I strongly recommend "CLAMP North Side"!!

No comments about American Masters of the Mississippi Gulf Coast: George Ohr, Dusti Bonge, Walter Anderson, Richmond Barthe.

No comments about Infrared Spectroscopy in Conservation Science (Scientific Tools for Conservation Series).

No comments about Ceramic Art from Byzantine Serres (Illinois Byzantine Studies).

1 comments about A Broken Beauty.

1. Suffering poses one of the central dilemmas of the modern age -- an era that, arguably, with its world wars and mass genocides has inflicted more of it and on a vaster scale than any other in recorded history. What meaning can human suffering have in a world paradoxically devoted to notions to salvation through technology, on the one hand, and, on the other, to an aesthetics of despair that, in the name of authenticity, refuses all invitations to hope?
   
   "A Broken Beauty" boldly enters into this nexus with a presentation of contemporary figurative painting and sculpture that both engages with contemporary themes and, with equal if not greater daring, shows with what power and versatility classical artistic forms and iconography still speak to the human condition today.
   
   There's nothing facile about the work or the attitude on display in these pages. The art of this landmark exhibition does not assume that Christianity, or that artists of faith have easy answers to either the dilemmas of modernity or to the ongoing crises of postmodernist aesthetics. What "A Broken Beauty" does assume is that classical Christian and artistic perspectives direct an important challenge to an art world that appears to have lost faith in itself, and, indeed, perhaps in the value of the artistic enterprise. In "A Broken Beauty," there is the fragmentation, the "brokenness," that is part and parcel of modern consciousness, but there is also beauty, the perception, however "darkly" glimpsed, of original wholeness, of the transcendent value of the body, and of human life itself.
   
   While there is much to praise, the catalogue's essays, particularly the defining ones by editor Theodore Prescott and the exhibition's curator Gordon Fuglie, are worth the price of admission. They rarely settle arguments, but none of the five essays plays it safe, either; none casts anxious glances in the direction of the latest academic theories (that alone is refreshing!). Each essay is full-blooded, passionate and informative as it tries to situate this landmark effort in the context of its historical antecedents, and, even more importantly, in the context of today's profound aesthetic crisis. If we ever manage to free ourselves from the debilitations of a half century or more of the aesthetics of despair, it will be due to efforts such as this, to the kind of bravery and vision exhibited in "A Broken Beauty."

1 comments about Piet Mondrian.

1. "It is proper to the way of living," the author Jean Paul Richter once noticed, "that one is polite also against himself".
   
   However, Mondrian painted manically compulsively out of a fear against the chaos of the world daily. Although it did not feed him, he could not quit this activity; he continued to work, got pneumonia in that cold New York winter [slaving away in the unheated studio for three days non-stop] and died before he could finish his "Victory Broadway Boogie Woogie" painting. A tribute to the city of New York which on the other hand almost let him starve, the money at least did not reach for having the heating on.
   
   Nevertheless he loved this town full of jazz, dance and boogie-woogie (he liked to dance there). His paintings are telling a tribute to this pulsating, dynamic Big Apple.
   
   Burst from the desert of the Dutch landscape, saved in the liver Paris, escaping the racial world of the Nazis - like many other artists did. While however painters like Max Beckmann were getting a university-chair offered in New York, this luck did not fall to Mondrian.
   
   With an astonishing optimistic colour joy he managed to compensate the real sadness. His last work, "Broadway Boogie Woogie" almost works like a city centre Map: Horizontally numbered the Avenues streets -- only the slash of Broadway breaking out of this grid is missing vertical.
   
   One is filled with consternation occasionally, out of which suffering art can arise.
   
   Mondrian may have been assessed compulsion neurotically. However, if he could set such harmonious works against this hell, he is a winner, not a looser.
   
   His compositions against the chaos of the world are fascinating forever. The effort had to be done - though it has been a hard life for Mondrian...

No comments about Roni Horn: Gurgles, Sucks, Echoes..

No comments about Art and the Empire City.

No comments about Official Guide to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

5 comments about The Country Houses of David Adler.

1. Though I must say, that I agree that this book could have used some color plates, it in my opinion does not distract from the fact that this is a wonderful book on a fine architect. I personally love the archieval black and white plates, they are so vivid and the Adler homes are quite old, so it somehow seem to fit. This book covers in detail Adler's best country homes, his work was just amazing and the attention to detail in his homes ranks with Horace Trumbaur and McKim, Mead, and White as the best of this age. Chicago is most blessed with his homes, but the Crane Estate, in the Boston suburbs is, in my opinion, his most interesting home and this book does a fine job of covering it. If you have any interest in great American residental architecture, or Mr. Adler's work itself, then I can't imagine you being disappointed in this book.



2. oh i wanted to LOVE this book-- it is FINE--but not amazing-- a bit too "textbook"--



3. I really love David Adler. I was thrilled to find out that this book was in the making. But when I finally got my hands on it I was furious to find that there were no color plates in the entire book. All photographs are archival. The Richard Crane mansion in Ipswich is a tremendous house, and I appreciate the old view from the beach, but how does that compare to the view now that all of the landscape has come to maturation. Not including color plates and more contemporary shots was a cruel tease to play.



4. growing up in Lake Forest, IL...I, too saw these beautiful country estates -- but never knew the common theme was David Adler. Such a wealth of information and history that I have to thank Mr. Salny for. We are talking an era of architecture that included not only the design of a building, but also the design of the gardens, the interiors, etc. A fabulous book -- beautiful and inspiring in so many ways!



5. Useful and informative, but Norton was a bit slap-dash in its production. The "newly-drawn plans" were disappointing and nowhere near the standard in architectural publishing; whoever was responsible shouldn't have been.