5 comments about Lost: Lost and Found Pet Posters from Around the World.

1. The book in terms of images is lovely, there are many smart, funny, and cute posters all by average people who simply want their pets home safely. That's what makes the book bitter sweet, one is left wondering how many were never found. Interesting, but sad at times.



2. This book is a collection of the cutest animals from all over the world. It's very interesting and funny to read. It's a great book for pet animal lovers who know what it's like to lose their best friends. Please read.



3. This book makes a fine gift for those with a quirky sense of humor or who appreciate found objects/art. The collection of posters has an interesting variety, but some of the posters lack the same interest and obscurity of others. The foreign posters are certainly worth a laugh. The concept of the book is very funny, but as other reviewers have mentioned, it would have been a more successful book if the tone of the more creative and funny posters was carried throughout the entire book.



4. Interesting idea, i did enjoy the book but some of the posters were really boring and very rigid. I think if you are making this as an entertaining book, try to include mostly extraordinary postings. Over wise it will look like an archive for people "who study the case".



5. I love his work and collecting these pet posters is a stroke of genius. Anyone who's ever had a pet and who has had to write one of these posters will be blinking back tears of sympathy, even if you acknowledge the ugliness of other people's pets, for some here are real lollapoloozas. Mostly you take your hat off to the eternal virtue of hope, for some of these people have faith deeper than rivers if they believe that you'd be able to recognize their cat or dog from the miserably scanned old photo of the animal, sometimes off in a corner of a photo looking completely anonymous or so dark you can't tell what you're supposed to be looking at. The texts Phillips collects are as heartbreaking as the photos, and again for every clearcut description of an animal, there's quite a few in which it's like the old parable of the blind man and the elephant
   
   As you pore through this book you can only hope all of these owners found their pets in this world and if not in this world, maybe in the next. LOST is a postmodern assemblage with old fashioned heart and soul, it looks good and it feels good too.

2 comments about Nan Goldin: I'll Be Your Mirror.

1. this is one of the most important books available in contemporary photography. i admire it for its bold reality, honesty and shockingly moving images. Anyone who takes documentary photo seriously should own this book. there is no pomp or frill here just the pain, disapointments and celebrations of life and death.



2. Goldin is the one of the most talented and prolific photographers of the 90's. Her work, which is based mainly on friends and lovers, is painful and delicate, striking a nerve in anyone who looks. It shows the beauty and horror of everyday life, sometimes bringing a tear to your eye. This book is worth every dollar.

No comments about Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Exhibition of Japanese Traditional Art Crafts Exhibition.

1 comments about In Smog and Thunder: Historical Works from the Great War of the Californias.

1. This is an excellent book that fits somewhere between a picture book and a novel. The paintings are beautiful and very funny and the writing is incredibly imaginative and hilarious. It tells the story of a fictional war between Los Angeles and California but its real point seems to be the skewering of many contemporary social issues about California today, from arguments about which city leads in cultural aspects to politics, racial problems, immigration, Hollywood and the movie industry, and on and on. The back section contains all the critical reviews to put the work into art historical perspective and its quite interesting as well, and you don't need to have studied art to get it.
   Get this book and pour over the pictures, read the text, and then put in the CD. Its an over the top production featuring interviews with surviors, sounds of battle, music, historical analysis, and even drive-time radio traffic reports from the middle of the battles!! The price is worth the CD alone.
   A perfect gift and relevent to anyone, not only Californians but Americans as well with its skewering of the Civil War.
   I bought every copy in my store!!!
   Loved it!!!

No comments about Matter Mind Spirit: Twelve Contemporary Indiana Women Artists.

No comments about Landmarks: Sculpture Commissions for the Stuart Collection, University of CA, San Diego.

No comments about In Company: Robert Creeley's Collaborations.

No comments about Typologies.

No comments about The Economics of Art Museums (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report).

2 comments about Art of the North American Indians: The Thaw Collection (Fenimore Art Museum, New York State Historical Association).

1. This is no mere exhibition catalogue. It is a superb book- thoroughly researched, well-written and beautifully photographed- really a one-volume encyclopedia of Native North American art. The inclusion of provenance is essential and an important ethical model that others in Native American studies should follow.

   A major achievement.




2. Over the years I've been an avid collector of every museum or exhibition catalogs on North American Indian Art -- but this one is the biggest disappointment. While provenance histories can be of importance for the reader, here it provides little meaning and appears to primarily satisfy the collectors/dealers' vanities. Oftentimes provenance entries are incomplete. The lengthy caption reveal very little new or interesting information and for the most part contain meaningless blah-blah just to pad the space around the pictures.
   
   Layout and design is pedestrian, and for that price one would have expected to find all items in color.
   
   A missed opportunity, too bad!