No comments about NeoHooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith (Menil Collection).

1 comments about Birth and Present: A Studio Portait of Yoshitomo Nara.

1. Yoshitomo Nara is one of my favorite artists. He is also a giant in today's Art world. Although, shy and soft-spoken his work speaks large volumes. He rarely talks about what inspired his work, because he allows his fans to come to their own conclusions. He also is someone with integrity because he refuses to sell out by allowing big corporations to take control of his work. As a result, he is not as big as he could be.
   
   This book shows Mr. Nara in his Japan studio working on various art pieces. There are no words, just pictures of him working and concentrating. At the very end of the book, the author explains almost every picture to give you an understanding of what is going on. The book also explains Mr. Nara, a Japanese man, recently moved back to Japan and these pictures are some of the first pictures of him working in his native land.
   
   A good-looking man, Nara actually lives in his studio alone because it allows him to create his work in a large area. As most people know, the spaces in Japan are small but Nara is used to working in big spaces because he lived in Germany for over a decade. Therefore, he purchased a warehouse to work and live in. You have to feel sorry for him because the climate in the warehouse is not ideal for a human being and he has very basic living set ups (for example, a kitchen).
   
   I called this review, "A Silent Giant" because it fits Nara and this book.

1 comments about Art Space Tokyo: An Intimate Guide to the Tokyo Art World.

1. This gorgeously illustrated little book takes the reader on a stroll through Tokyo's neighborhoods. Its twenty interviews and half dozen essays successfully mix the voices of artists, gallery owners, journalists, art producers and art lovers.
   
   (Disclaimer: I took part in one of the interviews. By far not my favorite part of the book, but... I am very fond of the rest.)
   
   What really seduced me, however, is how the guide introduces each area with a wealth of tips on where to eat, shop, or what to see on the way to the art spaces. It succeeds not just as valuable insight on how the art world works, but as one of the best guides to date on my favorite city.
   
   Who would I recommend this to? Perhaps not novices to the art world, but to any art professional or lover of Tokyo looking for a different way to roam the city, definitely.

5 comments about Yesterday's Tomorrows: Past Visions of the American Future.

1. nice book about old visions of the future!
   Very nice pictures and illustrations!
   I would like to get more pictures but this is a very nice book!



2. I agree with the reviewer below. It's one of the few books on this subject (I've only seen one other) so we have to live with it. On the other hand it's small, it's a bit scattered in its approach, and it feels like a museum gift-shop item/show catalogue of sorts. I would like to see someday a huge, profusely illustrated, and text-rich book on the complete history of portraying the future (positively) which is an historically recent phenomenon. It died probably around the time of the '64 World's Fair and depictions of the future since then have been largely dystopian. Nowadays they're downright awful. This is something we need to address because unless you can conjure up imagery of an upbeat future you're not likely to even try to create one. This book made me miss the days when people thought more positively and hopefully about many things, regardless of how bad it was at the time. Imagine the images in the mind of the average contemporary young person of the "World of 2050."



3. Amid the other glowing reviews, let me offer a different perspective.
   
   First, I was a bit disappointed in the size of the graphics. The book is only about 6 3/4" by 8 3/4", and the graphics and photos in many cases are difficult to see. In the cases of copies of book extracts and magazine images, they are often nearly impossible to resolve.
   
   More troubling to me is the overall "lean" of the book. Expecting a fun book reflecting on images of the future, I was disappointed to read things like "The visual cacophony of the advertising-laden landscape was for him [Edward Bellamy of Boston in the 1880s]...the most palpable of symbols for the general depravity of the capitalist system."
   
   And how about this quote from the section on space toys of the 1940s and '50s: "Girls who yearned to project themselves into a fantasy future through their toys had few media role models beyond the stereotype of the hero's girlfriend. The dual message to the younger generation seems clear enough--the future will be violent [too many space guns], and it will belong to men."
   
   And here is how the book reviews the "Star Trek" series: "Though the crew, with black Uhura and the Asian Mr. Sulu, seemed to reflect newly enlightened attitudes, the program, like its 1930 relatives, was dominated by brave white males."
   
   In discussing the future of housing, the book diverges from any discussion of future technology, and instead offers: "We ask whether the home of tomorrow will be inhabited predominantly by single-parent families, by working mothers and children. Will it contain greater numbers of couples without children at all, couples of the same sex, or other groups of adults living together, and if so with what social consequences?"
   
   And as a final example of the social messages of the book, how about these phrases from the section "The Weapons and Warfare of Tomorrow":
   
   "Although Americans have long cherished the myth that they are an unusually peace-loving people..."
   
   "...just one more instance of the American habit of believing in that ultimate weapon, a technological fix, as a substitute for politics in eliminating world conflicts."
   
   And finally: "...it ironically symbolized the country's broader policy on Viet Nam, an effort to refashion a foreign environment better fit to American needs and expectations."
   
   To my taste, the book has too many unnecessary social messages. I was expecting a book on past visions of the future. Instead, I got a book on technology laced with criticisms of capitalism, Amercianism, and political policies. Those weaknesses cheapen what could have been a far more enjoyable publication.



4. Most books about past visions of the future deal with cities of the future, robots of the future and houses (or should I say kitchens) of the future. And this book DOES deal with those subjects and MORE. Between the covers of this book are plans for atomic powered cars, tanks, and bombers, the promises found within hobby magazines, chapters on the movies and radio shows that showed us the future, the designs for bomb proof cities and homes, hopes for the flying car, the idea for death rays, flying tanks and much, much more.
   Having been first published in 1984 it even hints at what visions we still believed in that would appear in our future, from the space shuttle to real laser weapons. Kind of fun but also kind of sad.



5. Yesterday's Tomorrows is a great, evocative book.

   Stemming from a traveling exhibit sponsored in Michigan by the Michigan Humanities Council, its retro-future images (comprised of period memorabilia, car designs, advertisements, and architectural wonders) are bountiful, crisply reproduced and accompanied by text that adds context to the visual journey.

   And what a journey! Travel back to an anticipated future when modernism and futurism were part of the manifest destiny of humankind.

   Employing an added bit of retrospective frisson, in the post 9/11 world, this mid-80s work now serves as a window on a future that would never be realized, of a time when people still dreamed of building towers to the sky. Thankfully, its unabashed message of near-limitless possibilities is conveyed utterly without irony.

   This volume can be enjoyed on so many levels. Delight in the visual salience of images gathered from dozens of rare sources. Lavish your attention on the many literary influences and how these images would inspire a whole genre of science fiction and futurist works, from Buckminster Fuller to Gene Roddenberry to Alvin Toffler.

   In this "shape of things to come," the future, our present, is always a golden destiny of exotic creative and technological evocations and innovations - even when the future is more dystopian than utopian.

   It is a reminder that hope and vision, art and science, are intrinsic to the human condition and surely the salvation for our own, as yet unwritten, future.

5 comments about Concentration Camps: A Traveler's Guide to World War II Sites.

1. Great little book with both basic and extra helpful tips. Especially good for those that travel by train. If you want or expect more than that, do your own research and write another book....I think the author has done a STELLAR job.



2. For the military history devotee this is a "must book" which I plan to use with 20 friends next April "on site". Well researched, easy to locate the camps on the maps and an honor to the victims that their misery and deaths will not be forgotten and be a reminder that this is still happening around the world but we ignore and stand impotently by doing nothing. How could such a sophisticated country as Germany be so mislead?
   Therefore it can happen anywhere.



3. This volume is extremely helpful for visiting the more out of the way or forgotten Holocaust sites. The author has done a great service in this respect, and the book is a "must" for those who wish to visit these sad and terrible places. Some who have reviewed the book have criticized the author's imperfect editing, occasional errors in grammar, etc. This is true, the book has a few minor glitches. But who cares, really? The information contained in it is accurate and really useful and I can easily overlook the other stuff(which is quite minor anyhow).
   I used the book when visiting central and eastern Europe two years ago and it proved excellent. I would never, ever have found the Plaszow camp site without it, that's for sure. I plan to bring the guide along every time I go to Europe.
   Bottom line: Sure, the production might leave a little to be desired in places (though as I have said, it isn't all that annoying) but this guide is the best out there - at least that I have discovered - on this subject and is therefore indispensable to the WW2 or Holocaust tourist.



4. an excellent guide. if you've been looking on the interweb for how to get to these places, you have probably been driven to despair. I wish I'd found this book 5 years ago when i started visiting these important sites. A thoroughly useful and informative book.



5. This is THE book I've been looking for. Finally, someone did a very good job. Marc Terrance has included the most necessary data that you will need to visit these relevant sites. Thanks, Marc. You did a great job!!

1 comments about Lowell Herrero.

1. Herrero's work is beautifully displayed in the gorgeous coffee table art book. Herrero's rich colors come alive in the printing process that is used here to display a wide range of his paintings as well as some interesting text. I am not a painter myself, but some of my friends are, and they were struck with the beauty of this book as well. Highly recommended as a gift or as a addition to one's own art books. You won't be disappointed.

4 comments about Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Collections.

1. In contrast to a previous review which said the reproductions in this book are very small, I don't agree. It's a large book, and most of the reproductions are decent-sized and good quality.
   Along with the wonderful reproductions of Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings are some very nice photographs of her. This book isn't heavy on text, but what there is, I found valuable in interpreting the paintings.
   I'd recommend this book highly for any O'Keeffe fans.



2. I flipped through this book at Barnes and Noble, and was frustrated to find that while the pages were large, the prints were tiny! Just a few inches across, usually. Anyone planning on buying this should know.



3. Georgia O'Keeffe would have loved this book! Not only does Barbara Buhler Lynes, curator of Santa Fe's Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, respect her subject's astonishing eye and craftsmanship in this book, she respects Ms. O'Keeffe's wishes regarding displaying her works of art. During her lifetime, the artist often mounted her own shows, e.g., at An American Place, her husband Alfred Stieglitz's gallery in New York. Ms. O'Keeffe was adamant (a) that her creations be hung on white walls, and (b) that her artwork be arranged by type rather than chronology.
   
   Lynes abides by both of the artist's rules here to great effect, and her meticulousness, in terms of the notes she provides about the artist's work and also the tags she associates with the plates (where she identifies the type and size of the surface used and also the type of medium: charcoal, graphite, oil, watercolor), add another layer of enjoyment for the reader.
   
   Lynes' notes attempt to steer the reader away from stereotypical interpretations that haunted Ms. O'Keeffe during her career. For instance, regarding "Blue II" (Plate 3, Page 19), the curator states: "The . . . womblike spiral of 'Blue II' seems to substantiate connections critics in the 1920's made between O'Keeffe's work and female sexuality. Yet when she made this watercolor, O'Keeffe was intensely involved in playing the violin, and . . . the form . . . of the spiral in her watercolor most likely derive[s] from the scroll-shaped termination of the neck of the instrument . . ."
   
   Categories in the book include abstractions, still lifes, architecture, animal and human forms, and trees. Every reader will find his or her favorite here; mine are the artist's representations of feathery kachina dolls and New Mexico's Pedernal. The last category in the book contains works by other artists at the museum whose careers, in some way, parallelled that of Ms. O'Keeffe. Stieglitz photographs (including a Georgia O'Keeffe nude) are here, as well as Ansel Adams' memorable "gelatin silver print" of Georgia O'Keeffe and Orville Cox at Canyon de Chelly National Park.



4. 
   For those of us not fortunate enough to be going to Santa Fe this year for the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum (which houses the largest collection of her work), here is an able substitute. Those who have visited the Museum in the past will relish this opportunity to revisit not only her art but her houses at Ghost Ranch and in Abiqiu, New Mexico.
   
   It need not be said that O'Keeffe is a preeminent artist of the twentieth century, one of the most respected and loved. An American modernist she is acclaimed for her compelling abstractions, so elegant and vital. Her visions are often enlarged. Inspired by the natural she once said, "When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home too...I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it."
   
   This gorgeous volume is rich with illustrations - 335 in full color and two eight-page gatefolds. It also includes numerous photos, some previously unpublished, and works by others who embraced modernism and painted in New Mexico.
   
   Curator of the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, author Barbara Buhler Lynes is the leading authority on this artist. She has done a meritorious yeoman's task in compiling this glorious volume which is a treasure for all.
   
   - Gail Cooke

3 comments about Modigliani: The Melancholy Angel.

1. If you like Italian art and beautiful women, then this is the book for you. Modigliani is without parallel. His art echoes the elegance of Trecento Sienese painting, elegantly garbed in the Paris of its heyday. Should your eye wonder more towards the purely formal in art, a delight in the abstract of form and colour, then Modigliani is also a master to enthral your eye and mind. Hope you enjoy the book as much as I do.



2. Modiliagni might be undervalued in the world of artists and painters. He should be honored as well as Picasso, and friends...
   In the book with mainly act paintings, sketches and text explains Amadeos way how he had seen women and colors. The book is a must in your library...



3. For those who love the sensuous work of this early 20th century master, this text is the best on the market. The pictures span the entire short career (he died at age 36) of this artistic genius. There are stunning images throughout. The colour reproduction is superb, and the paper used is of the highest quality.
   There are excellent, exhaustive descriptions of the artist's life, although the descriptions of many of the paintings are short. My only wish is that there were more nudes chosen for the exhibition, because no artist dead or alive painted a nude as beautiful or as provocative as Modigliani. The book is not cheap, but for those who admire this wonderful painter, the price is worth every penny and more.

No comments about The National Trust Manual of Housekeeping: The Care of Collections in Historic Houses Open to the Public.

No comments about Managing Interactive Media Projects.