1 comments about The Art of Decorative Matting.

1. I was highly disappointed in this book. I was expecting a more step-by-step format. I would not have purchased it had I seen it in person. Why is it listed #1 in the matting category? I hope that this is no indication of the books in that category to follow.

No comments about K Foundation Burn a Million Quid.

1 comments about All Riot On The Western Front.

1. A man with an amazing eye and attention to detail. If you don't know who Winston Smith is, he is an amazing collage artist who juxtaposes various images from 40's/50's magazines. A great commentator in the visual form, his prints have a great take on pop culture. In case you don't know who he is, Winston Smith has been involved the punk rock art community since the late-70's with partner in crime, Jello Biafra. He's done ALL sorts of flyers, album covers, clothing designs, logos, EVERYTHING. If you know who he is, you'll know what's in the book, great art.

4 comments about Views.

1. Roger Dean is best known for his groundbreaking work in LP cover art, including Yes, Uriah Heep, Osibisa, and other names from the 1970s music world. This great collection pulls together Dean's early work, including sketches, student work from his time at the Royal College of Art, and set design for the Yes tour stages.
   
   I usually think of Dean as a visual artist, so his furniture, sets, and architectural interests were a pleasant surprise. It would have been helpful to have better identification of year in which each piece done. That's a small enough complaint, though. This is an outstanding collection of his work, and an interesting reference point for comparing the 70s culture to todya's.
   
   //wiredweird



2. Groundbreaking when it was first published, this unique book has remained a benchmark in both art and publishing. Dean founded his own Paper Tiger imprint to release this collection of his designs. The book is sized the same as an old vinyl album, and contains dozens of his architectural/fantasy world renderings, know best as the covers of the majority of the YES albums, along with many other rock projects. Essential for the fans of Dean, it covers his schooling, 2D and 3D design projects, and an amazing array of full color, high quality reproductions of his ink and watercolor paintings.



3. Roger Dean's artwork has been featured on the record and CD coversof Yes, Aisa, and Pink Floyd. He has displayed his artistic talent since Yes' "Fragile" LP in 1972. His work belongs in a museum display (I did see a print of the Fragile cover in the Hayden Planetarium) and this book (if you're lucky enough to get your hands on it) is recommended to avid Yes fans! It features the covers of "Topographic Oceans", "Beginnings", "Relayer", "Yessongs", and the inner gatefold of "Close to the Edge". Simply breathtaking! And in need of a reprint soon!



4. The architypal album cover artist of the early seventies period, Roger Dean produced covers for seventies album artists such as Yes, Gentle Giant, Greenslade and even Osibisa. This, his first of a number of publications, contains his early and best work. For fans of the progressive rock group "Yes" it also contains a number of photographs from their ambitious "Tales from Topographic Oceans " tour. This book should be reprinted NOW and is a must for all ardent "Yes " fans.

No comments about Piet Stockmans: Monograph.

3 comments about Transluminal: The Paintings of Jim Burns.

1. It's hard to find words that adequately describe the greatness of Jim Burns' artwork. You look at these works with a sense of wonder, amazement and envy.

   Like Chris Moore, his attention to detail is astonishing. Every part of the picture is treated with equal importance. (I love the way he paints every blade of grass, every little pebble and every single leaf in his backgrounds.)

   I have to confess, a lot of the SF books I have read were bought simply because Jim Burns did the cover. It's interesting to note that Burns was among many artists influenced by the British 1950s comic "Eagle", which featured the hugely popular story "Dan Dare - Pilot of the Future". When "Eagle" resurfaced in the 1980s I grew up reading this comic too.

   I'm currently in my second year at art college. I'm a little wary of admitting that I like SF art because a lot of lecturers tend to look down on it. Maybe they believe it's too commercial. But at home this is the sort of art I like to do. Futuristic architecture especially.

   Looking at Jim Burns' detailed paintings, you wonder if he suffers much from eyestrain. In the beginning of the book he mentions "airbrush thumb". Sitting at a keyboard might not be so comfortable either. Every artist has their cross to bear. With this book you could spend hours looking at just one painting.

   Perhaps in the future, centuries from now, people will look at Jim Burns' work the way we look at the work of Hieronymous Bosch.




2. Jim Burns deals in vivid, constrasting colors and deep shadows, shiny surfaces and rich textures, acrylics, oils, and digital media, humans and humanoids full of predatory tension and energy. His art is comparable to Eggleton's in terms of luster, but is far more detailed, defined, spacious.

   Mr. Burns is almost excusively a science fiction artist, but he is not above doing fantasy. Included are the magnificent cover for Silverberg's "Lord Prestimion" and the covers for Duncan's "A Handful of Men" tetralogy, to mention a few. In any case, Mr. Burns seems to derive more inspiration from science fiction than fantasy - his sci-fi paintings just seem more alive. He is notorious for keeping to the letter of the subject material, and thus his artwork is full of detail. On a different note, I enjoyed the captions - written by Mr. Burns himself: they sparkle with wit and personality.

   A few paintings - this is especially evident in some of the humans - do suffer from minor parallax problems: just observe the case of minor cross-eye in the finger-knitting heroine on the cover, or, alternatively, the similar figure on the painting for Bear's "/" ("Slant", not "Slash"). Otherwise, this is an indispensable book for lovers of fantastic art.




3. I have loved Jim Burns's art since forever, and always regretted that I missed out getting a copy of his collection "Lightship" a few years back. So when "Transluminal" came out, I made sure to grab a copy hot off the presses, and I was definitely in swoon-mode as soon as I cracked the covers. Burns is simply the best SF illustrator of the last twenty-five years. This is not to say that there aren't tons of other great artists out there; Moebius and H.R. Giger are also amazing and wonderful. And I fondly remember the time when Richard Powers ruled the paperback world. But when the fashion in SF publishing turned from abstraction to narrative art, it all could have gone so very wrong. Fortunately, that was about the time when a young Welshman fresh out of the R.A.F. was beginning his career, and he has gone on to define the standard for beautiful jacket art. Burns combines old-master technique with a big and wild imagination, and his covers often make me buy books I might've passed up otherwise (in fact, I hate to say it, but the books aren't always as good as the pretty pictures). His baroque/organic gadgets, his ornately-sculpted spaceships, his lovely women and gorgeously bizarre aliens are all like dreams come true, and must give authors as many ideas as Burns gets from the stories he's assigned to illustrate. If only more SF films looked as good as Jim Burns's paintings (okay, well, "Babylon 5" did have some suspiciously Burnsian stuff in it...and a long time ago, Burns apparently did some pre-production work on "BladeRunner"...or so I heard). Anyway, if you love SF, and aren't snobbish about commercial art, this book is a great introduction into the world of a huge talent.

1 comments about The Dave Nestler Sketchbook Volume 1.

1. Start out with that fantastic cover of Salma Hayek from Dogma and move on to an entire collection from one of the most talented artists in the business today. Subtitled "Bad Girls Drawn Nicely" this book from SQP is the first sketchbook collection from the brilliant hand of Dave Nestler. Nestler has already established himself as one of the great modern masters of erotic pin-up art and this book is a prime example. It presents 64 pages of luscious, sexy, and oh so naughty females, rendered in beautiful pencil illustrations. Calling this a sketch book makes it perhaps sound as if these are rough drawings but don't let that fool you. These are completed and polished drawings, suitable for framing.
   
   Nestler has a true eye for capturing women in their most subtle nuances with a fine-line detail that is unrivaled today. His anatomies are flawless and the eyes of the Nestler women enchant the reader. Check out the beauty lying on a stylish, Art Deco sofa, one breast exposed, seemingly waiting for her lover to come home. Then check out the gorgeous sun Goddess, pouring cool, refreshing water from a shell down over her body as she soaks up the sun. Catch a glimpse into the bedroom of a lovely woman as she readies herself for the evening in leather garter and bustier, and is busy attaching her stockings. A truly sensuous piece features a topless, delectable piece of cheesecake in a French maid skirt.
   
   The examples are too numerous to try and highlight them all. This is one of the finest pin-up sketch books I've ever seen. Nestler points out in the introduction to this volume that this is the time he has worked exclusively in pencils since he was in art school and he obviously hasn't lost a step. While the majority of the drawings feature full or topless illustrations there are also a number of great facial portraits as well. A first-rate collection! Sal Quartuccio continues to publish the finest in erotic fantasy and pin-up art.
   
   Reviewed by Tim Janson

1 comments about Thomas Mann: Storm Cycle--An Artist Responds to Hurricane Katrina.

1. Truly amazing work that reflects just some of what Hurricane Katrina means.
   This is what real artists do. I was fortunate to see the complete installation, but the book is wonderful in itself.

1 comments about Greek Vases.

1. "Greek Vases" by Dyfri Williams of the British Museum is a 72-page survey of Greek Vases. It includes 86 beautiful prints (36 in color) and reviews the history of Greek vase design and painting from its origins through the second century b.c. The text focuses on the progression of styles over time and in different regions including vases made in southern Italy and elsewhere by Greeks or in the Greek tradition. This is a very nice stepping stone from the basic art history book such as Janson's and a good primer to read before heading to the museum. It would have been nice if there were more cross-references between plates to show the connections between styles and a bit more about events in Greek history to help explain the major turning points. Additionally, a book like this would benefit tremendously with a short guide to Greek iconography for the novice. Nevertheless, if you are interested in Greek vases, this brief survey is a worthwhile and enjoyable! introduction.

3 comments about Tempo, Tempo! The Bauhaus Photomontages of Marianne Brandt.

1. Extremely well researched and uniting for the first time an extensive body of Brandt's photomontage, this book brings together a critical study of interwar Germany with an abundance of visual material. The author (Art History, SUNY Buffalo) places Brandt's forays into montage in the context of wider social, economic and technological changes arising out of the World War I. Reuniting collections previously fragmented between the United States and the former East and West Germanys, she demonstrates the myriad ways through which Brandt drew meaning and significance from the splinters of the past and on topics as diverse as gender, militarization, and the transformation of modern urban life. Readers interested in Bauhaus design or in Brandt's metal work will find this book a fascinating complement to a little known side of Brandt oeuvre. A thoroughly pleasurable book, I highly recommend it to all those interested in the arts of the Weimar era, the study of gender in interwar Germany, or to anyone interested in art history more generally.



2. Tempo, Tempo! is a highly informative, beautifully presented, and intriguing look at a set of photomontages by one of the few women members of the Bauhaus collective, Marianne Brandt. Elizabeth Otto's selection, analysis, and interpretation of Brandt's work gives us a fascinating glimpse of part of the history and culture of Weimar Germany. Brandt's photomontages, and the images she used to create them, drew on a number of themes--global militarism, changing perceptions of masculine and feminine gender roles, industrial development and machinery, metropolitan spaces, images of the "exotic"--that have as much resonance today as they did when she created this body of work. The photomontages reveal more and more as you study them, and Otto's accompanying texts, in both English and German, guide the reader to further insights on how to read these complex works of art. It is an erudite text, but not an inaccessible one. It is an enjoyable read, and the photomontages themselves are fun to study. I definitely recommend this text for anyone interested in Weimar history and culture, women in art, or art history generally.



3. Tempo, Tempo! The Bauhaus Photomontages of Marianne Brandt is a comprehensive look at the works of this fascinating woman. One can read the book in English or German, or attempt to go back and forth between the two. The author does a tremendous job interpreting Brandt's images and relates them to the culture of the time. One can learn a lot about Brandt and history through this book.