SANDRA J. SHAW
STUDIO
Book Notes
This page is a casual pass-time of mine to record my thoughts about my art books. The entries are not formal book reviews, but brief notes on the books' subject and significance. Entries appear in no particular order, although the catalogue list is alphabetized by title. In the early 1980s I began haunting used book fairs for old books with good text, and browsing bookstores for more contemporary publications with good photos of art. Since then my collection has blossomed into hundreds of books and catalogues. This page is a first stab at discussing some of this material -- and it's a work in progress. Time permitting, it may become a more thorough compendium of reviews organized by order of the importance of each book. But for now, this is just for fun -- I love my books and learn more from them through note-taking. Hopefully these notes offer interest and insight for those who also love art and art books.
- Catalogue
- click on book titles below for Notes
- The American Renaissance by R. L. Duffus, 1928
The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors by Christine Mitchell Havelock, 1995
Art Students' Anatomy by Edmond J. Farris, 1935
The Artist-Gallery Partnership by Tad Crawford & Susan Mellon, 1998 & Business and Legal Forms for Fine Artists by Tad Crawford, 1990
Bridgman's Life Drawing & Constructive Anatomy by George B. Bridgman, 1924 & 1920
Brunelleschi's Dome by Ross King, 2000
- How to Draw the Human Figure by Jose M. Parramon, 1989
How to Enjoy Pictures by M. S. Emery, 1898
The Human Figure by Jon H. Vanderpoel, 1958
The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallway, 1997
Modelling and Sculpting the Human Figure & Modelling and Sculpting Animals by Edouard Lanteri, 1902-1911
The Natural Way to Draw by Kimon Nicolaides, 1941
The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe, 1975
Painting as a Pastime by Winston S. Churchill, 1950
Purpose and Admiration by J. E. Barton, 1932
Sculpture West and East: Two Traditions by Herbert Christian Merillat, 1973
Shadow of Eros by Adrian Bury, 1954
Story-Lives of Master Artists by Anna Curtis Chandler, 1929
Venus in Exile: The Rejection of Beauty in 20th-Century Art by Wendy Steiner, 2001
How to Enjoy Pictures
by M. S. Emery
Boston: The Prang Educational Company, 1898
290 pages
Just as the title says, this is a layman's guide to greater enjoyment of the two-dimensional arts. Emery's How-To guide emphasizes understanding art for the purpose of the pleasure it gives us. A great variety of pictures are discussed, including Rembrandt etchings, paintings by Michelangelo and Rubens, Gibson's pen and inks. Additional chapters offer insights about the processes of reproduction, and the use of pictures in the classroom.
Published in 1898, Emery's How to Enjoy Pictures also offers a glimpse of the spirit of the Age of Industry. As with many publications of that era, the author reveals his tacit embrace of the Anglo-American culture of capitalism and its Man-centered optimism. For example, in an aside in which he discusses a painting of New York Harbor, Emery comments on the Brooklyn Bridge set far in the distance: "...men are greater than the earth, for they have it in their brains and their hands to wrest out of the very heart of the earth the materials for bridging her chasms and spanning her streams and sailing the whole circuit of her heaving oceans."
The greatest value of this book is twofold: it offers the reader the opportunity to contemplate representational art at length and so acclimate one's faculties to thoughtful observation, and to the quality one should expect to see in art. Two: it offers the opportunity to experience a nineteenth-century mind at work.
Purpose and Admiration
by J. E. Barton
London: Christophers, 1932
271 pages
Don't let the title fool. Purpose and Admiration is an irrational piece on aesthetics written in the style of the stream of consciousness. As with many works written in this style, certain passages are insightful and give pause, but taken in the full context of the author's method, the content remains over-all a wash of confusion.
The chief value of this book is that it is a good example of the thought of inter-war period intellectuals. Published in 1932, Purpose and Admiration demonstrates the intellectual paving stones for the impending era of modern art. Barton makes the case for a "new" art that is mystical and ineffable. He cites Plato and Hegel as his progenitors, and he describes art as requiring selflessness and a collectivist social system. From Plato to primitivism, all of the intellectual prerequisites for modern cultural madness are laid out here.
Compared to today's art criticism this book is a pillar of sobriety, but the author's view of art as irrational produces such familiar nonsense as: "We feel, in the presence of this statue [of a primitive figure] that we are in the embodied presence of instinctive forces which run deep, and which dominate all the forms of the work, even those which are actual failures from the imitative [representational] point of view. In a word, the art is unconscious." Or how about: "'Back to the land' is not a motto, if we take it to mean 'Back from the bottle to the udder.'"
Barton's pronouncements for the mystical value of art, and his view that great art requires a community of workers controlled by elite "experts" parallel Josef Goebbels's cultural speeches of this same period. The British Mr. Barton may have found this comparison offensive, as do today's art critics who have inherited Barton's, and the Nazis', views about "modernity." ... but if the boot fits ...
All in all, this is an insightful read for those interested in the intellectual foundation of modern art and dictatorship.
The Natural Way to Draw
by Kimon Nicolaides
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1969
221 pages
This is a rigorous and valuable workbook for the serious art student who wants to be great. Published in 1941 after the author's death, it presents the lessons Kimon Nicolaides (d. 1938) taught at the Art Students League in New York City, where he taught for fifteen years. These lessons are presented in a demanding program of studio practice. They are not to be treated as ends in themselves, and are not designed to produce final art works. This book is a tool specifically for developing the skills of observation that are in turn vital to the creation of good art.
Nicolaides' approach to art instruction is, on the whole, inductive -- he stresses that direct experience - observation via the senses of the live model - is the foundation for artistic understanding and creation. Says Nicolaides, "The first step in drawing is an objective step -- the observation of facts as they exist. This is the surest way to [] the power of an accumulated real knowledge." He stresses that a theoretical method of drawing is useless unless the theory is based upon observation. The opening quote by Leonardo da Vinci encapsulates this crucial issue for the artist: "The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance."
Like many artists of his generation, Nicolaides straddles the rational art traditions of the 19th-century and the abandonment of principles in the 20th. Although he advocates observation of nature as the starting point in art, he does not feel obliged to remain in contact with reality throughout the process of artistic creation (this is reflected in his own abstract concoctions, which fortunately do not appear in this book). Nicolaides's use of both classical and modern works as examples of "good" art hint at his subjectivism and would be confusing to an uninformed student. This problem aside, the practical instruction that he offers in this book does not encourage subjectivism, and only deals with the rational goal of developing skills of observation.
All-in-all a very good book of instruction for the student who understands that learning how to see is not automatic, and that all good art is authentic -- born from the artist's honest relationship to nature, not on his/her allegiance to a formula.
Shadow of Eros
by Adrian Bury
London: Macdonald & Evans, W.C.I, 1954
103 pages
This is a biography of the brilliant British sculptor Sir Alfred Gilbert (1854-1934) written by a friend of the artist. As such, it offers insights into the artist's life in the gracious language of a valuer. This is no small offering. Many art criticisms written in modern times convey little admiration or even respect for the artist. Today biographical facts are often presented in cold detachment from any positive evaluation of the individual. In contrast to today's approach, this book is a warm, thoughtfully prepared account of what the author thought is most important about the life of a great artist he was privileged to know.
Bury outlines the course of Gilbert's life and career in terms of essential events, and provides an intimate treatment of Gilbert's studio works. Gilbert's superlative artistic virtuosity is revealed in 24 plates that include his famous Eros atop the Shaftsbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus, London; his exotic St. George on The Duke of Clarence Memorial, Windsor; and his solemn bronze Icarus. His figures have a somber quality that reflects the artist's stormy and at times tragic life, yet throughout them shines Gilbert's romantic conception of human potential. Gilbert's sensitivity and passion for his art are revealed in his brilliant work, and suggested in his life decisions, including the smashing of his own work rather than allow creditors to have them completed by other hands.
Gilbert would have witnessed the demise of the fine arts in the west. By the time he died his work was deemed to be out of date -- the inter-war period was a time when "English sculpture was about Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth." (R. Dorment.) This is a profound issue left untreated in this biography. Perhaps the author, along with so many at that time, had not identified nor fully understood this phenomenon.
The bibliography is good for early resources on Gilbert. The Notes and Commentary on the works should be appreciated with reference to a more modern publication on Gilbert for good photos of his wonderful works -- for example, Alfred Gilbert Sculptor and Goldsmith by Richard Dorment (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1986).
Story-Lives of Master Artists
by Anna Curtis Chandler
Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1929
298 pages
This is a benevolent story-book for children. It is meant for grade school reading to inspire interest in the lives of some of the great painters from the Renaissance to the nineteenth-century. The selection of painters is a good one, beginning with the early Renaissance Italian Giotto (1266-1337) and ending with American Winslow Homer (1836-1910). Each story is opened with a brief biography of the artist and short list of their major works. The Bibliography is an introductory reference for early sources on the artists.
The writing is fair, and its best use may be for oral reading. Chandler picks one or two events in the artist's life and relates it in the form of a bed-time story. The spirit of these stories is benevolent throughout -- even Michelangelo's painful execution of the Sistine ceiling and Cellini's escape from a mad jailer are treated as adventures of high achievement. Like a fresh breeze blowing from a different world-view, we see the term 'gay' used to express its original meaning before its destruction in modern times. No other term can so ably characterize the brushwork in Dutch Master Frans Hals's portraiture.
Chandler pays special attention to the glory of physical objects throughout. The dress of the characters are vividly described: "...the cobweb lace of his collar, the rich velvet of his cape, the silver buckles on his slippers, the plume of his soft, broad hat..."; landscapes are treated in terms of their physical content: "...the velvety fields, the bent old trees, the deep, still woods, the shining rivers." Each story is full of descriptions of the physical world that the artists paint. This emphasis on physical objects is excellent content for a child's (and adult's) understanding of the foundation for art: the physical world.
The American Renaissance
by R. L. Duffus
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1928
321 pages
This is a poorly written book on a great topic: the history of art education in the United States. It surveys the major art schools of America, roughly dividing them into categories of instruction: the universities, technical schools, academies, art museums, workshops. The institutions are treated similarly, which results in repetition of content, however, the section on the art academies is good. The academies shine forth as the best of fine art training in the U.S., and this remains true today.
'The American Renaissance' refers to "the birth of a new national art." What this means is never explained, but from the book's content, it seems to refer to a collectively determined art. At the time this book was written, nationalism was popular in cultural circles -- intellectuals searched for ways that the realm of the man-made could be socialized, standardized or collectively defined and managed. How this would be done is not clearly explained, only that some sort of collective / government oversight would be involved. Duffus does not explicitly advocate state control of the arts, but his call for a national art supports such a role for government.
The most interesting aspect of this book is the author's call for a national art. Duffus senses that something is going wrong in the arts and that some major change is needed. He does not describe what this problem is, he only alludes to the need for change. Along with his call for change is Duffus's tacit endorsement of the modern art movement. He endorses experimentation over standards. He appears to be in accord with the avant-garde movement of his day. This is perhaps the origin of his call for change. It is not that Duffus has a certain high standard to which he wants the arts to aspire, he wants change for its own sake, and on a national scale.
Duffus notices that John Constable's realistic treatment of landscape "gives him completely away in the eyes of a generation which does not give a tinker's damn for realities." The generation Duffus refers to is that of his own time -- the inter-war period, in which the first followers of the modern art movement were just beginning to penetrate the art schools ... and damning reality all the way.
On the up-side, there are some gems from by-gone western culture to be found amid Duffus's muddled ramblings, such as a Yale commencement address of 1770 in which art is characterized as "being more sensible of the dignity of human nature and despising whatever tends to debase and degrade it." The author benevolently describes the students of the Eastman School of Music as "expectant as well as gay -- they are so exuberant that a notice has to be kept posted to warn them not to slide down the banisters."
It is interesting to read this author's glowing reviews of the art schools of 1928, from our vantage point of having witnesses decades of destruction in the arts ever since. What destroyed the arts was the avant-garde, subjectivist nihilism that these institutions taught -- and that this author apparently endorses. Duffus likely had no idea what destruction these schools would render to American culture, and his naive reviews have tragic significance for the modern reader. Over-all, this is an interesting read for those studying the origins of modern art in America.
How to Draw the Human Figure
by Jose M. Parramon
New York: Watson Guptill Publications, 1989
112 pages
The Watson-Guptill Artists Library series is a recent addition to the genre of amateur art instruction books. It's primary virtue is that it uses digital imaging and so offers a good range of vivid images to help the student concretize the purpose of the lessons. Parramon brings together an impressive array of concretes: beautiful reproductions of Master drawings -- particularly those by Mariano Fortuny (1838-1874), his own competent renderings of Master drawings, photos of the live model, vivid schematics, and examples of the stages and types of life drawing from the brief gesture to the developed study. All these visuals provide a broader range of concretes than earlier instruction books.
The down-side of this book is in the over-all structure and the writing. The anatomical drawings are poorly and at times even incorrectly labeled. The most grievous weakness is that although this book is about how to draw the human figure, the author begins his instruction with the student working from wooden and paper models. Only after working from these does Parramon deal with the nude model. Understanding of the human figure requires the opposite to this approach. Any schema of the figure, whether a gesture drawing or block-figure, must be derived from observation of the live model. The student must begin with the model, and only supplement his/her understanding of nature with study of wooden models or other facsimiles. Parramon spends a great deal of time on the making of a paper doll from which to study the figure. This is a waste of the student's time, which should be spent with the living model.
I recommend this book to art students only as one of what should be many visual sources that the student uses. It covers the very basics of life drawing and offers a wide range of good visuals. All the basics that are covered in it are valid and fundamental to good drawing. Like all art instruction books, it must be appreciated in the context of other sources. I suggest the old Walter T. Foster "How to Draw" Library for comparison, as well as the use of a wide range of instruction books such as those by George B. Bridgman, Robert Beverly Hale, Edouard Lanteri, John H. Vanderpoel and Kimon Nicolaides.
The Human Figure
by John H. Vanderpoel
New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1958
143 pages
Vanderpoel's classic analysis of the figure is my very favorite book on drawing the figure for the art student. Written in 1935 by one of America's preeminent art instructors, this gem is appropriately introduced by George B. Bridgman. It contains 430 pencil and charcoal drawings by Vanderpoel that are some of the loveliest, most sensitive studies we have of the figure in these media. Overarching sensitivity marks all great art, and this book is defined by the author's possession of it. Vanderpoel offers not only his masterful studies, but also lengthy and detailed descriptions of the figure throughout. He brings to the features of the figure care and consummate knowledge, and the best students must read all of what he says with great attention.
Only the reader who loves the figure as does Vanderpoel will benefit from this book, because it is written for the individual who possesses the heightened awareness of an intense valuer. His probing descriptions of each facet of the figure are underscored with value-laden summations such as: "The beauty and grace of the curvature of the eye are not exceeded by any other form in nature." -- an assessment charmingly followed up with a typical observation: "In the farther eye the outer corner is not visible."
This is a joy to read and to view. Any further descriptions of this book are useless -- the serious art student must study it carefully.
Modelling and Sculpting the Human Figure
Modelling and Sculpting Animals
by Edouard Lanteri
New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1985
480 & 336 pages, respectively
This two-volume set is an unabridged edition of what was originally a three-volume set published from 1902 to 1911. It comprises what I consider to be the bible of instruction for the sculpture student. The French author, Edouard Lanteri (1848-1917), was England's preeminent sculpture instructor of the early nineteenth-century. Many of England's and Europe's finest sculptors of the New Sculpture Movement owe a great deal to Lanteri's instruction. He brought a fresh romanticism to the figure in sculpture that challenged the traditional academic approach, while embracing classical principles.
Lanteri's legacy is found largely in the works of his more famous students, such as Rodin and Alfred Gilbert, while a few unheralded sculptures of his own grace the halls of the National Portrait Gallery and the Tate in London. These volumes stand as records of the knowledge he gave to artists of the great Age of Industry: how to sculpt the figure in the round, in relief, nude and draped. All the fundamentals are covered here. His sensitive and powerful conception of the figure is revealed in the black and white photos of his working models captured in their several states of development. The horse, the lion and ox are also treated with Lanteri's characteristic nobility. Don't pass over the volume on the animals. It contains discussions on the history of the animal in sculpture, pointing, casting in plaster of the human bust and figure in the round and in relief.
I strongly recommend these volumes for anyone who wants to sculpt well, and/or who wants to judge sculpture well.
Painting as a Pastime
by Winston S. Churchill
New York: Cornerstone Library, 1965
32 pages, 18 Plates
One of my heroes, The Right Honourable Sir Winston Churchill, wrote this charming little piece on the pleasures of painting for the amateur. First published in the U.S. in 1950, it is only 26 pages of his writing, with 18 colour plates of some of his efforts in oil on canvas. The reproduction quality of the plates is not good, but that is a small draw-back to this brief delight. Churchill's humour and command of English make this a treasure for all who love art, and art books, or are simply curious about taking up painting as a hobby.
If you have trouble finding this gem, the following is an excerpt for your pleasure. (Bear in mind that these are the words of the lion that took the Third Reich to task):
"Having bought the colours, an easel, and a canvas, the next step was to begin. But what a step to take! The palette gleamed with beads of colour; fair and white rose the canvas; the empty brush hung poised, heavy with destiny, irresolute in the air. My hand seemed arrested by a silent veto. But after all the sky on this occasion was unquestionably blue, and a pale blue at that. There could be no doubt that blue paint mixed with white should be put on the top part of the canvas. One really does not need to have had an artist's training to see that. It is a starting-point open to all. So very gingerly I mixed a little blue paint on the palette with a very small brush, and then with infinite precaution made a mark about as big as a bean upon the affronted snow-white shield. It was a challenge, a deliberate challenge; but so subdued, so halting, indeed so cataleptic, that it deserved no response.
At that moment the loud approaching sound of a motor-car was heard in the drive. From this chariot there stepped swiftly and lightly none other than the gifted wife of Sir John Lavery. 'Painting! But what are you hesitating about? Let me have a brush -- the big one.' Splash into the turpentine, wallop into the blue and the white, frantic flourish on the palette -- clean no longer -- and then several large, fierce strokes and slashes of blue on the absolutely cowering canvas. Anyone could see that it could not hit back. No evil fate avenged the jaunty violence. The canvas grinned in helplessness before me. The spell was broken. The sickly inhibitions rolled away. I seized the largest brush and fell upon my victim with Berserk fury. I have never felt any awe of a canvas since."
The Inner Game of Tennis Revised Edition
by W. Timothy Gallway
New York: Random House, 1997
122 pages
A book about tennis in a collection of art books? The Inner Game of Tennis is not really about tennis. It is about mastering one's own psycho-epistemology -- the psychological foundation of learning. Whether it is tennis or art that interests the reader, this book introduces skills of concentration crucial to mastering our greatest, most demanding skills -- and the creation of fine art is one of Man's greatest, most demanding skills.Making a work of art requires a vast amount of knowledge and skills held by the artist at the subconscious level -- it's too much to hold and employ consciously. Therefore it's crucial for the artist to be able to program their subconscious "storehouse" as well as access it during creation. The Inner Game of Tennis offers methods for monitoring, programing and accessing the subconscious.
Gallway stresses the absolute need for focus in properly dealing with one's own actions. Without focus, the tennis player (or artist) cannot acquire knowledge, master skills or monitor one's own abilities, whether of the body or of the mind. The artist's sensitive awareness of his or her subject is what makes great art possible, and Gallway's book is a great help in teaching how to achieve, and use, that kind of awareness.
Venus in Exile:
The Rejection of Beauty in 20th-Century Art
by Wendy Steiner
New York: The Free Press, 2001
280 pages
The subject of this book is a good one: the scorn of beauty in modern art. The author asserts the obvious -- that modern art is purposefully ugly -- but more importantly she identifies the intellectual cause of monstrosity in modern art: the ideas of Immanuel Kant. Steiner points to Kant's idea of the transcendental Sublime as the chief cause of today's attack against art that pleases or otherwise serves human interest. The Kantian moral ideal of disinterest is revealed in this book as the engine driving art away from that which is identifiable and attractive (both intelligibility and pleasure serve Man's selfish needs and therefore must be cast out of the arts, according to the Kantian view). Although Steiner does not name this issue in terms of self-interest versus selflessness, she consistently shows how it is Kant's denial of the moral credibility of human interest as such that translates into an "art" that is designed specifically to be inhuman.
The tragedy of this book is that the author is herself a subjectivist and a fan of modern art (!) A great deal of this book is detailed descriptions, in tones of approval, of "art" that is openly irrational and ugly. And like most modern academics, Steiner finds the most trivial distinctions among irrational artworks to be enormously important and cause for the most stretched interpretations. Steiner is not opposed to modern art as such. She is fundamentally opposed to male domination in art -- a phenomenon she links to the misogynistic ideas of Kant. As a modern academic, Steiner finds gender issues to be at the core of aesthetic problems. As a result, she does not deal with the more fundamental issue of Man-hatred, and the attack against reason launched by Kant, but instead casts her subject in non-essential terms of gender conflict.
One interesting observation about misogyny, that this book almost reaches, is that the attack on feminine beauty in modern art is due to the fact that women are objects of desire, in a way that men are not, and since the Kantian code must excise objects of desire as such, then woman with all her specifically feminine charms cannot exist in a Kantian culture.
This is an interesting read for those who want to know that modern art is inhuman, and that it need not be.
The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors:
A Historical Review of the Female Nude in Greek Art
by Christine Mitchell Havelock
Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1999
158 pages, 39 Plates
This is a well researched, scholarly analysis of the Greek achievement of the Aphrodite statue, written by a professor of Art History and Curator of the Classical Art Collection at Vassar College. Happily, it is also an engaging read. Havelock presents the known facts about the unprecedented Aphrodite of Knidos by Praxiteles of the 4th-century B.C. She also offers a thorough treatment of other major Aphrodites dating through to the Greco-Roman period. She traces the development of the Aphrodite in the ancient world, as well as how historians have viewed her since.This book offers a benevolent and respectful vision of the ancient Greeks and of Praxiteles's greatness. For example, the Hellenistic works are treated in terms of their virtues and not at the expense of the Classical achievements. The author obviously loves the Greeks and their evolving vision of the female nude.
The plates, all black and white, are good, and the notes are exactly as notes ought to be: terse and helpful. Her bibliography is very good. This is a must read for anyone who loves ancient Greek sculpture and wants to come to know it.
Bridgman's Life Drawing
Constructive Anatomy
by George B. Bridgman
New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1971 & 1973 respectively
169 & 167 pages, respectively
Bridgman's classic figure drawings are a must for all serious art students. His famed, block-like rendering of the human form gives students the opportunity to understand more clearly that the body is a structured, functioning organism.
These are two separate books, not a set. Both offer Bridgman's novel understanding of the figure with some redundancy. Constructive Anatomy treats each part of the body in more general terms of their over-all structure and action, and with more extensive drawing examples. Life Drawing introduces the discussion of anatomy with important treatments of more general principles, such as the major actions of the body and its parts, the major masses and how they are interpreted with form and light. Life Drawing also has a helpful section on proportion and measurement of the figure.
Other books by Bridgman are: The Book of 100 Hands; Heads, Features and Faces; The Human Machine. They apply Bridgman's approach to the figure to more in-depth treatments of certain areas of the figure. Bridgman's dramatic, distinctive style is often copied by art students, and it is best to use what he has to offer without imitation. Like all anatomy works, Bridgman's invaluable insights are best understood in the context of other artist's treatments of the figure, and most importantly, the artist's observations of the live model.
Sculpture West and East:
Two Traditions
by Herbert Christian Merillat
New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1973
272 page
This is a good introduction of some of the major sculptural achievements of the West, and of the major trends in sculpture in the East. The catalogue of photos offers an excellent overview of the two traditions and a good opportunity to contrast western versus eastern sculpture. Merillat's personal evaluation of the differences between the two traditions is not very helpful as he is a cultural relativist. He draws no fundamental conclusions about the significance of the differences he records. However, his choice to juxtapose the two traditions is novel and a great opportunity for comparison by the reader.
Merillat essentalizes western sculpture in terms of the major, trend-setting sculptors, and eastern sculpture in terms of the major religions. I particularly found helpful his treatment of the east which does not get mired in details of eastern religion, but spells out simply the major religious and geographical categories.
His list of illustrations includes details on the sculptures, a helpful map introduces the east, a glossary and suggested readings list are both good, and his chronology is also very helpful -- bringing the two traditions together at a glance.
The Painted Word
by Tom Wolfe
New York: Bantam Books, 1975
120 pages
This is an appropriately belligerent attack of modern art. It is written like a stand-up comedy routine that wittily insults the entire program of modern art in America. Wolfe describes the flowering of the movement in the U.S. in the 1960s with revealing anecdotes about the various participants. Since no fundamental change has occurred in art since then, Wolfe's observations are as relevant today as they were in 1975. This is not an in-depth analysis of modern art, and so it lacks the important identification of Kant as the intellectual and causal foundation. But for a light-hearted treatment of what can be appropriately treated as a silly topic, Wolfe does his subject justice. It's very funny and offers the reader a quick read that adequately encapsulates the world of modern art.
Art Students' Anatomy
by Edmond J. Farris
New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1961
159 pages
This is a good little handbook on anatomy for the artist that includes certain very valuable images not found in other anatomy books -- these are the wonderful x-rays of the joints in varied degrees of articulation. The best of these are of the shoulder through a full 180 degree rotation, the elbow bent to 90 degrees, and the knee also bent to 90 degrees. The knee joint shows that illusive movement of the floating patella relative to the end of the femur as the leg is flexed. The x-rays are accompanied by contour line drawings on opposite pages that outline the bones shown. This presentation of these complex joints is invaluable for the artist who seeks to understand the bony structures that underlay the forms of the body in its varied movements.
The small size of this book belies the wealth of information within. The drawings by L. Augusta S. Farris are good and all accompany photographs of the live model. The labeled skeleton and musculature are compared with spirited drawings by the eighteenth century anatomist Bernard Siegfried Albinus (1697-1770). Other entries include a series of action photos, student drawings and a full glossary of anatomical terms.
The author Edmond J. Farris was Professor of Anatomy at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and this instruction book reflects his fundamental approach to training in anatomy for the artist: "Close observation of one's self, as well as of others [] will prove exceedingly beneficial in the mastery of anatomy."
Brunelleschi's Dome
by Ross King
New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 2000
175 pages
This is a well researched story about a great achievement by a Renaissance hero: architect Filippo Brunelleschi and his great Duomo. It is an "absorbing tale" about the rise of the giant dome of the Basillica of Florence in the 15th century. Author Ross King frames historical details in an engaging and easily digested adventure story. Although it is a short read, the amount of information is considerable. Great attention is paid to, for instance, the design and materials of construction -- down to the numbers of bricks used and details about the various machines employed. By describing the many elements that went into raising the great dome, and by highlighting the ground-breaking intellectual achievements that made the dome possible, King enables the reader to fully grasp the enormity of this accomplishment.
I like this book because it covers this heroic event without miring the reader in countless encyclopedic details. All the essentials are dealt with in an easy, narrative style that includes amusing side notes, and intriguing related issues that connect the event to the wider context of the humanist revolution of the Italian Renaissance. All in all, a real pleasure to read.
The Artist-Gallery Partnership
by Tad Crawford and Susan Mellon
New York: Allworth Press, 1998
190 pages
Business and Legal Forms for Fine Artists
by Tad Crawford
New York: Allworth Press, 1990
126 pages
This pair of books provides an excellent foundation of knowledge and guidelines for the artist looking to do business with art galleries. The Artist-Gallery Partnership is a clear and straight-forward outline of a rational business relationship between artist and gallery. It reviews the elements of a reasonable agreement between the parties based upon their rational, mutual interests. Each element of this agreement is discussed in a manner that illuminates both the interests of the artist and that of the gallery, including interests and circumstances that may be in conflict. By discussing both sets of interests, the authors offer a total perspective so crucial to the success of any relationship. This book also includes a spectrum of agreements ranging from a simple receipt to a comprehensive contract -- a range that reflects the varied interests and commitments appropriate to this relationship. Included is a list of State Consignments Laws, a sample Standard Art Consignment Agreement, an Inventory Sheet/Receipt, a sampling of UCC laws, and a list of arts-related organizations.
Business and Legal Forms for Fine Artists is an excellent appendix of sorts for The Artist-Gallery Partnership. It provides a wide ranging series of legal documents that can be copied or used as reference in developing a sound business relationship. Thirty contracts and forms range from a standard sales contract, to Artist's lecture contract, to a copyright application. Crawford's "Success Kit" also includes negotiating checklists and advice about filling in the forms/contracts.
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