Museums & Collections Books - Page 4

The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece (P.S.)

Edward Dolnick

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Interesting, but too long and digressive. 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If the reader is interested in a fast pace and action, then this book will not satisfy. The basic story is not a lengthy one. The digressions into background matters provide useful peeks into assorted issues, such as thievery, forgery and the art world, but go on for too long and should have been condensed. I found myself impatient for the story to move forward. The sheer number of delays and digressions bordered on comical.

Editorial Review:

In the predawn hours of a gloomy February day in 1994, two thieves entered the National Gallery in Oslo and made off with one of the world's most famous paintings, Edvard Munch's Scream. It was a brazen crime committed while the whole world was watching the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer. Baffled and humiliated, the Norwegian police turned to the one man they believed could help: a half English, half American undercover cop named Charley Hill, the world's greatest art detective.

The Rescue Artist is a rollicking narrative that carries readers deep inside the art underworld -- and introduces them to a large and colorful cast of titled aristocrats, intrepid investigators, and thick-necked thugs. But most compelling of all is Charley Hill himself, a complicated mix of brilliance, foolhardiness, and charm whose hunt for a purloined treasure would either cap an illustrious career or be the fiasco that would haunt him forever.

Mitch O'connell: Tattoos

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Its Okay 3 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book doesn't have any pictures of actual work. Each image looks like a professional cartoon but there are many variations of the same work. For instance he might have 4 pictures of the same woman, with the same face, but wearing different clothes. Almost every image has some cute caption to go along with the picture but I didn't think there was more than a handful someone would want on their body.

Tacky Tat... 1 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I was hoping to get some good origonal ideas out of this for my next tattoo. I was disappointed to see what was inside this book. It's just packed full of a bunch of tacky white trash stuff that you see when flipping through one of the millions of floating around all tattoo shops.

Editorial Review:

The book contains 250 tattoo designs, the best of O’Connell's 3 sets of tattoo flash titled Stewed, Screwed and Tattooed (2001), Done While Drunk (2002), and From the Bottom of the Barrel (2006). Each limited edition set sold for $100, and is now out of print, and this volume collects all the images in one easy-to-flip-through book. Mitch O'Connell's art is reminiscent of the Old School tattoo art, from masters such as Sailor Jerry Collins and Don Ed Hardy, but uses more contemporary themes with a distinctive style.

The Book of Kells: An Illustrated Introduction to the Manuscript in Trinity College Dublin

Bernard Meehan

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Darkness into Light 5 out of 5 stars.
40 of 40 people found this review helpful.

I was glad I had this book along with me when I went to see the real Book of Kells at the Trinity College Library in Dublin. The lines of tourists waiting to view this famous eighth century manuscript were about a quarter of a mile long, and the museum proctors were really hustling us through the area where a small sampling of pages were actually on view.

(If you take the tour, be sure to check out the main chamber of the Old Library with its first editions of Newton and Darwin, plus the harp that is (alas, falsely) attributed to Brian Boru, high king of Ireland).

The first facsimile of the Book of Kells was published in 1974, and although this book only advertises itself as 'an illustrated introduction to the manuscript...' it contains good color plates of many of the most famous pages, e.g. the symbols of the four evangelists and the beginning of the 'Breves causae' of Matthew, among others.

Author, Bernard Meehan, the current Keeper of Manuscripts at Trinity College states that "the sacred text itself was copied in the Book of Kells with a remarkable degree of inaccuracy." It consists of the Latin text of the Gospels, illuminated in the very ornate Hiberno-Saxon style ('Hiberno' refers to the Irish, or Hibernians).

Legend has it that the Book of Kells was produced by St. Colum Cille on the island of Iona off western Scotland. Although it was probably begun in the Irish monastery on Iona, it was taken to the monastery of Kells in County Meath, after a series of Viking raids. The monastery on Iona was pillaged in 795, and again in 802. According to the author, "In 806, sixty-eight of the community were killed in another raid. The following year, the survivors migrated to Ireland and began to erect conventual buildings at Kells..." where the illumination of the manuscript was probably completed.

If you are interested in the historical background of the Book of Kells, the author devotes a whole Appendix to it.

Alas, according to this book's second Appendix, "Losses, Additions and Marginalia," the Book of Kells has not remained intact down through the centuries. "At present there are 340 folios, but around thirty folios, including some major decorated pages have been lost." The monks also used blank spaces in the manuscript to record details of property transactions in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.

Meehan's book is definitely worth viewing and reading. It also contains a wealth of the smaller decorative illustrations that do not always relate to the sacred text, e.g. hares, dogs, horses, and at least one moth. The color and minute details of these decorations are a source of endless fascination, and the scholarly text, although a trifle dry, is also very interesting.

Concerning The Spiritual In Art

Wassily Kandinsky

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

"to break the bonds which bind". . . "to an impoverishment of possibility" 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Kandinsky had risen to positions of influence in other disciplines (political science/economics and law) before directing his considerable intellect to painting. His insights extended into the historic 'meta' trends of the arts and sciences, including the physical sciences, and had his interests been directed more to the history and philosophy of science instead of the history and philosophy of art, he might have written Kuhn's observations regarding paradigm change a half century before Kuhn did: "Here and there are people with eyes which can see, minds which can correlate. They say to themselves: 'If the science of the day before yesterday is rejected by the people of yesterday, and that of yesterday by us of today, is it not possible that what we call science now will be rejected by the men of tomorrow?' And the bravest of them answer, 'It is possible.'"

Instead, Kandinsky extended the frontiers of painting and authored philosophic writings on the future of art that are among the most important of such works. M.T.H. Sadler, who translated this work into English, was a friend of Kandinsky's and was among his early admirers. The notes he has written in the front of the book (Translator's Introduction) are therefore more helpful than could be the opinions of many other critics, including myself:

"Anyone who has studied Gauguin will be aware of the intense spiritual value of his work. The man is a preacher and a psychologist, universal by his very unorthodoxy, fundamental because he goes deeper than civilization. In his disciples this great element is wanting.

"Kandinsky has supplied the need. He is not only on the track of an art more purely spiritual than was conceived even by Gauguin, but he has achieved the final abandonment of all representative intention. In this way he combines in himself the spiritual and technical tendencies of one great branch of Post-Impressionism.

"The question most generally asked about Kandinsky's art is: 'What is he trying to do?' It is to be hoped that this book will do something towards answering the question. But it will not do everything. This--partly because it is impossible to put into words the whole of Kandinsky's ideal, partly because in his anxiety to state his case, to court criticism, the author has been tempted to formulate more than is wise. His analysis of colours and their effects on the spectator is not the real basis of his art, because, if it were, one could, with the help of a scientific manual, describe one's emotions before his pictures with perfect accuracy. And this is impossible.

"Kandinsky is painting music. That is to say, he has broken down the barrier between music and painting, and has isolated the pure emotion which, for want of a better name, we call the artistic emotion. Anyone who has listened to good music with any enjoyment will admit to an unmistakable but quite indefinable thrill. He will not be able, with sincerity, to say that such a passage gave him such visual impressions, or such a harmony roused in him such emotions. The effect of music is too subtle for words. And the same with this painting of Kandinsky's. Speaking for myself, to stand in front of some of his drawings or pictures gives a keener and more spiritual pleasure than any other kind of painting. But I could not express in the least what gives the pleasure. Presumably the lines and colours have the same effect as harmony and rhythm in music have on the truly musical. That psychology comes in no one can deny."

Some aspects of Kandinsky's color theory are dubious, at best they cannot be universalized, and Kandinsky sees this. But other of his ideas and arguments are widely accepted among artists, even as being self-evident. Stating that "there is no 'must' in art, because art is free," that is, free to address external representations OR "the inner need," to merely chase after material 'objects' OR to wrestle with the mysteriously spiritual, to somehow meld the two visions OR to stay purely to exploration of the spiritual high ground, Kandinsky absolutely rejects the materialistic expectation of an art "explanation" that has been articulated by EO Wilson in his unfortunate daydream 'Consilience' (Wilson knows ants better than he knows humans, and is given to understanding humans to be essentially ant equivalents).

Anyone interested in art history, painting of the past century, or the relationships/correlations/divergences of the various arts (visual, musical, literary), as well as anyone interested in the meaning and purpose of art, or in the philosophy of aesthetics, should read this important book, perhaps more than once.

Editorial Review:

But despite their patent and well-ordered security, despite their infallible principles, there lurks in these higher segments a hidden fear, a nervous trembling, a sense of insecurity. And this is due to their upbringing. They know that the sages, statesmen and artists whom today they revere, were yesterday spurned as swindlers and charlatans.

Keith Haring

Elisabeth Sussman, Keith Haring

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

NEW TO KEITH HARING? 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

A VERY COMPREHENSIVE LOOK AT WORKS FROM THE WHOLE OF KEITH HARING'S RELATIVELY SHORT CAREER, YOU GET A DEFINITE FEELING OF HIS WORK CHANGING BEFORE YOUR EYES. THE TEXT, OF WHICH THERE IS AROUND 20 PAGES, MORE THAN ADEQUATELY SUMS UP THE THEMES AND AIMS OF THE ARTIST . THERE IS ALL YOU COULD WANT REALLY:

· ART HISTORICAL CRITICISM( WITH FREQUENT REFERENCE TO THE ONSUING PLATES) · INTERVIEWS WITH KEITH HARING HIMSELF · A FULL LIST OF ALL THE EXHIBITIONS AND STREET ART HE DID · SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY · 182 PLATES

YOU GET A REAL FEEL FOR WHAT THE ARTIST WAS ABOUT, SO WOULD BE AN IDEAL FIRST BOOK ON KEITH HARING, AND A GOOD REFERENCE BOOK FOR THE ART HISTORY STUDENT!

Editorial Review:

In 1980, mysterious chalk drawings of simple outline figures began appearing on unused advertising space in New York City's subway stations. Combining the appeal of Disney cartoons with the sophisticated "primitivism" of such artists as Jean Dubuffet, these underground artworks were bold, humorous, accessible, subversive--and unmistakably the work of one man, Keith Haring. This is the first look back at this singular talent. 325 illustrations, 175 in color.

Mutter Museum Historic Medical Photographs

College of Physicians of Philadelphia

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The first book on the Mütter Museum contain artful images of the museum's fascinating exhibits shot by contemporary fine art photographers. Here, the focus is on the museum’s archive of rare historic photographs, most of which have never been seen by the public. Featured are poignant, aesthetically accomplished works ranging from Civil War photographs showing injury and recovery, to the ravages of diseases not yet conquered in the 19th century, to pathological anomalies, to psychological disorders. Many were taken by talented photographers between the 1860s and the 1940s as records for physicians to share among colleagues and to track patients’ conditions, and demonstrate various techniques used in medical photography including the daguerreotype, micrography, X ray, and traditional portrait-style photography. As visual documents of what humans endured in the face of limited medical knowledge, these extraordinary and haunting photographs demonstrate how far medicine has advanced.

Tintin: The Complete Companion

Michael Farr, Herge

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A mixed bag 4 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

A strange book! The information and illustrations in it is great, but there are curious qualities to it. The writer is a native speaker of English, but from errors in sentence structure and some obvious mistakes in word usage, this publication was translated from French. There are curious recurring preoccupations and repetitions, almost suggesting that each chapter appeared separately, possibly in a magazine. For example, the comparison of Herge's work and that of his studio with that of Raphael and his assistant Giulio Romano occurs at least three times! The reproduction of pictorial archival material from Herge's collections and elsewhere alongside panels from the books is fascinating. But Farr often dedicates a lot of space to discussion of the source of a particular image or set of images -- and then there's no illustration. At other times there are illustrations that are scarcely mentioned in the text.

Still, we have to be grateful for all the data given here. I remember an old Tibetan lama looking at "Tintin in Tibet" with my children, and pointing out corners he knew in the panoramic picture of Katmandu, being puzzled by the Abominable Snowman, and laughing at the pictures showing levitation. In the '60's I camped all through through Yugoslavia; my young kids were reading "King Ottakar's Scepter" and constantly pointed out details in the landscape that matched the book. Herge did his homework, and it's great to have the sources laid out.

Despite its flaws, this book is a keeper.

Editorial Review:

An overview of the life of Herge, Tintin's creator.

Immediate Family

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Total reviews: 35 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Taken against the Arcadian backdrop of her woodland home in Virginia, Sally Mann's extraordinary, intimate photographs of her children--Emmett, Jessie, and Virginia--reveal truths that embody the individuality of her immediate family and ultimately take on a universal quality. Mann states that her work is "about everybody's memories, as well as their fears," a theme echoed by Reynolds Price in his eloquent, poignantly reflective essay accompanying the photographs in Immediate Family.

With sublime dignity, acute wit, and feral grace, Mann's pictures explore the eternal struggle between the child's simultaneous dependence and quest for autonomy--the holding on, and the breaking away. This is the stuff of which Greek dramas are made: impatience, terror, self-discovery, self-doubt, pain, vulnerability, role-playing, and a sense of immortality, all of which converge in Sally Mann's astonishing photographs.

A traveling exhibition of Immediate Family, organized by Aperture, opened at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia in the fall of 1992.

Painting With Light

John Alton

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Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Few cinematographers have had as decisive an impact on the cinematic medium as John Alton. Best known for his highly stylized film noir classics T-Men, He Walked by Night, and The Big Combo, Alton earned a reputation during the 1940s and 1950s as one of Hollywood's consummate craftsmen through his visual signature of crisp shadows and sculpted beams of light. No less renowned for his virtuoso color cinematography and deft appropriation of widescreen and Technicolor, he earned an Academy Award in 1951 for his work on the musical An American in Paris. First published in 1949, and long out of print since then, Painting With Light remains one of the few truly canonical statements on the art of motion picture photography, an unrivalled historical document on the workings of the postwar, American cinema. In simple, non-technical language, Alton explains the job of the cinematographer and explores how lighting, camera techniques, and choice of locations determine the visual mood of film. Todd McCarthy's introduction, written especially for this edition, provides an overview of Alton's biography and career and explores the influence of his work on contemporary cinematography.

I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children's Drawings & Poems from Terezin Concentration Camp,1942-44

Hana Volavkova

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Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The drawings and poems by the children of Terezin are among the most poignant documents of the Holocaust. This expanded edition of the unforgettable collection I Never Saw Another Butterfly was occasioned by the loan of the children's art by the State Jewish Museum in Prague to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., for exhibition and for this book.

The ghetto of Terezin (Theresienstadt), located in the hills outside Prague, was an unusual concentration camp in that it was created to cover up the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Billed as the "Fuhrer's gift to the Jews," this "model ghetto" was the site of a Red Cross inspection visit in 1944 and of a propaganda film produced by the Nazis. Some elderly Jews even paid to enter its protective ghetto walls. With its high proportion of artists and intellectuals, culture flourished in the ghetto -- alongside starvation, disease, and constant dread of the continuous transports to the death camps of the east. Every one of its inhabitants was condemned in advance to die.

A total of 15,000 children under the age of fifteen passed through the Terezin Concentration Camp between the years 1942 and 1944; less than 100 survived. In these poems and pictures drawn by the young inmates of Terezin, we see the daily misery of these uprooted children, as well as their courage and optimism, their hopes and fears.

The drawings and poems are all that is left of these children. About those who signed their names to their work, it has been possible to find out a few facts: the year and place of their birth, the date of their transport to Terezin and to Auschwitz, and the date of their death. For most of them that last date was 1944, a year before the end of the war.

These innocent and honest depictions allow us to see through the eyes of the children what life was like in the ghetto. Birds and butterflies flutter with the looming red roofs of Terezin in the background; a luminous moonlit room betrays the stark interior of the barracks. Pencil line drawings depict the threatening guards, work brigades, and deportations they witnessed. Side by side with the realities are images of hope -- a sailboat guided by a candle, a lighted menorah, children playing in a garden that resembles Eden, figures scaling mountain peaks to liberation.

The children's poems and drawings, revealing a maturity beyond their years, are haunting reminders of what no child should ever have to see. Each piece of art gives the overwhelming tragedy of genocide a human and individual face.

This new, expanded edition of I Never Saw Another Butterfly includes many additional drawings and poems chosen from the archives of the State Jewish Museum in Prague by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.