Private Books - Page 2

Splendors of Versailles

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A DROP-DEAD GORGEOUS! CATALOG of rooms, objets, history.... 5 out of 5 stars.
16 of 16 people found this review helpful.

This is the lavishly produced catalog for the impressive one-time, one-venue 1998 show of the same name at the Mississippi Arts Pavilion, in Jackson. The 225-page, 9x12 inch format heavy card-cover tome begins with outside and inside views of the major rooms of Versailles, mostly full-page size, then focuses on shots of the 120+ artifacts and installations included in that ambitious show.

The Mississippi Commission on International Cultural Exchange did a 1996 one-venue show on Russian Imperial Style that broke U.S. exhibition attendance records -- those folks do great work, and this show's catalog reflects it. Printed on heavy gloss paper in superb color, it includes well-selected paintings, tapestries, porcelains, the king's bedchamber installation, and the controversial 10-ton equestrian statue by Bernini.

This is a superb coffee table book, especially for the remarkably low (as of this writing) aftermarket price. I'm not familiar with the other extant Versailles books, but this one looks like a must-add to any enthusiast's collection. It would be in much higher demand -- and fetch higher prices -- if it weren't a show catalog, and hence not as well known as it might be. A royal sleeper!

Editorial Review:

This detailed and richly illustrated, full-color volume offers a view of such treasures from Versailles as magnificent state rooms, royal portraits, fine tapestries, elaborate clocks, and classic furnishings, porcelain, and chinaware. It provides insight into a gilded court life that has long since vanished and reminds us of the enduring value of the arts and fine craftsmanship.

The Irish Game: A True Story of Crime and Art

Matthew Hart

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Subjects -> History -> Europe -> Ireland -> General
Subjects -> History -> Europe -> Ireland -> General AAS

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

Editorial Review:

In the annals of art theft, no case has matched—for sheer criminal panache—the heist at Ireland’s Russborough House in 1986.

The Irish police knew right away that the mastermind was a Dublin gangster named Martin Cahill. Yet the great plunder —including a Gainsborough, a Goya, two Rubenses, and a Vermeer— remained at large for years. Cahill taunted the police with a string of other crimes, but in the end it was the paintings that brought him low. The challenge of disposing of such famous works forced him to reach outside his familiar world into the international arena, and when he did, his pursuers were waiting.

The movie-perfect sting that broke Cahill uncovered an astonishing maze of banking and drug-dealing connections that redefined the way police view art theft. As if that were not enough, the recovery of the Vermeer—by then worth $200 million—led to a remarkable discovery about the way Vermeer achieved his photographic perspective.

The Irish Game places the great theft in Ireland’s long sad history of violence and follows the thread that led, as a direct result of Cahill’s desperate adventures with the Russborough art, to his assassination by the IRA. With the storytelling skill of a novelist and the instincts of a detective, Matthew Hart follows the twists and turns of this celebrated case, linking it with two other world-famous thefts—of Vermeer’s “The Concert” and other famous paintings at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” at the National Gallery of Norway in Oslo. Sharply observed, fully explored, The Irish Game is a masterpiece in the literature of true crime.

Roy Lichtenstein: Prints 1956-1997

Elizabeth Brown, Dave Hickey, Roy Lichtenstein

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Editorial Review:

Think "Roy Lichtenstein" and you probably conjure up comic strip-based paintings and the colorful dots that comprise them. Lichtenstein intended his now iconic depictions of characters in tense, dramatic situations as commentaries on modern man's plight, in which the media--magazines, television, and advertisements--shapes everything, including our emotions. Many of the same concepts behind the artist's paintings apply to the significant number of prints he produced in the latter part of this life. Focused on works created from the mid-50s until his death in 1997, this exhibition catalogue gives a full overview of Lichtenstein's printmaking accomplishments. Accompanying reproductions of the artist's works are essays by two outstanding scholars: Dave Hickey, a MacArthur Award-winning writer on art and culture; and Elizabeth Brown, who wrote her thesis on Lichtenstein at Columbia University, under the tutelage of the late Kirk Varnedoe. Approximately 40 prints are illustrated in this elegant, intimately-scaled book, which highlights a specific body of work from one of the most innovative forces in post-World War II art. Essays by Dave Hickey and Elizabeth Brown. Introduction by Chris Bruce. Hardcover, 8 x 10 in./80 pgs / 50 color and 3 b&w.

Art Held Hostage: The Battle over the Barnes Collection

John Anderson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Art Held Hostage reveals the messy inside story about the most infamous world-class art museum that you’ve probably never heard of. The saga begins with the life and times of Albert C. Barnes, a Philadelphia business magnet who, after making his fortune during the Depression, becomes one of America’s most important collectors of impressionist and post-impressionist art. The collection includes famed paintings by such luminaries as Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso, and Renoir. Barnes became well known for his harsh personality and instigated a problematic invitation-only policy to his museum, located in a Philadelphia suburb. Strangely, even after Barnes’ death the museum continued to become embroiled in financial, legal, and community disputes. The story gets uglier during the 1990s with a series of lawsuits for the foundation’s high-profile president, including a racial discrimination suit and eventually near-bankruptcy for the collection. Author John C. Anderson, a contributing editor of The American Lawyer magazine, spares no cynical detail in his investigation into this truly American tale of power, litigiousness, and boardroom antics. This is a book for those interested in the dark underbelly of the business side of the art world. -- J.P. Cohen

Departed Angels: The Lost Paintings

Ed Adler

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This first-ever collection of Jack Kerouac’s visual art includes nearly every existing full-color painting collected and preserved by the Kerouac estate in Lowell, Massachusetts. Also included are dozens of black-and-white line drawings, sketches, and facsimile reproductions of Kerouac’s notations from his unpublished notebooks. In writing, Kerouac’s restless and relentless experimentation—what he called "spontaneous bop prosody"—pushed language to the boundaries of meaning. In painting and drawing he found a complementary means of expression. A friend and admirer of painters Willem de Kooning, Larry Rivers, Franz Kline, and Dody Muller, Kerouac was an ardent and deliberate student who worked to develop and refine his skills and his conception of the act of painting—a conception related to the spontaneous composition he had pioneered in his books. Ed Adler’s essay offers an unprecedented view of Kerouac, the visual artist. Rich in anecdote and drawing on extensive quotation from Kerouac’s letters, notebooks, and published writings, Adler’s essay demonstrates the biographical and thematic preoccupations common to Kerouac’s writing and painting, especially Kerouac’s struggle to integrate the two spiritual traditions, Catholicism and Buddhism, to which he was devoted. No consideration of Kerouac will be complete without reference to this heretofor- unseen aspect of his life and work.

Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

American folk art and decorative arts from the early years of the Republic are telling indicators of family traditions, aesthetic values, and household customs of the young nation. Showing us how creative and consumer cultures from the old world were transformed in the new, Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence presents more than two hundred examples of American folk art and decorative arts created in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia in the 18th and 19th centuries. Drawn from the extraordinary Jane Katcher Collection, the book features familiar expressions of American folk art—portraits and carvings, quilts and needlework, weathervanes and whirligigs, family records and calligraphy, ceramics, furniture, baskets, and toys—as well as the unexpected—valentines, friendship albums, and keepsakes woven from the hair of loved ones.

A distinguished group of scholars discuss these objects within the context of historical, economic, and social issues as well as aesthetics.. There are also explorations of craft methods and artistic strategies practiced by the artists and artisans represented in the collection. Separate essays on the Shaker and the Pennsylvania-German communities concentrate on the unique features of their material cultures and their religious and social orientations.

With more than 100 previously unpublished works, this generously illustrated book is essential for anyone interested in American folk art or decorative arts.

Visions of Spaceflight: Images from the Ordway Collection

Frederick I. Ordway III

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Outstanding! 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Fred Ordway has to be the world's leading space historian. If he isn't recognised as such he darned well should be! True to form Fred delivers an outstanding book filled with beautiful reproductions of some of the greatest space art ever painted. In the past fifty years Fred Ordway's contributions to the documentation of man's preoccupation with the heavens has to be unsurpassed. This book is a brilliant and perfect addition to any space enthusiasts collection. Trust me...buy this book!

Editorial Review:

This full-color book assembles a fabulous collection of images of astronautics and rocketry. The pictures, both imagined and real, extend from the 16th century to the eve of the Space Age in the late 1950s. Collector Fred Ordway, one of America's first rocket scientists in the post–World War II era, has been a pioneer in making the dreams of spaceflight come true. This realm is populated by heroes and scientists, dreamers and trailblazers. Images abound of square-jawed astronauts maneuvering their craft near Mars and of fantastic vehicles with propulsion ranging from dewdrops (17th century) to antigravity (19th century). Visions of Spaceflight is a compelling mix of the intentionally fantastic and the rigorously scientific.

Illuminated Manuscripts: Treasures of the Pierpont Morgan Library New York (Tiny Folios Series)

William M. Voelkle, Susan L'Engle

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This little treasure is one of a score of pocket-size tomes in the "Tiny Folio" series, which offers mini courses in art history based on the collections of the world's great museums. The nearly 300 pages, just four by four-and-a-half inches, hold almost that many full-color illustrations of the jewel-like illuminations that adorn Medieval manuscripts. This handy book is the perfect purse or pocket-stuffer, guaranteed to transport the reader to a paradise of unicorns and crimson-clad maidens, jousting knights, lute music, and gold-framed bestiaries. There are also the mouths of hell, Satan and the damned, and a hirsute "wild woman" rescuing a child from a curiously lamb-like dragon. All in all, it's a mesmerizing trip through five chapters: Biblical Scenes; Saints, Rites, and Rituals; Royalty, Pastimes, and Professions; Flora and Fauna; and The Supernatural, with a short essay to introduce each one. This is a great book to give as a gift or use as a visitor's guide to the Morgan Library, as the editors have provided thorough captions, an index to the illustrations, and a short but carefully chosen bibliography (which includes Roger S. Wieck's Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art, a larger look, so to speak, at one particularly beautiful type of illuminated work in the Morgan Library's collection). Be warned that some readers may need to take a magnifier to these minuscule, detailed pages, which teem with brilliant colors, vividly drawn decorations, and scenes that range from the bizarrely imaginative to the pastoral and serene. --Peggy Moorman

The Angel Tree: A Christmas Celebration

Linn Howard, Mary Jane Pool

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

This is a stunningly beautiful book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Each time I visit the Met at Christmas and see this exqusite creche, I am in awe at the magnitude and splendor of detail. The book was fascinating. I appreciated the in-depth history of Neapolitan artists who meticulosly hand carved the individual figures with such fastidious, detailed execution..

Editorial Review:

This stunning volume, illustrated throughout in full color, is an exquisitely designed celebration of the magnificent "Angel Tree" annually installed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, at Christmastime. The 109 photographs reproduce in breathtaking detail the extraordinary collection of 18th-century Neapolitan Baroque creche figures.

100 American Flags: A Unique Collection of Old Glory Memorabilia (The Collector's Eye)

Kit Hinrichs, Delphine Hirasuna

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A great expression of exceptional antique flags and patriotic memorbilia 5 out of 5 stars.
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Compiled by one of the grandfathers of modern print design, this book, which features items from Kit Hinrichs' own personal collection, is a wonderful artistic expression of the Stars & Stripes through antique American flags, patriotic memorbilia, and art. I highly recommend it.

Jeff Bridgman, dealer in antique flags, www.jeffbridgman.com

very Good 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I was very pleased with the quick delivery. I knew what I was ordering because I had seen the author on Martha Stewart. It was a great overview of his book. I am a Patriotic and flag nut, and this was right up my alley. I was not disappointed with this purchase.

Editorial Review:

The American flag has been raised high in wartime triumph and peacetime celebration; sewn lovingly onto quilts, caps, pillows, and bags; appropriated by popular culture; and faithfully honored every Fourth of July. This vibrant collection of 100 Stars and Stripes artifacts ranges from Civil War-era banners and Native American braided moccasins to an early 20th-century "friendship" kimono and original flag art by several of the world's leading designers. Destined to captivate folk-art aficionados, history buffs, and collectors, 100 AMERICAN FLAGS provides a stunning visual history of America's most treasured symbol.