Reference Books

Seven Days in the Art World

Sarah Thornton

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A fly-on-the-wall account of the smart and strange subcultures that make, trade, curate, collect, and hype contemporary art.

The art market has been booming. Museum attendance is surging. More people than ever call themselves artists. Contemporary art has become a mass entertainment, a luxury good, a job description, and, for some, a kind of alternative religion.

In a series of beautifully paced narratives, Sarah Thornton investigates the drama of a Christie's auction, the workings in Takashi Murakami's studios, the elite at the Basel Art Fair, the eccentricities of Artforum magazine, the competition behind an important art prize, life in a notorious art-school seminar, and the wonderland of the Venice Biennale. She reveals the new dynamics of creativity, taste, status, money, and the search for meaning in life. A judicious and juicy account of the institutions that have the power to shape art history, based on hundreds of interviews with high-profile players, Thornton's entertaining ethnography will change the way you look at contemporary culture.

The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain

Betty Edwards

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Total reviews: 169 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

illustrated with 12-page color photo insert and line art throughout

A revised and expanded edition of the classic drawing-instruction book that has sold more than 2,500,000 copies.

When Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was first published in 1979, it hit the New York Times bestseller list within two weeks and stayed there for more than a year. In 1989, when Dr. Betty Edwards revised the book, it went straight to the Times list again. Now Dr. Edwards celebrates the twentieth anniversary of her classic book with a second revised edition.

Over the last decade, Dr. Edwards has refined her material through teaching hundreds of workshops and seminars. Truly The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, this edition includes:

* the very latest developments in brain research;
* new material on using drawing techniques in the corporate world and in education;
* instruction on self-expression through drawing;
* an updated section on using color; and
* detailed information on using the five basic skills of drawing for problem solving.

Translated into thirteen languages, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is the world's most widely used drawing-instruction guide. People from just about every walk of life--artists, students, corporate executives, architects, real estate agents, designers, engineers--have applied its revolutionary approach to problem solving. The Los Angeles Times said it best: Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is "not only a book about drawing, it is a book about living. This brilliant approach to the teaching of drawing . . . should not be dismissed as a mere text. It emancipates."

Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy

Lawrence Lessig

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Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The author of Free Culture shows how we harm our children—and almost anyone who creates, enjoys, or sells any art form—with a restrictive copyright system driven by corporate interests. Lessig reveals the solutions to this impasse offered by a collaborative yet profitable “hybrid economy”.

Lawrence Lessig, the reigning authority on intellectual property in the Internet age, spotlights the newest and possibly the most harmful culture war—a war waged against our kids and others who create and consume art. America’s copyright laws have ceased to perform their original, beneficial role: protecting artists’ creations while allowing them to build on previous creative works. In fact, our system now criminalizes those very actions.

For many, new technologies have made it irresistible to flout these unreasonable and ultimately untenable laws. Some of today’s most talented artists are felons, and so are our kids, who see no reason why they shouldn’t do what their computers and the Web let them do, from burning a copyrighted CD for a friend to “biting” riffs from films, videos, songs, etc and making new art from them.

Criminalizing our children and others is exactly what our society should not do, and Lessig shows how we can and must end this conflict—a war as ill conceived and unwinnable as the war on drugs. By embracing “read-write culture,” which allows its users to create art as readily as they consume it, we can ensure that creators get the support—artistic, commercial, and ethical—that they deserve and need. Indeed, we can already see glimmers of a new hybrid economy that combines the profit motives of traditional business with the “sharing economy” evident in such Web sites as Wikipedia and YouTube. The hybrid economy will become ever more prominent in every creative realm—from news to music—and Lessig shows how we can and should use it to benefit those who make and consume culture.

Remix is an urgent, eloquent plea to end a war that harms our children and other intrepid creative users of new technologies. It also offers an inspiring vision of the post-war world where enormous opportunities await those who view art as a resource to be shared openly rather than a commodity to be hoarded.

The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren

Jonathan Lopez

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Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

It's a story that made Dutch painter Han van Meegeren famous worldwide when it broke at the end of World War II: A lifetime of disappointment drove him to forge Vermeers, one of which he sold to Hermann Goering, making a mockery of the Nazis. And it's a story that's been believed ever since. Too bad it isn't true.

Jonathan Lopez has drawn on never-before-seen documents from dozens of archives to write a revelatory new biography of the world’s most famous forger. Neither unappreciated artist nor antifascist hero, Van Meegeren emerges as an ingenious, dyed-in-the-wool crook who plied the forger's trade far longer than he ever admitted—a talented Mr. Ripley armed with a paintbrush. Lopez also explores a network of illicit commerce that operated across Europe: Not only was Van Meegeren a key player in that high-stakes game in the 1920s and '30s, landing fakes with powerful dealers and famous collectors such as Andrew Mellon, but he and his associates later offered a case study in wartime opportunism as they cashed in on the Nazi occupation.

The Man Who Made Vermeers is a long-overdue unvarnishing of Van Meegeren’s legend and a deliciously detailed story of deceit in the art world.

How to Draw What You See (Practical Art Books)

Rudy De Reyna

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Don't be deceived by the title 2 out of 5 stars.
4 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book is not for novice artists. I'm a Middle School art teacher and was looking for some new ways to TEACH drawing. I have "Drawing on the right side of the brain" and use many of the exercises in it with my students. This book doesn't even come close in my opinion. I didn't take anything from it that I could remotely use in the classroom. Reminded me of my college level drawing classes with professors that just threw a bunch of concepts out without *teaching* how to actually DO.

Editorial Review:

•A best-seller for 35 years

• A timeless classic that has taught generations of artists—and will teach generations more

When it was originally published in 1970, How to Draw What You See zoomed to the top of the publisher’s best-seller list—and it has remained there ever since. "I believe that you must be able to draw things as you see them—realistically," wrote Rudy de Reyna in this introduction. Today, generations of artists have learned to draw what they see, to truly capture the world around them, using de Reyna’s methods. How to Draw What You See shows artists how to recognize the basic shape to draw the object, no matter how much detail it contains.

The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art

Don Thompson

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock’s drip painting No. 5, 1948 sell for $140 million?

Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.

This book is the first to look at the economics and the marketing strategies that enable the modern art market to generate such astronomical prices. Drawing on interviews with both past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a journey of discovery through the peculiar world of modern art. Surprising, passionate, gossipy, revelatory, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark reveals a great deal that even experienced auction purchasers do not know.

The Art of the Turnaround: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Arts Organizations

Michael M. Kaiser

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Many arts organizations today find themselves in financial difficulties because of economic constraints inherent in the industry. While other companies can improve productivity through the use of new technologies or better systems, these approaches are not available in the arts. Hamlet requires the same number of performers today as it did in Shakespeare's time. The New York Philharmonic requires the same number of musicians now as it did when Tchaikovsky conducted it over one hundred years ago. Costs go up, but the size of theaters and the price resistance of patrons limit what can be earned from ticket sales. Therefore, the performing arts industry faces a severe gap between earnings and expenses. Typical approaches to closing the gap--raising ticket prices or cutting artistic or marketing expenses--don't work.

What, then, does it take to create and maintain a healthy arts organization?

Michael M. Kaiser has revived four major arts organizations: the Kansas City Ballet, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, and London's Royal Opera House. In The Art of the Turnaround he shares with readers his ten basic rules for bringing financially distressed arts organizations back to life and keeping them strong. These rules cover the requirements for successful leadership, the pitfalls of cost cutting, the necessity of extending the programming calendar, the centrality of effective marketing and fund raising, and the importance of focusing on the present with a positive public message. In chapters organized chronologically, Kaiser brings his ten rules vividly to life in discussions of the four arts organizations he is credited with saving. The book concludes with a chapter on his experiences at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, an arts organization that needed an artistic turnaround when he became the president in 2001 and that today exemplifies in practice many of the ten rules he discusses throughout his book.

Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking

David Bayles, Ted Orland

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 97 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Labor of love, love of labor 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book addresses flawed, fallible human readers, the ones who hopes to perfect craft despite their many and obvious imperfections. There is a lot to overcome: the inevitable gap between the vision and the actual result, the limits of materials and the difficulty of achieving their full potential, the times when inspiration seems to dry up, and the basic uncertainty that anyone will care about the eventual result. Even the term artist itself creates confusion, especially when capitalized into Artist. Self-doubt of myriad kinds creeps in: do I have enough (or any) talent? Am I just faking it? Why is it so hard for me, and so easy for everyone else?

The authors take a tough love approach: No, it's not easy. Yes you will have doubts and dry spells. If you're any good as an artist, then you'll be painfully aware of the flaws in your work, even the flawed implementation of your initial vision, which only you can know. And, once you've created your work, there's the whole problem of public acceptance and approval (not the same thing). Getting into the galleries and getting sold creates whole new vistas of difficulty and doubt, since neither the gallery owners nor the hoped-for buyers have the same goals that you do.

In the end, it comes down to some tiny core spark that the artist must have inside. It's not "natural talent" - maybe creation comes easily to the Mozarts of the world, but the authors address us mere mortals. That spark isn't some magical inspiration, either, since earning a living in art means you have to pay the rent whether inspired or not. That spark keeps the artist going when the world gives no reason to, and keeps the artist creating even when the magical Muse isn't there for inspirational hand-holding. In the end, the artist's human flaws aren't what defeats the art - they're what drives it. Seeing how each work falls short of perfection shows two things: it shows the flaws, of course, but it also shows a higher goal that could never have been seen otherwise.

-- wiredweird

Editorial Review:

An artist's survival guide, written by and for working artists. The authors explore the way art gets made, the reasons it doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way.

Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines (Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines)

Graphic Artists Guild

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 61 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Don't buy any book until you've read this one! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I've illustrated over 20 children's books, 10 of which without this book. Once I used the contracts from this book, I got paid what my time was worth! Great tips on pricing what your work and time. Most importantly, selling artist usage rights to multiple users. Who says your efforts can't be duplicated from one project to the next. This book is Gold! Pick up a copy and use it! Only for serious individuals wanting to do business in the real world. I recommend this book to authors, publishers, and anyone I work with.

Just a lot of the best information available... 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

So much information that it will take a lot of time to read it all, but it is so well written and with the right and necessary information that it is a must for everyone in this field. Very informative, clear and to the point. Covers almost every aspect of the Graphic Artist business. Will help a lot, specially with themes regarding your rights and obligation, what is to be expected from an artist and what should an artist expect from others.

The price tables are not accurate for everyone since I believe that there are different markets for different reasons, geographical, economical targets and so on... so you should not expect them to apply exactly to you, but those are really good points of reference you should consider and seriously evaluate.

I don't like the cover at all since it is very confusing and non practical, specially if you are looking for this book in a bookstore by reference and not knowing how it looks like, since it is hard to read it's title at first glance, which I think is a huge violation to the basic rules of commercial design. I think it should have some practical and useful design for that matters. Thats's a no, no, for something coming from an "Artist" Guild. Actually it is an ugly cover (sorry for the artist who created it). The size of it does not help to make it a carry on book say to read everywhere, but for the amount of information it carries, I don't see any more practical shape.

Buy it!

Editorial Review:

Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical guidelines, 12th Edition is the industry bible, containing information all graphic artists and their clients need to buy and sell work in a totally professional manner. This edition has been revised and updated to provide all the information you need to compete in an industry moving at lightning speed.

The Calligrapher's Bible: 100 Complete Alphabets and How to Draw Them

David Harris

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Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Great! 5 out of 5 stars.
8 of 8 people found this review helpful.

This is a great book for beginners. It has a great layout and is easy to understand.

Editorial Review:

Both hobbyists and students of design will value this easy-to-use self-teaching book. Each of its 100 sections shows a complete A-to-Z calligraphy alphabet, with lessons on correct pen strokes and advice on avoiding errors. Beginners will find sound basic instruction, while experienced calligraphers can extend their repertoire with letter styles that range from classic Roman to clean and elegant contemporary styles. In addition to analysis of each alphabet’s features, the book’s detailed instruction provides information on— Tools and materials * Layout basics * Numerals and punctuation * Illumination and ornamentation * Tips for the left-handed calligrapher . . . and more. Readers will also find examples by master calligraphers from past eras. This book’s spiral binding ensures that pages lay flat when opened, allowing calligraphers to study and copy each pen stroke with ease. The Calligrapher’s Bible is printed in color and features more than 350 illustrations.