Book Description
"What is abstract art good for? What's the use--for us as individuals, or for any society--of pictures of nothing, of paintings and sculptures or prints or drawings that do not seem to show anything except themselves?" In this invigorating account of abstract art since Jackson Pollock, eminent art historian Kirk Varnedoe, the former chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, asks these and other questions as he frankly confronts the uncertainties we may have about the nonrepresentational art produced in the last five decades. He makes a compelling argument for its history and value, much as E. H. Gombrich tackled representation fifty years ago in Art and Illusion, another landmark A. W. Mellon Lectures volume. Realizing that these lectures might be his final work, Varnedoe conceived of them as a statement of his faith in modern art and as the culminating example of his lucidly pragmatic and philosophical approach to art history. He delivered the lectures, edited and reproduced here with their illustrations, to overflowing crowds at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in the spring of 2003, just months before his death.
With brilliance, passion, and humor, Varnedoe addresses the skeptical attitudes and misunderstandings that we often bring to our experience of abstract art. Resisting grand generalizations, he makes a deliberate and scholarly case for abstraction--showing us that more than just pure looking is necessary to understand the self-made symbolic language of abstract art. Proceeding decade by decade, he brings alive the history and biography that inform the art while also challenging the received wisdom about distinctions between abstraction and representation, modernism and postmodernism, and minimalism and pop. The result is a fascinating and ultimately moving tour through a half century of abstract art, concluding with an unforgettable description of one of Varnedoe's favorite works.
Customer Reviews:
Pictures of Nothing.......2007-10-13
This is a very good collection of lectures given about abstract art. It gives some valuable clues as to the genealogy of modern art.
overrated and wordy.......2007-09-19
a disappointing book - pretentious and unenlightening - get hilton kramer's "the trium of modernism" instead!
They really need a Zero Star category for books like this one.......2007-07-24
I watched the excellent series on art on DVD called "Power of Art" by Simon Schama. The last episode of the series is on Mark Rothko, an abstract painter. It made me want to learn more about abstract art, so I bought this book. Annnt! Thanks for playing. This book is a dog. It didnt help me understand abstract art one bit . In fact, it goes on and on about pieces of "art," but does not explain them beyond being smears or smudges or works of technique. The basis of abstract art is not explained at all.
BTW, it appears from this book that these guys were often making paintings just as rude jabs at one another's work.
I found the book a total waste.
Review by P Hutchings, Melbourne, Australia.......2007-06-13
Kirk Varnedoe's Pictures of Nothing is a masterpiece of empirical art chronology/criticism. It is gritty and on the ground. This is a relief after Danto's warmed-over Hegel and Clement Greenberg's star-spangled marx with a small M. If one might venture any hypothesis about the artists about whom Varnedoe wrote it would have to face, square on, any counter-instances. No Zeitgeist, just Popperian falsifiablility. Good. It is of course a pity for those of us who were not in New York at the right time. But, that's life.
Patrick Hutchings
Department of Philopsophy
University of Melbourne
Australia
Abstraction clarified.......2007-02-07
A brilliant and thorough explication of contemporary abstract art. The lectures were not intended for
arts professionals but are a literate and enjoyable guide to the visual arts since Jackson Pollock.
Book Description
The focus of this manual is not what provisions to include in a given contract, but instead how to express those provisions in prose that is free ofthe problems that often afflict contracts.
Customer Reviews:
Quick read with helpful tips.......2007-09-05
This book provides a good desk reference for best practices in contract drafting. Although focused primarily on commercial transactions, the tips are helpful for all areas of contracts. Highly Recommended.
So-so.......2007-03-10
Bought this book after reading some of the author's articles and the rave reviews here. It is more like a style guide (it focuses on tenses, font, grammar) than a substantive legal drafting guide. It is very nitpicky regarding the English language, to the level where if you adhered to every rule, you would be closer to a fuddy duddy phD candidate type than a practitioner. It reminds me of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. I much prefer Charles Fox's Working With Contracts - What Law School Doesn't Teach You, which is more practice-oriented and actually explains each clause, and its the purpose and meaning. Every junior associate should receive Fox's book as a present when they start their first year.
It could threaten my job security..........2007-01-07
As a contract litigation attorney I'd be worried if more people were to buy this book. Luckily for me the vast majority of lawyers and people who draft agreements apparently have not. Thus, I'm not worried about my job. It was actually an enjoyable read, too.
Must Have!.......2006-11-11
Any attorney actively involved in the drafting of contracts must have this manual. I am general counsel for a product development and manufacturing firm and have been actively using the guidance of Ken Adams' book for several months now on a variety of contracts, including overhauling our standard contracts. Not only is it improving my efficiency, but the feedback from members of our company is very positive. I cannot state it any better than Ken does in his preface to this manual. If you agree with the premise of his preface, as I do, then you will find this to be an invaluable and indispensable tool.
Book Description
With Stone and Designing a Home with Wood, Heather and Earl G. Adams brought us inspirational style guides to using two of the fundamental materials in home design. Now this creative team has turned their attention to tile in all its beauty and utility. Once merely ceramic, today's tile encompasses glass, stone, and cork, among other materials, and Tile Style celebrates tile old and new with 250 color photographs of gorgeous completed rooms as well as step-by-step installation demonstrations.
This comprehensive guide shows how tile can be used in myriad applications-from floors to ceilings and bathrooms to kitchens-as well as in multidimensional tile designs and mosaics. Tile Style is also filled with practical information on choosing, purchasing, installing, and caring for tile. The book is divided into four sections, covering natural and man-made tile materials, decorative uses for tiles and mosaics with instructions for special artistic projects, and a complete guide to installing tile. Projects include laying a stone tile floor and installing a granite tile countertop with a glass and metal backsplash. An extensive appendix section provides home decorators with all they need to know about budgeting a job, hiring an installer or doing it themselves, and maintaining surface tiles.
Customer Reviews:
Beautiful Tile.......2007-05-12
This is a great book about tile. It has creative, inexpensive ways to upgrade your tile look and to help enhance your end result. There are beautiful pictures of tile work someone would actually install into their own home. Highly recommend this book for the person who is looking for creative ideas.
Ideas, Ideas, & More Ideas.......2007-02-15
This book has some wonderful examples of tile projects to inspire you to do your own. After I read the book I did my own project and it turned out well. The book is packed full of useful information to help anyone complete their own project.
Pure tile eye candy!.......2006-06-22
This book is chock full of gorgeous tile applications in a variety of styles. I especially love the mosaics. Pure eye candy!
One of the BEST!.......2006-02-08
I have always been an avid DIY'er and a passionate lover of tile, so I have just about every book on the subject. I've been waiting for the release this newest book TILE STYLE and let me tell you, it does not disappoint. Truly an all inclusive book, it covers in great detail everything tile including natural stone, glass, metal, mosaics, terra cotta, brick, porcelain, ceramic, cork and numerous decorative tiles. Not only will you learn the qualities of each, but how to chose, design with, install and care for them as well. The book is filled with beautiful photos of tiled rooms (even the installation sections are full color). And when it comes to the installation sections, this has to be one of the most detailed, yet simply presented of my entire collection. Plus, the projects incorporate the newest setting methods and materials in conjunction with the most current trends in kitchens, baths and flooring such as a granite tile countertop, a glass and metal backsplash and setting a travertine tile floor! Beautiful, extremely informative and cutting edge - a must have tile book!
Book Description
Using a cookbook approach, The JavaScript Anthology will show you how to apply JavaScript to solve over 101 common Web Development challenges. You'll discover how-to:
Optimize your code so that it runs faster
Create Ajax applications with the XmlHttpRequest object
Validate web forms to improve usability
Take control of your web pages with the DOM
Ensure that your JavaScript code is accessible
Create slick drop-down menu systems
Included in this book is extensive coverage of DHTML and Ajax, including how-to create and customize advanced effects such as draggable elements, dynamically sorting data in a Web Browser, advanced menu systems, retrieving data from a Web Server using XMLHttpRequest and more.
The JavaScript Anthology also includes extensive coverage of object oriented coding, efficient script design, accessibility, and cross-browser issues. Best of all, you'll get download access to all the code used in the book, so you can put the scripts to use instantly.
Customer Reviews:
Just What I Needed.......2007-02-27
I purchased this book out of desperation after using a 1000 page Javascript Wrox book published in 2000 that was worse than useless. The author's blog posting here is very accurate: it is a modern javascript book that gives usable solutions and concepts that work well. I recommend this book to anyone who has at least some programming background and is sick of cut and pasting garbage code from other mickey mouse tutorial sites that break at the slightest change. It is also a great start for working with AJAX, which is what I needed it for.
That said, the book is surprisingly a great read. I am reading this book cover to cover and also use it as an every day reference with dozens of tips. It is obvious the authors have worked extensively with web sites and write from experience. Thanks for a job well done!
Javascript 4 U.......2007-02-16
This is an excellent next-step up from an introduction to Javascript and looks at its use in real world situations. You will need to be reasonably fluent in the language to get the best out of it.
The book presents a topic as a question and then presents code to action that query as a solution, then goes through that code in a discussion section. This is where I have a relatively minor criticism of this book; the necessities of discussing the code do not always mesh well with the question and answer format of the layout.
The authors have gone to great effort to ensure that the book is as up-to-date as possible, though this is a rapidly moving target of course, and detail how to ensure that the code will run on as many platforms as possible, rarely giving up and saying 'forget it..', though this proved necessary in a number of the more esoteric options and older browsers.
A highly recommended read if you are looking for a quick solution, or a detailed understanding of what's going on.
The most useful JavaScript book on my shelf.......2007-02-06
I didn't really think I needed this book -- I have sever other JavaScript books, including the O'Reilly JavaScript Cookbook, and it seemed like this would just be a duplication. But I kept reading really positive reviews of this and other SitePoint books on sites that I trusted, so I decided to take a flier on it.
I'm really glad I did. Unlike some of the O'Reilly books, which are dated at this point, this has really up-to-date, professional code that incorporates best practices. Depending on what kind of JavaScript code base you need to integrate with, you may be able to use this code as-is in many instances. Even if you need to modify it for your own uses, you will never find poorly-organized hackwork here.
Also nice is the up-to-date topic selection. Classics like DOM, form validation, drop-down menus, and cookies are supplemented with topics about accessibility, XMLHttpRequest, in-page dialogs, and using class prototypes. When the authors tell you how to launch popups, they also tell you about all the pitfalls and problems.
No cookbook is going to cover ever possible topic (personally, I would have liked to see JSON examples), but this one is about as complete as you could reasonably ask for. Really, the only downside about this book that I can see is that you need to have at least an intermediate understanding of JavaScript to understand what's going on. There isn't a lot of handholding, and you will likely want to own both a good tutorial and a solid reference on JavaScript and spend some time with them before you're ready for this book. But if you have a good working knowledge of JavaScript and are looking for practical, well-written examples of how to incorporate new techniques into your code, you won't find a better book than this one.
Good and elegant book.......2007-01-24
It is a good book with useful tips and tricks.
the authors use an elegant way to catch the target.
For serious developers!.......2007-01-10
This book has chosen a different approach for teaching javascript to the readers. It first raises a question and then gives you the solution. What I like most about this book is that the solutions are very brief yet complete.It is obvious that the authors have years of work experience in web-development industry because they mention all the most popular problems that a developer might face while developing a website. (If they wanted to point all the tips and tricks, the book had to be named 10001 tips and tricks not 101 ... !!!).
I'm not quite sure if this book can be very handy for absolute beginners. I had a good(but not extremely good) understanding of javascript yet there were parts of this book that I struggled to understand. However, if you are serious about javascript, this book is the one you can't afford to miss!
Customer Reviews:
Stunning Pictorial Quality.......2007-07-27
Instructively organized, beautifully written, and edited to include representive artists in painting, sculpture, and architecture, even "environmental art," over the most significant Western styles and periods, this general text glows with some of the best reproductions of visual art ever produced. The first two chapters, Why Do We Study Art and The Language of Art, provide marvelous distillations of themes and ideas that recur throughout the history. The artful coincidence between the intelligence of the author and the skills of the publisher will enrich all readers, providing endless pleasure.
On Time, perfect condition.......2007-05-22
My order was a new book, perfect condition and arrived very quickly.
Excellent book.......2007-02-19
Excellent textbook. Full of quality photos of the art in focus. The information is in great quality and to the point.
Beauty. Not just a Coffee Table Book!.......2006-03-06
In a word - comprehensive. This book is beautiful from cover to cover and covers most of what you would expect, but adds detail in terms of comparing works of art in small side bars. A painting of a reclining Venus is brought up in sections covering later time periods to show the influence early art work had on the pieces of the day. A significant covering of 20th century art is also important to note as with that period now closed, we can see that it is more than just about Campbell's soup cans by Worhal.
I had the misfortune of having the flu but the recovery passed quickly as I spent literally most of the day reading through this book and reaquainting myself with the foundations of art. Now I see the influence of various forms of art in almost everything around me. As a designer I like to think that what I produce is new. Of course the best design borrows from the past...even if its a web page layout or corporate brocure. This coffee table sized book inspires me to realign and recognize that great art is to be inspiring as well as revolutionary.
I can hardly wait to get into the CD ROM again, which on first pass seems to beg for another sick day.
Amazon.com
Van Day Truex was born in Kansas, the artistically inclined son of a stern and intolerant shop manager. After the seemingly obligatory stint living with a sympathetic and worldly aunt in Wisconsin, he escaped to New York City and design school (quite against his parents' wishes), turning in a stellar performance at the institution that would become Parsons School of Design and immediately earning the notoriously hard-won approval of none other than Frank Alvah Parsons. Several hundred society introductions, garden parties, and black-and-white balls later, Truex found himself at the center of the international elite, one of the social register's most sought-after interior designers--not to mention one of the most prized dinner guests in New York and on the Riviera.
As an enormously popular instructor at Parsons, and the school's president from 1942 to 1952, Truex influenced American interior design far beyond the rarefied circles of his friends and clients--Brooke Astor, Lady Mendl, Grace Bingham, and the like. And as director of design at Tiffany & Co. from 1955 to 1962, arguably the store's heyday, Truex indeed had a hand in defining upper-class taste--he called it "design judgment"--or at least what went into the place settings on the dining tables of the very wealthy. Many of the designs Truex commissioned and developed for Tiffany's are still sold today as classics of the brand: the all-over wild strawberry china pattern, for example.
Adam Lewis's illustrated biography is not particularly vivid, and details of Truex's work and design philosophy are scant compared to the exhaustive (and exhausting) descriptions of the charming, urbane decorator's endless social engagements. One must remember, though, that Lewis is writing about the man whose preferred color came to be known as "Truex beige." Perhaps the designer himself would have approved of the stilted style of Lewis's prose, but for those not instantly enchanted by minor high-society and interior-design intrigue, the book's studied humorlessness will make for dull reading. --Liana Fredley
Book Description
Van Day Truex is widely regarded as the father of twentieth-century American design. Under his leadership, Parsons School of Design became the foremost school for interior design and fashion in the United States and he influenced generations of students entering these fields. But his greatest legacy—beautifully chronicled in Van Day Truex—is his long reign as design director at Tiffany & Co., which he transformed into a model for unprecedented style and grace. Interior designers, architects, fashion devotees, and furniture designers will treasure this first-ever portrait of Truex. This magnificent volume—illustrated throughout with color and black-and-white photographs—is a glorious tribute to one of America's foremost designers and a fascinating biography of the man Brooke Astor called "one of the most charming men I ever knew."
Customer Reviews:
Completes a significant gap in American design history.......2001-12-10
Lewis has obviously unearthed a treasure trove of very important material in the form of Truex' scrapbooks bringing to light an amazing tapestry of relationships bridging the worlds of fashion, product design, interior design, design education, and various cultural elites. It's refreshing to read a biography that is illustrated with the subject's own snapshots, original works, and previously published material that has been long unavailable. Parsons School of Design itself celebrated a centennial not long ago giving Truex no more than a few lines in its retelling of its story--the author has filled in a gaping hole in American design history for Parsons as well as Tiffany and Co.
Contrary to another reader review, I am relieved not to be subjected to the "spice" that is strewn over so many other biographies. Lewis gives us as much personal information as is appropriate to the subject. This will be a requisite acquisition for many libraries, circulating and otherwise, I think.
Is That All There Is?.......2001-11-14
Lewis is to be commended for his valiant attempt at constructing a biography about one of the 20th century's most invisible design talents. Truex had a minor influence on a certain coterie of designers and products that never reached very far beyond 57th and Fifth. His circle was rich, cultured and insular, therefore preventing him from gaining a kind of commercial notoriety that some of his peers were able to. Yet we still reap the fruits of his efforts to this day, with some of most lovely flatware,china and objets Tiffany's has to offer. What is most curious about Truex as a subject, is that perhaps he should have been a chapter in another book. He just wasn't that compelling (except for his fastidious neatness and controlled eating habits). Not to minimize the amount of work it must have been for Lewis to assemble all of this vaguely interesting material. I just wanted to know a little bit more about his personal life. Just a tiny bit more gossip might have been like a dash of paprika!
Book Description
CSS-based design doesn 't need to be boring. The Art & Science of CSS brings together a talented collection of designers who will show you how to take the building blocks of your web site's design (such as headings, navigation, forms, and more) and bring them to life with fully standards-compliant CSS. This full color book helps you to design web sites that not only work well across all browsers, are easy to maintain, and are highly accessible, but are also visually stunning.
Create truly attention-grabbing headings.
Discover multiple ways to present images effectively.
Use background images to give your site zest.
Build usable and attractive navigation.
Design forms that are stylish and functional.
Learn how to break away from the square box clich ©.
Create funky tables.
And lots more
Customer Reviews:
Very Disjointed Book, Needs an Editor.......2007-10-14
This is not a comprehensive A-Z book on CSS, it is a compilation of seven essay / tutorials by five different authors on specific topics (headings, images, backgrounds, navigation, forms, rounded corners, and tables). This book is much like 7 blind folks describing an elephant and whole swatches of the elephant are left uncovered and undescribed.
It seems to be a trend amongst the tech publishers to put out books with multiple authors, yet very few of them provide any cohesive editing and authorial narrative between sections, of which The Art & Science of CSS is an offender.
Publishers and Editors, please either take a cue from short story and essay compilations and give each author an introduction at the beginning of each chapter, tell my why I should care and what this person can educate me on. If that is not the approach you want take, then have one main author or editor who crafts all the chapters into a cohesive whole with good transitions and point of view.
Sitepoint - Hire an editor who can edit. Pick one main author. Introduce the guest authors at each point where the authorship transitions. Give the reader a cohesive POV.
Amazon leads one to believe that Jonathan Snook is the main author, he is not, but has a few bits on javascript & css in several chapters. I would have liked this book a great deal more if it actually was the Art & Science of CSS with a strong voice all the way through, rather than just a few drill downs into a few topics. Cameron Adams or Jina Bolton both had great written tones & POV, why not have one of them "lead" the reader through the content?
very complicated hard to understand.......2007-10-10
I found the book hard too understand would not recomend I know html but cannot learn css from this book.
Applied CSS: Review of "The Art & Science of CSS".......2007-09-20
Good book, and right to the point. It shows you how to use CSS to create a website that will standout by using simple and clean looking designs. You can get started right away.
Chapters include how to make rounded corners on tables and navigation tabs; the combining of images and text for visually appealing web pages, as well as styling of forms, headings, lists, and page backgrounds.
The book is laid out nicely with the sample code very easy to read and follow. Excellent format. If you want a practical guide for using CSS that zeros in and focuses on the basic parts of a web page (forms, headings, text, navigation, tables, and images), this is a good one. It shows you clearly just what you need to do.
If you want a deeper explanation on CSS elements, I would recommend "Cascading Style Sheets: A Definitive Guide".
Lots of detail and applied website information perfect for practicing designers........2007-09-08
Standards-based design might seem dull but CSS-based design needn't be - and THE ART & SCIENCE OF CSS gathers together designers who show how to take a typical web site design and add CSS to jazz up results. Any college-level computer library catering to programmers and web designers will find this packed with ideas on how to design forms which are attractive and functional alike. From creating eye-catching tables and designing forms to vertical navigation basics, THE ART & SCIENCE OF CSS has lots of detail and applied website information perfect for practicing designers.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Exceptional CSS Case Study Book.......2007-09-05
'The Art and Science of CSS' by Jonathan Snook is another gem in the sitepoint series of books. If you are a web developer, you owe it to yourself to pick up the entire LINE of sitepoint books. Ever since this publishing series came out years ago, I have been one of the main fans of these books. With spot-on design, wonderful writing, great chapter flow, and the right length for the topic at hand, I have yet to find a sitepoint book that I haven't liked, and most I LOVE the moment I start reading them. They aren't just reference manuals, they are books that are meant to be enjoyed, and if you use CSS on a daily basis, you will find this book extremely useful.
This book is broken up into 7 chapters at 200+ pages:
1. Headings
2. Images
3. Backgrounds
4. Navigation
5. Forms
6. Rounded Corners
7. Navigation
That's it. This may seem like not enough content, but if that is what you believe, you are simply ignorant, and like Socrates believed, I also do not think that is a crime.
From images that pop out and make you say 'ahhh' to slick navigation with great backgrounds to forms which really have great curb appeal and make the user want to USE the form in question (an important topic that isn't addressed nearly enough) to creating pretty round corners to tables that jump out at you, this book is G-R-E-A-T.
Fun to read, fun to use, and fun to learn from, another gem from the masters at sitepoint.
***** HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION
Book Description
Since the 19th century, when art history became an established academic discipline, works of art have been "read" in a variety of ways. These different ways of describing and interpreting art are the methodologies of artistic analysis, the divining rods of meaning.
Customer Reviews:
Methodologies.......2001-08-28
Excellent introduction to the various approaches to writing about art. She discusses Freudian art criticism, feminist art history, semiotics, biography and autobiography, among other topics, in a clear and cogent style.
see correction of listing.......1999-08-12
correction to your listing. Laurie Adams is NOT the editor of Methodologies, she is the author. Delete (editor) from your listing.
Average customer rating:
- Gorgeous Work in a Gorgeous Book
- A Happy Purchase
- What the text says, or what you see?
- Beautiful watercolors!
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Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth (A Whitney Museum of American Art Book)
Beth Venn ,
Adam D. Weinberg ,
Andrew Wyeth , and
Michael G. Kammen
Manufacturer: Whitney Museum of Art
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Binding: Hardcover
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Andrew Wyeth: Memory & Magic
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Andrew Wyeth: Close Friends
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ASIN: 0810968274 |
Amazon.com
Unknown Terrain: The Landscapes of Andrew Wyeth makes an irresistible case for ignoring both Wyeth's sentimental champions and his cynical detractors. It's easy to understand either pole of opinion about this very American painter, but harder to get to the essence of what makes him excite such vehemence. In the end, it may simply be that he is very, very good, and like all good painters, a little too complicated for most critics.
For one thing, while Wyeth does have a special sensitivity for suggestive narrative elements, he is also an abstract painter, with a powerful sense of gesture, stroke, and pattern. Some of his watercolors are as thrusting and liquid as Jackson Pollock's drips, and almost as nonobjective. Other compositions can be as fixed as Christina's World, the huge 1948 painting for which he is perhaps best known, but within the strictly ordered confines of tempera, a painstaking medium, he still handles the brush with bravura. The authors of Unknown Terrain make an attempt to elucidate Wyeth's relationship to this century, and they succeed admirably--with the help of nearly 200 reproductions.
Customer Reviews:
Gorgeous Work in a Gorgeous Book.......2006-10-21
If this were a hardbound edition (it may exist?) it would sell for an expensive price. The color plates, index and footnotes are exquisitely designed and printed in this softbound catalog edition. Anecdotes are plentiful, critical examination controversial, but this catalog of Wyeth's work is beautifully presented and great fun to examine. The words of critics are always oddly out of place and hard to swallow and fortunately there aren't many critic's editorials contained here. It's the dozens and dozens of paintings that are in this book-exquisite! As many of A.W.'s pieces were of a comparatively large dimension-as far as water-based works go, the plates do not capture the spatial and color phenomena of these paintings, but this is as good as it gets-next to a visit to a museum to view them "live!" One would be hard-pressed to find this many unpublished, heretofore unexhibited Wyeth pieces under one roof! A very enjoyable publication!
A Happy Purchase.......2001-11-18
The staff of the Whitney Museum for a 1998 Wyeth exhibition compiled this beautifully printed and bound book. The stock is heavy and glossy and the colors sharp and clear. Many watercolors included have not been publicly seen for years, as many private collectors contributed their paintings for this exhibition. The dates of the compositions range from the early 30's through the late 90's.
The two most recognized American artists of the 20th Century are Andys-Wyeth and Warhol, and they have more in common than their initials. Both are controversial and neither is as "realistic" as accused and/or categorized.
My enjoyment of Andrew Wyeth was never diminished by the fact that I had a lot of company. Popularity does not necessarily mean inferiority in spite of what the self-consuming art world tells us. True, you have to have a certain fondness for bleak settings to properly take pleasure in most of the paintings. I often idly wondered if Wyeth ever painted landscapes in spring or summer and why he was so enamored of bare earth and beige and brown compositions. I have never seen as many abstracts as are contained in this book.
The essays in the book are interesting, but not so prevalent as to overshadow the marvelous prints. My only complaint is the book is an unhandy shape, longer than it is tall, making it difficult to shelve. However, this is minor. Many hours of viewing pleasure are in store.
What the text says, or what you see?.......2000-08-04
When you view the work of an artist, who is to be the arbiter of what, in this case the painting is about, what it means? Do you turn to the Professional Art Critic, Art History Majors, you the viewer, or the man or woman who created the work? In this case the Artist is well and painting, and his thoughts about his work are many and well documented.
This book on the paintings of Andrew Wyeth focuses primarily on the media of watercolor and drybrush as opposed to the egg tempera paintings that are the medium for so many of his most famous works. Mr. Wyeth takes up to 6 months for a tempera work, and completes as few as 2-4 a year. The images in this book are produced by the hundreds, and over his career amount to literally thousands of images. This book discusses and publishes many images that have never been publicly shown, and uses this body of work to advance various ideas.
The book is a valuable addition to those who are admirers of his work, the opinions that are expressed by people other than the artist, are either critical to the book on one extreme, or mostly ridiculous from where I sit.
Andrew Wyeth has been a target for the self-proclaimed tastemakers of Art for one reason; his art is widely admired, collected, and highly valued. These elements automatically qualify him for criticism that is so absurd; it adds a comedic aspect to the text. Then there are those who do love his work but feel they must demonstrate that, yes, he is what the critics say he is not, and even more!
The text did help me understand more about the method by which Mr. Wyeth creates these works, and the role they sometimes play in a major tempera piece. I loved his work before this book, and will continue to regardless of what "they" have to say. The only individual whose comments matter are Mr. Wyeth's. His thoughts are documented; I don't see the need for others to presume they know better than he what he paints, and what his intent was when he created the work.
The book is great for the new images it brings to the public. Everything about the construction of the book is as good as you will find in a commercial publication, and the color plates are excellent. As to the text, that is left for you to decide, I am placing the stars above for the Artist and his work, not for what others have to say about it.
Beautiful watercolors!.......2000-07-25
A collection containing a number of stunning watercolors loosely executed, rarely included in a book of Wyeth's works. Also includes many of his more labored tempera paintings.
Book Description
Art across Time combines sound scholarship and lively prose, engaging students with both its narrative and its lavish visual program. Popular with majors and non-majors alike, Art across Time offers readers more than a chronology of art; it discusses political, economic, social, and personal concerns that influence the artists and inform their work, uniquely conveying the ideas, beliefs, and circumstances that inspire creativity. Visual reproductions in the text are larger in scale and higher in quality than those in other art history texts, enhancing visual appeal and allowing students to view details and elements of composition with greater ease.
The new third edition is enhanced by new visual connections between works, more use of color and architectural diagrams, an enhanced map program, new boxed readings, and more. In addition, the text's illustration program is now available to adopting instructors in digital format via The Image Vault--McGraw-Hill's new Web-based presentation manager. Instructors can incorporate images from The Image Vault in digital presentations that can be used in class offline, burned to CD-ROM, or embedded in course Web pages. See www.mhhe.com/theimagevault for more details!
Customer Reviews:
I think i returned this book. .......2007-01-10
I didn't read much of this book. I ended up not needing it for school. I think it was ok for the little bit I read out of it. Sorry if I'm not much help.
Study Guide, V1 .......2007-01-04
I used this book in conjunction with my text book and it helped me to gain an even better understanding of Art. All of the exercises helped to strengthen my understanding of each chapter.This book helped me so much that I got an "A" for the semester in Art 114.
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