The Art Shelf
MWBOOKREVW
Damascus
Brigid Keenan & Tim Beddow
Thames & Hudson, Inc.
500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
0500282994 $39.95 1-800-233-4830
Brigid Keenan's informative and highly recommended text comprising Damascus:
Hidden Treasures Of The Old City, is enhanced throughout with 214 illustrations
and photographs (171 in color) by Tim Beddow. This superb introduction to the
architectural grandeur of Damascus incudes descriptions of individual houses
and the people who built and lived in them. The amazing photographs reveal the
facades, courtyards, alleyways , fountains and amazing interiors behind
unassuming walls will delight students of Islamic culture, architecture,
history, and lifestyles.
Impressionist Still Life
Eliza Rathbone, et al.
Harry N. Abrams, Inc.
100 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10011
0810906139 $45.00 1-800-759-0190
Impressionist Still Life showcases more than 80 masterworks of still-life
painting by seventeen Impressionists working in the latter half of the
nineteenth-century. The featured artists include Cezanne, van Gogh, Monet,
Cassatt, Degas, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Caillbotte, and Gauguin. Impressionist
Still Life is the companion book to a traveling exhibition currently touring
the United States beginning with The Philips Collection, Washington, DC
(September 22, 2001 - January 13, 2002) and then traveling to The Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston (February 17 to June 9, 2002). A strongly recommended
addition to academic, personal, and community library artbook collections, the
superbly reproduced paintings comprising Impressionist Still Life are enhanced
with informative essays by noted art scholars Eliza Rathbone (Phillips
Collection); George Shackelford (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston); Jeannene M.
Pryblyski (independent art historian and critics based in San Francisco); John
McCoubrey (University of Pennsylvania); and Richard Shiff (University of Texas,
Austin).
Dryden Pottery Of Kansas And Arkansas
G.L. Dybwad & Joy V. Bliss
The Book Stops Here
1108 Rocky Point Court, N.E.
Albuquerque, NM 87123-1952
Dryden Pottery Of Kansas And Arkansas showcases A. James Dryden's fifty-five
years in the pottery business and is the first collectibles catalog for this
long-standing and prestigious enterprise. The text is enhanced with 80 pages of
pottery catalogs with labels and bottom markings, and is illustrated with
almost one thousand black-and-white images. It is the first available price
guide on current values for collectors and dealers. The inclusion of an
accompanying CD-ROM complete with high resolution color, makes Dryden Pottery
Of Kansas And Arkansas an outstanding and highly recommended contribution for
students of this distinctive art form.
Dante Marioni: Blown Glass
Dante Marioni, et al.
Hudson Hills Press
1133 Broadway, Suite 1301, New York, NY 10010-8001
1555952046 $45.00 1-212-929-4994
Showcasing Dante Marioni's glassblowing with 139 colorplates and four
black/white photographs, Tina Oldknow (Curator of Modern Glass at the Corning
Museum of Glass, Corning, New York); Joseph Marioni (twice artist-in-residence
at the Pilchuck Glass School); and Edward R. Quick (Curator, Presidential
Materials Staff, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington,
D.C.) offer an informative text and commentary that enhances our understanding
of this truly gifted man and his work. Very highly recommended for all serious
personal, academic, professional, and community library collections, Dante
Marioni: Blown Glass provides a "reader friendly" step-by-step depiction of the
process used in the making of a blown-glass vase, a list of public collections,
solo and group exhibitions, bibliography, biography, and index.
A Royal Menagerie
Samuel Wittwer
Getty Publications
1200 Getty center Drive, Suite 500, Los Angeles, CA 90049-1682
0892366443 $14.95 1-800-223-3431
Enhanced with 30 color and 17 b/w illustrations, A Royal Menagerie is a
superbly presented survey of extraordinary 18th-century porcelain animals from
Dresden in all its grandeur. The pieces were created between 1730 and 1735 at
the Saxon royal porcelain manufactory in Meissen, near Dresden, were
commissioned by Friedrich August I, Elector of Saxony. Samuel Wittwer draws
upon his many years of experience and expertise as curator of the ceramics
collections at the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation, and the archives of
the Royal Porcelain Manufactory, Berlin in writing an informative and
insightful text. Published to accompany an exhibition at the Getty Museum which
will run until January 2002, A Royal Menagerie is highly recommended for
students and collectors of 18th century porcelain.
Fortune
Daniel Okrent
Gibbs Smith, Publisher
PO Box 667, Layton UT 84041
087905932X $39.95 1-800-748-5439
Fortune: The Art Of Covering Business is a compendium of cover art drawn from
past issues of Fortune magazine in celebration of its 70th anniversary. These
covers are reproduced in full color and span the magazine from 1930 to 1950.
Informatively enhanced with a Foreword by John Huey and an Historical Essay by
Daniel Okrent, Fortune: The Art Of Covering Business is a welcome celebration
drawing from a spectrum of artistic talents who provided visual symbols of
America's burgeoning industrial society on the cover of one of the nation's
most influential and prestigious magazines.
Howard Finster: The Early Years
Thelma Finster Bradshaw
Crane Hill Publishers
3608 Clairmont Avenue, Birmingham, AL 35222
1575871718 $24.95 1-800-841-2682
In Howard Finster: The Early Years, Thelma Bradshaw (Finster's daughter)
provides an informative, intimate memoir and tribute to her 80 year old
father's life and work. The reader is treated to rare and previously
unpublished family photos of Finster in Trion, Georgia, along with his early
work. Howard Finster: The Early Years is a welcome contribution to American art
history and highly recommended reading for those who appreciate his original
artistic visions -- including his "Paradise Garden", which is an incredible
maze of found-object art and sculpture which he created near his home in
Summerville, Georgia.
Arcimboldo: Spring
Federico Zeri
NDE Publishing
15-30 Wertheim Court, Richmond Hill, ON, Canada, L4B 1B9
155321028X $14.95 ndepublishing.com
Part of NDE Publishing's "One Hundred Paintings", an outstanding series of
studies on the world's greatest artists, Federico Zeri's Arcimboldo: Spring
showcases a refined and cultivated sixteenth century European artist who
created visual works filled with symbols, living metamorphoses, and
thought-provoking composition. Here are 48 pages of superbly produced color
reproductions along, enhanced with a knowledgeable commentary (Federico Zeri is
a renowned art historian, critic, and formerly vice-president of the national
Council for Cultural and Environmental Treasures) that deftly introduces the
reader to the full range of Arcimboldo's imaginative talents and skills. Also
very highly recommended for personal, academic, and community library art book
reference collections are Federico Zeri's Vermeer: The Astronomer (1553210123,
$14.95) and Bocklin: The Isle Of The Dead (1553210255 $14.95).
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