Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw proposed that “without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”
Art has been a human passion since cave-dwellers first began embellishing their walls and their tools and since Plutarch first called painting silent poetry. Art continues today to color our lives and remains a measure of our humanity.
Book Buzz this week proposes a respite from the occasional ‘crudeness of reality’ with a list of inspiring new art titles. From posters and painters, to photographers and forgeries; and from heroic tales of art rescue and thorny questions of art ownership to the insane world of art values and the serenity of Japanese landscapes, get lost this week in an art book from your public library.
Happy reading.
The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious
Economics of
Contemporary Art
By Don Thompson
709.04 Th
A well researched thriller on the anthropology and economics of the contemporary art market, this is a fun and fascinating read. In a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world the author attempts to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.
500 Ceramic Sculptures:Contemporary Practice, Singular Works
From Lark Books
735.24 Fi
This is one volume in the 500 Series of books spotlighting works of art is various media. Clear color photographs of works will inspire beginners and professionals, collectors and enthusiasts. Look also for 500 Beaded Objects: New Dimensions in Contemporary Beadwork, 1000 Glass Beads: innovation and Imagination in Contemporary Glass Beadmaking and 500 Wood Bowls: Bold and Original Designs Blending Tradition and Innovation.
At Work
By Annie Leibovitz
779.2092 Le
Famous portrait photographer, Annie Leibovitz is portrayed in her own words in this presentation. Leibovitz tells us how she made her pictures. She talks about many of her famous subjects and about the ten things she is always asked. Another portrait collection can be found in The Vanity Fair Portraits: A Century of Iconic Images by Graydon Carter. American Photobooth by Nakki Goranin and The Art of the America Snapshot, 1888-1978 by Sarah Greenough are wonderful collections of intimate candid moments caught on film.
Cuba: Art and History from 1868 to Today
From the Montreal
Museum of Fine Arts
709.7291 Cu
Located at the meeting point of Europe and the Americas, Cuba is a land rich in culture. This publication tells the story of Cuba’s art within the island nation’s history. By turns the driving force behind collective political action and the expression of individuality in the face of history, Cuban art addresses essential questions about the place and role of the artist in society. From elsewhere in Latin America find more expressive work in The Baroque World of Fernando Botero by John Sillevis. For other ethnic arts try The Pacific Arts of Polynesia & Micronesia by Adrienne L. Kaeppler, Firecrackers! An Eye-Popping Collection of Chinese Firework Art by Warren Dotz or Made in India by Dalim Winata.
Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces
By Robert Clark
945.51109 Cl
The Arno River flood that deluged Florence, Italy, in 1966-killing 33 people and damaging 14,000 works of art and countless books and antiques-frames this meditation on the relationship between art and life. The extraordinary international restoration efforts and the decades-long and rancorously debated restoration projects are seen as a metaphor for artistic beauty as an endless work-in-progress. The flood’s consequences might have been even worse were it not for the efforts of a motley crew of art experts, painting and book conservators, wealthy philanthropists and ordinary people, not least the legendary “mud angels,” young people who flocked to the city to help save its heritage.
Julia Morgan:
Architect of Beauty
By Mark A. Wilson
720.92 Morgan Wi
Julia Morgan, America’s first truly independent female architect left a legacy of more than 700 buildings in cities throughout California as well as in Hawaii. This book includes text, drawings and photographs of the many buildings that still stand today and explores the underlying design philosophy that guided Morgan’s work as well as the physical, cultural and historic settings in which her buildings were created. For another architect retrospective try Frank O. Gehry: Selected Works: 1969 to Today by Casey C.M. Mathewson.
The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han Van Meegeren
By Jonathan Lopez
759.9492 Meegren Lo
Lopez explores a network of illicit commerce that operated across Europe. Not only was forger van Meegeren a key player in that high-stakes game in the 1920s and ‘30s, landing fakes with famous collectors such as Andrew Mellon, but he and his associates later 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. For another art detective story about history, art, taste, greed, envy and obsession read The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece by Jonathan Harr.
Mountains of the Heart
By Kameda Bosai
759.952 Bo
A great master of ehon, the Japanese art-book tradition, Bosai eloquently discusses man’s interaction with the environment. His work depicts small figures lost in the mist and forests of immense foothills, seeking nourishment for body and spirit. It instills in the viewer a sense of nature’s immense power and our comparative frailty, while still conveying the peaceful mood of the rural locales that he so lovingly immortalizes.
New Poster Art
By Cees W. De Jong
741.67409 Jo
Exhibits some of the best posters created world-wide in the past fifteen years, forming an enormously eclectic collection of political, commercial and purely artistic specimens. Brief bios of each artist round out this colorful, compulsively browsable volume. Even today, among the ever-increasing welter of digital media and abundance of images, the poster remains a key means of disseminating information and an important medium for designers’ artistic expression. Also check out Posters for the People: Art of the WPA by Ennis Carter.
One Hundred Details from the National Gallery
By Kenneth Clark
759.94 Cl
The author has chosen intimate details (parts of paintings) and records his responses to them. They are presented in pairs enabling us to see analogies and contrasts between paintings. He insists that there are countless ways to enjoy paintings, provided we stop, look and think. The volume combines deep knowledge and popular appeal.
Paris – NewYork –
Shanghai: A Book About the Past, Present and Possibly Future Capital
of the World
By Hans Eijkelboom
779.4 Ei
This unique no-words book takes a look at the modern metropolis exemplified by images from the three major cities. From businessmen in suits and fast food lunch tables, to playgrounds, public sculpture, and parents holding children, it provides a stunning visual exhibit of globalization. In another photo-documentation project, Earth Then and Now: Amazing Images of Our Changing World by Fred Pearce, images of the same places taken years apart show changes to unique locations.
Poussin and Nature:
Arcadian Visions
Edited by Pierre Rosenberg
and Keith Christiansen
759.4 Po
French painter Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) is most often associated with classically inspired settings and figures depicting solemn scenes from mythology or the Bible. Yet he also created some of the most influential landscapes in Western art, endowing them with a unique poetic quality. Lihue Library’s art collections include books on many other classical and modern artists including new works: Henri Rousseau: Jungles in Paris edited by Frances Morris and Christopher Green, Rubens: A Master in the Making from the National Gallery in London, 50 Women Artists You Should Know by Christine Weidemann, 501 Great Artists: A Comprehensive Guide to the Giants of the Art World by Stephen Farthing, and Lives of the Artists by Calvin Tomkins.
Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the
Battle Over Our
Ancient Heritage
By James Cuno
930.1074 Cu
Dealing with one of the most sensitive questions in today’s art world: Should antiquities be returned to their country of origin? the author’s message is that stewardship, not ownership, is what matters. Trade in antiquities should be dictated not by politics, but by the demands of conservation, knowledge, and access. He makes an impassioned argument for the ‘cosmopolitan aspirations’ of encyclopedic museums, answering his own question of Who Owns Antiquity? All of us do. The book is cogently argued and well documented. Whether or not you agree with Cuno’s arguments, the book is an important addition to the discussion on museum collections.
• Carolyn Larson, head librarian at Lihu‘e Public Library, brings you the buzz on new, popular and good books available at your neighborhood library. Book annotations are culled from online publishers’ descriptions and published reviews.
