One of the Great Books of Modern Art
926441
Unfortunately, the book is no longer in print.
But thanks to Amazon I was able to get 2 used copies to friends.
The author was an art reviewer for the NY times.
He explains things so you can see what is talking about in a picture and understand it.
1261524
The current re-evaluation of the contributions of John Singer Sargent to the art of the USA, as indicated by the impressive exhibition "Sargent And Italy" currently in Los Angeles, the steady flow of new books about his work, and the academic resurgence of emphasis on his importance in American art at the turn of the last century - this re-evaluation has been truly underscored by this very fine book by Trevor Fairbrother.  Written with great style and zest, the author explores the sensual nature of an artist once considered a 'society portraitist', a good painter but one more concerned with reaping the wealth from his gifts than in painting for art's sake.  Well, bury that prejudice, as Fairbrother reveals Sargent's preoccupation with the human body, not only elegantly clothed but sensually nude.  A fine example is "Nude Study of Thomas E. McKellar" in which Sargent paints his favorite African American model in a beautifully erotic pose.
But the sensuality does not stop with the plethora of nude figure studies.  Indeed, the author demonstrates how Sargent's compositions of landscapes and buildings as well as outdor and indoor groups of people are rendered with a sensual manipulation of light and pigment.  And much time and discussion focuses on the famous painting 'El Jaleo' of a flamenco dancer barely visible in the artificial light of the stage, making her sensual movements of the hands and wrists ring like the music accompanying her.
This well written book is lavishly illustrated with excellent color reproductions and gifts us with a significant body of work at book's end - a folio of male nudes called "Album of Figure Studies" which alone is worth the price of this superb volume.
Highly recommended.
4589830
En Guerre by Neil Harris and Teri J. Edelstein

This is a beautifully produced book, issued to accompany the exhibition at the University of Chicago Library. Focusing on talented French artists who contributed to illustrated books and periodicals during World War I, Neil Harris and Teri J. Edelstein draw our attention to many examples of their amazing and neglected artworks.
In his insightful essay titled "Illustrating the Great War," Harris sets the historical stage for the many pieces exhibited and introduces us to this innovative group of artists.  Apart from a few well-known names (Raoul Dufy, Fernand Leger, Andr LHote), most have been overlooked by art historians.  Some of the examples show illustrations intended for children's books.  Others, such as the numerous examples from the French publication La baonette, a satirical magazine, are definitely adult fare.  Some of these artists only presented the war in patriotic flavor but others hit hard with the war and its horrors.  Even with the more difficult subjects the images are rendered in a simplified style, many using wood blocks or pochoir, a stencil process.  The results are wonderful to look at.
The book contains over a hundred images representing nearly fifty artists and divided into thematic chapters: "The Allies", "Enemies", "The War Between Covers", "The French Soldier", "Cultivating the Home Front", "Fashioning the War", "The Children's War", "The Battle", and "Peace."  Each chapter is illustrated with examples of these works and enriched by Teri Edelstein's clear and thoughtful commentaries. Finally, there is an extremely useful checklist of the books and prints included in the exhibition, listed by artist. The book concludes with brief biographies of this talented pool of artists and selected bibliography.
You can tell that Neil Harris and Teri Edelstein love books.  This book is designed beautifully with thought behind every page spread.  Design and production is credited to Jane Sommers and Amanda Freymann of Glue + Paper Workshop LLC.  It seems clear that the authors were part of every decision.  The feel of it, the visual look, the quality of the paper used, the printed endpapers, sharpness of every image, results in a book that looks and feels like the very type of early 20th century illustrated book that these artists were involved with.  What is also striking about this book is that it is so reasonably priced, a real bargain.  A great addition for the book collector, the graphic artist or the Great War historian, this is a lasting testament to a memorable exhibition. It is also a valuable reference book, and one that I know I will use as a guide to pursue my own growing collection of illustrated books.  Any book collector will find this book a tremendous help in searching through French eBay and the many online book dealers to add to their own collection of prints and books from the Great War. Highly recommended!
2126886
Having used this book in my 2002 Art history class, I can say without reservation that is is probably the best Art History book I have studied. A close second would be the History of Modern Art by Arnason. Countless times I have referred to this book for references to art for my blog and personal works of art. If this isn't you schools text book, it should be.
325771
I got very excited when I saw some extracts of this book and the promotional videos on youtube, so I ordered it on Amazon. As I was very eager to begin, I did not want to wait, so I also bought the audiobook version, read by the author, available on Google Drive, and so was able to start reading immediately. The book has two parts: the first part is a general introduction to the four world ages of European art, and the second is composed of specific analyses of individual artists of the post-modern epoch. Ebert points out that there is no single center or capital of art in the contemporary world, and that the major artists are geographically dispersed, so one can call the two parts Chronos and Gaia.

1) Chronos. The book begins with a very interesting synthesis of the typology of historical periods proposed by Jean Gebser and of that proposed by Peter Sloterdijk in the SPHERES trilogy. His synthesis includes the ideas of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, Michel Serres, Marshall Mcluhan, Hans Belting, Martin Heidegger, Arthur Danto, Cornelius Castoriadis, Vilem Flusser, Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, and many more thinkers. Ebert distinguishes 4 major epochs in the semiotics of art, and more generally of our relation to being: the pre-metaphysical period - the artist is a shaman, the metaphysical or perspectival period - the artist is an optician in Euclidean visual space, the modernist or aperspectival period - the artist is an archetypologist of geometric or anthroplological forms in multi-dimensional space, the contemporary or post-aperspectival period - the artist is a monadologist in a liquefied quantized fom-space.

2) Gaia. Ebert argues that the contemporary period began not in 1962 with Andy Warhol's "Brillo Boxes", but in the period immeditely after World War II with the Abstract Expressionists. Pollock and Rothko correspond to a moment of effacing and liquefying the modernist "iconotypes", and dissolving the shared multi-dimensional macrosphere of modernity. They herald in the contemporary period, where the artist can no longer presuppose a universal organised semiotic system, and is obliged to select and combine the signifiers of the present and the past, and hybridise them with new signifiers, into idiosyncratic, temporary, partial, multiple organisations, with no universal legitimacy. Initially the living center of art moves from Paris to New York, only to be disseminated into a mobile polycentric dispersive phenomenon spread over the whole planet. From Parisian art has become Gaiatic. Ebert devotes chapters also to Basquiat, Beuys, Richter, Kieffer, Beksinski, Nerdrum, Bacon, Hirst, Kapoor, Kounellis, Boltanski and situates their singular work within the general episteme of the contemporary world.

This is an ambitious work taking in a vast period of history, from the ancient Mesopotamians and Egyptians to the contemporary world. Geographically Ebert moves from New York through the German artists to London, Rome, and Paris. The artists examined are very diverse, and allow Ebert to fill in his general frame with many more fine-grained analyses. Further, his categories are interdisciplinary or transversal, in that they apply to much more than artists and art works. To be sure, art has become a proliferation of singular semiotic processes, but frequenting the diverse art works that are elucidated with the help of Ebert's categories we find that our own lives are elucidated too. This is more than an academic manual, it is allso a useful guide to our own individuation in the pluralist ocean of foam that constitutes the semiotic and ontological background of our contemporary world.
2690732
It is sad that no one has reviewed this important catalogue till 2013 about 15 years after it's issue
The Albertina is one of the very greatest collections of Master Drawings in the world and many of there catalogues are worth getting
This catalogue is based on an Albertina exhibition in Vienna in 1993
It was an exhibition that was shown at The Drawing Center  NY and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth Texas. In 1995
This is the first exhibition of  Dutch 17th century drawings to be seen outside Vienna
There is a  9 page introduction to the exhibition by the author. This starts with some general comments on Dutch Landscapes then brief half pages comments introducing each section
One can get a idea of the topics covered by listing the chapter headings
Aspects of the period around 1600.  Numbers 1-10
Flemish Inspiration,the New Realism.  11-22
Jan van Goyen and his contempories  23-34
Rembrandt and his circle.  35-47
Light,Air,and Space,great talent of mid century. 48-54
Landscape and Topography, the Fascination with the Forest; The Later 17th Century  55-66
Seascapes and Costal Views.  67-76
The Netherlands and Italy.  77-95

The strength of the exhibition is it's well reproduced colour plates

The text is organized with the commentary on the Right page and a well produced colour reproduction on the left
The text  includes details of technique, Provence and bibliography
The commentary briefly summarizes the artists life then discusses the drawing
Some of this is easy to follow but there is a moderate amount of technical comment discussing drawing technique, attribution ,stylistic matters etc
This book offers a excellent cross section of landscape drawings from  17 century  Holland.
Artists from the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium ) like Rubens Van Dyck  and Jordaens are not included but a some artists who emigrated  from there to Holland are

There is a useful bibliography and list of artists

If you have been off to several exhibitions of Dutch 17th century art then a number of names will be familiar to you. If you are new to the area then many names will be unfamiliar
. Italy and France also had a significant landscape  drawing tradition  before and at this time. The native ( ie artists born in England as opposed to artists like Van Dyck who worked in England for part of there life ) English tradition started a bit later with artists like Sandby Turner and Constable  although there were a number of precursors

If you are interested in landscape then this a useful book to have on the shelf.
For those interested in Dutch 17th century drawings or the Albetina's rich collection of drawings then this is a book worth tracking down and getting
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This is a really fine piece of work by Michael Sappol, that takes the scientific / medical illustration techniques of Fritz Kahn developed during the early / mid 20th Century and explores them in the context of modernism / modernity and complex interplay between style and information. The book expertly shifts between a detailed history of the illustrations themselves, their scientific, artistic and socio-political contexts and, ultimately, ideas of embodiment and the ways in which we understand our own bodies.

As someone who (amongst many other things) taught anatomy for 30 years, two things struck me in particular as I approached the end of the book. First, the interplay between modernity / illustration / technique described for Kahn et al is being repeated in a similar way now with digitial technology, where often the technology (or at least its potential allure) is rated over the content and context. There is much we can learn from the past here.

Second, the closing discussion of  the identity of the "I" and its relation to neuroscience underpins a core issue in the teaching of anatomy to medical students: whose body are they learning: the cadaver? the picture in the book? the plastic model? their own? the patients they hadn't seen yet?Modern neuroscience tells us that the more you are familiar with the look and physical feel of an external object, including another body, the more it becomes internalised in some sense. Sappol's discussion of these issues brings his historical analysis firmly into the realm of modern teaching practice, with a foundation deep within current philosophical and cognitive science ideas of embodied knowledge.

And in case you think this all sounds too heavy, the book itself is beautifully written and richly illustrated, making it an easy and alluring read.
3343710
If you like the works of Jean Dunand, Art Deco design, or just a fan of lacquer technique, this book is incredible. The illustrations are superb, and descriptions are very throughout. There is no other book on Jean Dunand that even comes close, and since on one comes close to Jean Dunand as far as the perfection of the merge of ancient art of the Asian lacquer technique and the modern design, this book is the cat's meow and the bee's knees. Your knees will buckle when you open the book and see all the glory of the presented works. And yes, the photographic illustrations of Dunand's works are really that good. I have had a luxury of observing a number of Dunand's works in museums and collections, and this book gives his works a due credit.
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I received this book yesterday, and it is certainly a monumental work, weighing close to 20 pounds and superbly produced. But potential buyers should be aware that while this book is labeled as a definitive, complete guide to Michelangelo's work, its real focus are the paintings and drawings. There is probably no better book for the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Last Judgment, with scores of extraordinary closeups of every part of each painting. The foldout of the creation of Adam is a joy to behold. Readers may or may not like the fact that probably 40% of the book is on Michelangelo's drawings, given that these are mostly preliminary sketches for sculptures or paintings, as opposed to complete drawings in their own right, as in the case of Leonardo Da Vinci. The book also covers Michelangelo's architecture very well.
But obviously many readers will buy this book because they want to see Michelangelo's sculptures, and this book is surprisingly, disappointingly weak in this area. Of course, the David gets its due and there is also good coverage of the Vatican Pieta and, oddly, the Bacchus. But many of the other sculptures, such as the Moses and the Risen Christ, get only one large and one small picture, despite the fact that the book, at over 700 pages, has space to spare. By contrast, the "Complete Michelangelo" by William Wallace provides multiple views of each and every piece of sculpture.
But most incredible, indeed inexplicable, of all, is that this book (unlike Wallace, or any other Michelangelo book that I know of) fails to provide any large pictures at all of what are, next to the David, the most iconic and powerful of Michelangelo's sculptures: his four "prisoners" in Florence. Having seen these in person, I can easily understand why artists for centuries have looked in awe at these amazing "unfinished" sculptures which show figures struggling to emerge from the marble-which is exactly what Michelangelo felt he was doing when he took his chisel to the rock. How on earth, in a book of this size and ambition, can the omission of these sculptures be explained? Indeed, no explanation is provided, and the only illustration of these four sculptures, which have so influenced modern art, is four tiny, poor quality pictures in the second section of the book that is a complete catalog of all of Michelangelo's sculptures. By contrast, the Wallace book has a four page foldout that shows the four sculptures next to each other.
In short, this book is fantastic for the paintings and drawings and a very disappointing missed opportunity for the sculptures. One can only wistfully imagine what would have been if the sculptures had been photographed as carefully and as thoroughly as the Sistine Chapel paintings. By all means get this book--and overall I am glad that I did, despite its high cost--but adjust your expectations and don't expect that this one book will suffice to fully cover all of Michelangelo's genius.
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Charlotte Mullins is a highly respected British art critic and historian and her contribution to the milieu of figurative painting today is a major one. This book, PAINTING PEOPLE: FIGURE PAINTING TODAY, manages to give enough information about various approach to the figure, including the fusion of vision of artists with societal atmosphere at present to make it an immediately indispensable volume for students and art lovers and collectors.  She writes very well and manages to stay comfortably away from the Artspeak that so often alienates the casual viewer.  For that she is to be heartily congratulated: this book is readable even without images!

The best part of Mullins' writing is the segments she places beside the many images that generously flood the pages of this finely designed and produced volume. Readers who know the artists well may take exception to some of her 'diagnostic thoughts' about the meaning of some of the paintings, but at least she is making the attempt to pull the viewer into the paintings rather than  simply posting images.  Unfortunately the sizes of the paintings in this book are not listed, a factor that many seem unimportant to some, but when discussing the potency of standing in the presence of, say, the works of Cecily Brown, Jenny Saville, of Lucien Freud, size matters: the impact of the figures that are larger than life makes a difference on how they are perceived.

Anyone involved even tangentially with the artists who paint the figure may take exception to many of the artists included in this selection and be even more amazed at the paucity of the many giant figurative artists from the USA: listing the artists not included here would be an entire other book.  And on the other hand, while it is informative to be exposed to the myriad types of artists Mullins does include, the quality of many of them beg indulgence with the company they keep! But here is an opportunity to study the thoughts of a well regarded critic about the current status of figurative painting, and for those of us who have been champions of figurative art for decades, this book is gratifyingly comprehensive.  At least the Figure is being discussed in depth, even if too many of the artists who have devoted their lives and careers to the figure on canvas are ignored.  Grady Harp, May 10
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I have at least 5 of Frederick Franck's books and I love all of them.  They are all more than "art" how to books.  They are about life,
and how to live it, as welll as great ideas about "doing" art.
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I will have to agree with VRKAYA.  This book is not overpriced for being out of print. My husband went to school with Richard Schmid at The Chicago Academy of Art and saw how he quickly fine tuned his painting skills.  Our copy is so worn from his referring to it when he does his figure painting.  Richard's technique is unique and if you can find a copy of his books (especially the older basic ones) you are fortunate.  It is truly a 5 star book.
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After seeing Reigl works in the Met and the Tate Modern, and get this book...it is a great revalation!!! One of my my favorite artist of all the time!
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This is one of my favorite books of all time. It captures the spirit of New York while showcasing numerous works of art from the Metropolitan Museum in the city.  Juxtaposed together, children will love the fun drawings and adults will appreciate the cleverness contained in each page. I have bought this book as gifts for friends, and also bought two copies for myself. One sits proudly on my shelf, and I have matted and framed some of my favorite pages from the other copy to hang on my wall. If you love New York, art, and/or wonderful children's books you must discover this book for yourself.
1625455
I love this book. The many sketches by the Master shows the way of the development of his images.
I strongly recommend it.

Vasya - Los Angeles
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I bought this fabulous book of Sorolla's masterworks sight unseen. I took a chance because Sorolla's grand daughter was at the helm of the project and I thought rightly that she would not let down Sorrolla's fans. The hard cover book is full of gorgeously reproduced master paintings of the great Spanish painter, Sorolla who was a contemporary of John Singer Sargent. In the 1980s I had the opportunity to visit Sorolla's house in Madrid that has been turned into a museum. Many of his paintings adorn the walls and I became an instant devotee. This book is a must for your art library.
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If you are interested in fine art, what to know more about fine art, the artists, art reproductions, and more, this is a book for you. There are chapters on museum quality framing, and museums around the world. Included is a chapter on Fine Art Categories, Photorealism, and also collecting original art. I've learned a lot about fine art collecting from this great book. Written in a language that a layman can understand. Not only is the book a visual pleasure, but also a book of knowledge on the world of fine art. Recommended.