Lives of the The Great Artists by Charlie Ayres - review

Lives of the The Great Artists by Charlie Ayres
Brilliantly laid out, beautifully printed, brightly written, and augmented with activities, web resources, and fun facts, this book will hook young readers of every type.

Twenty European artists are profiled, arranged in chronological order. Each entry begins with a summary and a portrait, and then the reader is dropped into the artist's life. We accompany J.M.W. Turner as he sells a painting, and wait with Goya for the Spanish royal family, who are coming for a portrait sitting. Facts about each artist's life, technique, and importance are skillfully blended into these present-tense vignettes.

The narrative is written in the present tense, which gives it a fictionalized "feel," but the bulk of the events and feelings described are based on correspondence or other documentation (although such support is not cited in the book).

The works of art chosen to represent each artist are heavy on the drama and detail, resulting in high kid appeal and interesting captions. In some cases, sketches are included. The book's design merits special mention: each artist's entry has its own color palette, drawn from the works of art used as illustrations, and despite the multitude of sidebars, layout is clean and clear.

Back matter includes chronologies of the artists, locations of major collections of each artist's works, a glossary, and catalog entries for each work of art.

Unfortunately, this graceful, thoughtful book is badly marred by a garish cover that not only fails to represent the rich content within, but also fails to acknowledge the author's stated scope - European artists of the past seven hundred years. There is no such qualifying language on the cover, leading to the unpleasant - and offensive - impression that the book is declaring that the only important artists are European.

Antony Mason's A History of Western Art: From Prehistory to the Twentieth Century takes a more encyclopedic approach to this subject and would make a good companion volume.

Name that Style: All about isms in art by Bob Raczka - review

This book looks at stylistic movements in Western art - from the birth of Naturalism in the Renaissance through the twentieth century, ending with Op Art and photorealism.

The conversational narrative and detailed observations that characterize Raczka's earlier books (Here's Looking at Me, Where in the World?) are in this book reduced to a minimum - to the book's detriment. Instead, each style is profiled using a fixed set of questions, with the answers presented as lists, short paragraphs, and bullet points.

The art chosen to illustrate each style is in some cases perfect - van Eyck's "The Arnolfini Portrait" illustrates Naturalism; in others, surprising - Courbet's "The Stone Breakers" is a little-seen painting that is nonetheless a fine choice to illustrate Realism; but sometimes misses the mark - J.M.W. Turner's "Snow Storm" is chosen as an example of a painting in the Romantic style, but unless the viewer is familiar with Turner's other paintings, it will appear more Impressionistic or even abstract.

Fills a gap. However, unless there is a need for a book strictly about artistic styles, libraries would be better served by a more comprehensive art history book for young people, such as Antony Mason's A History of Western Art or The History of Art by Claudio Merlo.

I'm the best artist in the ocean by Kevin Sherry - review

I'm the best artist in the ocean by Kevin Sherry
The return of the squid! More from the talented creator of I'm The Biggest Thing in the Ocean (recommended earlier as a Best Picture Book for Hipsters, and also children).

Kevin Sherry is the Baltimore boy who makes all the coolest t-shirts. He went to our local art school, he visits our library. You might think I'd praise his books just as a matter of course. Hm. You'd probably be right. But anyway. I'm the best artist in the ocean takes Kevin's grandiose little squid with the optimistic disposition, slaps a mustache on him and gives him a bunch of brushes loaded with 100% squid ink (it says so, in the illustration note!).

And what do you know, too, this squid can draw! The savvy adult reader will notice interpretations of Miro and Picasso, styles both abstract and cartoony, and Cthulhu, who generally has NO place in a children's book.

When I read this aloud, I'll do the squid's lines with an outrageous French accent to match his silly mustache. And I will have them rolling in the aisles when I deliver the punch line, an inclusive, art-positive yodel of self-expression.

Bear's Picture by Daniel Pinkwater, illustrated by D.B. Johnson - review

Bear's Picture by Daniel Pinkwater, illustrated by D.B. Johnson
Why are bears such conduits for wisdom in picture books? Think of Drawing Lessons from a Bear. Zen Shorts (ok pandas aren't really bears but still). Winston of Churchill. Maybe because they're percieved to be big and fuzzy, strong but gentle. I guess it's all Gentle Ben's fault.

Pinkwater's bear is an artist. He dabs and daubs his painting to life, attracting the attention of two stuffy gentlemen critics, who tell him he can't paint, because "Bears aren't the sort of fellows who can do whatever they like."

Sound familiar? Like... a CHILD can't do whatever he likes? Oh, wait, if you didn't get it, "Besides... that is a silly picture. Nobody can tell what it is supposed to be."

The bear sticks up for himself, continues working on his beautiful picture, into which the men are swallowed. The painting eventually turns out to depict all the things that the bear treasures, and eventually, the bear himself.

Maybe I'm just in a cranky, cynical mood, but I just don't see the need for another book telling kids that they shouldn't listen to what other people say, they should go ahead and make art and be happy. Fact is? Nobody these days tells kids that their art is worthless because you can't tell what it's supposed to be. Nobody tells kids that they shouldn't try something new. This book would be fantastic if it were for 5th through 7th graders, who all of a sudden stiffen up and decide that if they can't be excellent at something right away, they're not going to do it.

The bear's picture, by the way, is terrific. Beautiful colors, super shapes. It's fun to watch it coming together.

Color by Ella Doran, David Goodman and Zoe Miller - review

Have you ever gone to an art supply store and just wanted to dive into the colors? To come away with every oil stick, pastel, colored pencil, and tube of paint they had? I used to go to Pearl Paint on Canal Street in New York and just wander around coveting.

Paging through Color is like doing that - I kind of wanted to rub each page of this book against my face. Sumptuous photography conveys the texture of every brilliantly-hued object, from pencil shavings to felt. Grass. Chocolate. A pansy so purple it practically pulses. Spot coatings such as flocking and varnish add to the three-dimensional feel.

Basic color theory is included - primary colors, shade and tint, optical effects. Fun spinny thingies explain complementary colors and color mixing.

Thank you to Ella Doran and the Tate Museum for publishing this spectacular birthday present for my four year old son, to whom color is as essential as food. Frequently, more so.

and to name but just a few: Red Yellow Green Blue, written and illustrated by Laurie Rosenwald - review

and to name but just a few: Red Yellow Green Blue, written and illustrated by Laurie Rosenwald
Packed with Easter Eggs and in-jokes, this shouty color book is a delight. Laurie Rosenwald is a professional illustrator for fine New York publications, but she obviously enjoys a spell of messy, unprofessional behavior from time to time. The illustrations - expressive collages and swipes of crayon, scraps of photo, puddles of paint - are bold and chunky enough for babies... while the text, laid out, colored and sized in such a way that you know exactly how to read it and where to place the emphasis, is clever enough for first or even second graders.

mary had a little lamb
its fleece was white as snow
she painted it with poster paint
and now it isn't

When I read it to my kids, my four-year-old said that the pink page was his favorite. "You know why? I love this page because it's pink, and your hair is pink, and I love you!" Q.E.D.

Give it to your niece who's going to art-school; give it to those hipster parent friends of yours with the expensive stroller.

Look! Seeing the light in art, by Gillian Wolfe - review

Look! Seeing the light in art, by Gillian Wolfe
When I selected the books for the brand-new library at my son's school, the 700's (art) gave me fits. Apparently, if you are a young person, the only artists you need to know about are Andy Warhol, Georgia O'Keeffe, Monet, Picasso, Leonardo, and, weirdly, Frederic Remington. Maybe Matisse, maybe Faith Ringgold. Diego Rivera. The biographies by Mike Venezia, which are pretty much the only game in town, have the UGLIEST covers in juvenile non-fiction - not his fault, but awfully hard to make yourself buy, especially since the books are about ART.

Nowadays, the fact is, I will pretty much buy any kid book that is loaded up with reproductions of art. People keep trying to come up with different didactic presentations - Lucy Micklethwait's books exhort kids to find numbers, shapes, and colors in art; and Phil Yenawine's books for MoMA organize works of art around varieties of color, lines, people, and story (among others).

The kids at MoMA hate those Yenawine books, for reasons I don't
understand. Me, I think they're ok. The fact is, I don't really care. Most of the exercises in these books are useful and can even be fun, but what's important to me is that the works selected as examples are, in the first place, good examples, of course, but also, that they are reproduced at a high quality, and large. Bonus points if the selections represent a stylistic spectrum and aren't the same 10 pictures every other book uses: a cubist Picasso, a Matisse Jazz piece, a Van Gogh, a Renoir, and an Egyptian fayoum painting.

Look! Seeing the light in art gets mixed marks here - the reproductions are not particularly large or high quality, but there are some unexpected choices - a Henry Moore drawing, a Diego Rivera painting (instead of the expected de Chirico), a Frank Hampson instead of the Lichtenstein that is de riguer in such books. I'll buy this book for the school library, and dream of the day someone lets me write this book.

The art book for children, book two - review

The art book for children Book Two, text by Amanda Renshaw
Oh to have the assignment from Phaidon to make this book. Take a beautiful repro of a work of art, and ask some questions about it. Use as many detail photos as you want. "How fast do you think these boys are running?" "What kind of school could this be?". Discuss.