Hans Werner Holzwarth

This budget Taschen book – 20 euros, like the stellar Basquiat in the same 40th Anniversary Edition series – is a marvel. 511 pages, excellent reproductions and an authoritative, clear text by Lutz Eitel.

It is a newly assembled edition of the SUMO size David Hockney: A Bigger Book and the chronology volume that accompanied that expensive limited edition mammoth. It is the only career spanning monograph in existence I know of. There’s 2007’s Hockney’s pictures by Thames & Hudson, but that is very, very low on text.

It is effectively organized as a chronology, starting at the end of the 50ies up onto 2016, and has about 1.5 page text for each year, followed by about 8 to 10 pages of art. Hockney’s full oeuvre is on display: paintings, water colors, drawings, photographic assemblages, stage designs, iPad drawings, etc.

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Full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It… (plus d'informations)

Quick review: I am not a formal student of art; for such a student there would probably find nothing noteworthy about this book, especially this edition which is smaller than a normal hardback (but also only $15 at B&N). For me, an amateur student of art, and mostly a denizen of the museums in New York in particular, but anywhere in general with Modern Art, I was impressed with the essay on Impressionism. I learned a lot in a brief, non-academic essay that preceded the survey of the usual suspects.
I selected this book because of these essays, which provide a lead-in to each of the main topics. These are Impressionism, Symbolism, Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, Abstract Art, Dadaism, Realism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art Minimal Art, Conceptual Art, and Post-Modernism.… (plus d'informations)

With just a brief synopsis for each artist featured in this collection, the text being English, German and French, the real attraction in this two volume set is the superb illustrations. Each artist is well represented with several or his or her works, with some reproduced full page along with others two three or more to a page. The book is well laid out and is vibrant without being brash.

The second volume concludes with a brief biography along with a photograph for each of the featured artists.

The range of work is widely diverse and thankfully includes a good proportion of painters in addition to sculptors, photographers and instalation artists. Altogether this is truly a sumptuous and exciting collection of works providing a good coverage of what is happening in the field contemporary art.… (plus d'informations)