Fine Art Registry™ Art Book List and Reviews
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Art Behind the Scenes:
One Hundred Masters In and Out of Their Studios
by Joan Altabe
Windstorm Creative, paperback 238 p. (June 2005)
Price: $24.99 (Autographed by Writer)
About the Book: Art Behind the Scenes: One Hundred Masters In and Out of Their Studios is an invigorating introduction to one hundred artists of the last five centuries. Brief discussions of their work, their place in art history and a peek into their private lives make for a fascinating read.
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Book Reviews
By Dan Koon
Artists. Can't live without them and, apparently, can't live with them. Caravaggio was a murderer. Rembrandt—Rembrandt!—was rather a pig who customarily wiped his brushes on his clothing. James Ensor was a misanthropic loner.
And yet ... Frida Kahlo's fierce determination overcame a terrible accident, 35 subsequent surgeries and constant pain to produce images of real power. Tiepolo's generous Venetian heart enabled him to assist a jealous fellow artist when the latter's plot to have Tiepolo beaten by thugs backfired and the perpetrator became himself the victim. And Goethe said of Michelangelo, “Until you've seen the Sistine Chapel, you can have no adequate conception of what man is capable of accomplishing.”
With snapshots of these and 94 other master painters from the Renaissance to the present, art critic Joan Altabe builds a composite, warts and all, of the personality that has forwarded the artistic vision of Europe and America for 600 years. No mean accomplishment considering this is a group of men and women about whom literally thousands of volumes have been written. One wonders for a moment if Ms. Altabe isn't familiar with a good portion of them all, given the array of anecdotes and facts she manages to pack into only a few paragraphs about each artist.
Each chapter furnishes the context of a specific artistic movement proceeding from Renaissance times, Mannerism to Surrealism, Mantegna to Motherwell. She discusses each artist's work and then delves into the mind and life that shaped the work. Here, Ms. Altabe further departs from the common fare of art history books. Her scholarship enables her to pluck from dusty shelves who knows where something of the essence of her subjects. Need one ever read another word about Miro than the following anecdote?
“At the height of the surrealist movement, when the big demonstrations were
going on, everyone was supposed to do something scandalous, to throw mud
in the collective bourgeois eye. It was considered a major achievement to do
something outrageous right out on the street. ... Miro was expected to justify
his presence in the group in some manner. So what did he do? He went around
declaiming politely, 'Down with the Mediterranean.' The Mediterranean is a
pretty big, indefinite area. ... 'Down with the Mediterranean' was the only
outrage that went unpunished.”
Likewise, she captures something in every profile that sheds light on the temperament, creative thought or inner life of each man or woman.
Certainly, this is a book Ms. Altabe wouldn't have, couldn't have, attempted before the advent of the Internet. For though she makes reference to several of each artist's important paintings in her essays, the only pictures in the book are single black and white examples at each chapter head, illustrative of that period or style. Unless you are an art historian, you'll go mad without your laptop. The title of a painting is not the painting itself, but that is remedied with a few keystrokes, as each painting is well represented on the web.
The pictures themselves are obviously not the prey Ms. Altabe is hunting. She is after the creative source behind the work, and she succeeds in capturing for us a series of penetrating glimpses into the collective mind of artistic genius down through the centuries.
by Dan Koon | December 15, 2006
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