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30,000 Years of Artfor £26.95 from Times Online's Books First
They are a doddle to wrap, but art books are still difficult to choose as
presents. There are more types than brands of whisky, and they vary as much
as Kanga Rouge differs from Château Lafite.
Don’t worry too much. Anyone would be delighted with King
Tutankhamun: The Treasures of the Tomb by Zahi Hawass (Thames &
Hudson £39.99), especially anybody who has seen the exhibition currently at
the O2complex in London. Here are some 200 striking photographs of pharaonic
objects, each furnished with a commentary by Hawass, a leading Egyptologist,
who, to judge from his wide-brimmed hat, fancies himself as Indiana Jones.
Just as good, and cheap enough to be a stocking-filler, is The Complete
Tutankhamun by Nicholas Reeves (Thames & Hudson £9.95). It vividly
tells the story of the long search for the tomb and the subsequent
sensational excavations, with the aid of more than 500 illustrations.
Van Gogh Paintings: The Masterpieces by Belinda Thomson (Thames &
Hudson £24.95) is another safe bet as a present, not only because so many of
the strongest paintings by this most popular of artists are reproduced in
it, but also because of the quality of the text. Books about impressionism
are equally dependable Christmas choices, especially if they wander a bit
off the well-worn track like Musée Marmottan’s The Treasures
of Monet by Michael Howard (Deutsch £30), although the idea on which it
is based has been tried before: a mixture of spare text and some
near-facsimiles of letters, sketches and other documents contained in bags
and envelopes in order to put readers in more immediate touch with the
subject. The book is obviously intended for children, and none the worse for
that. So, too, is The Treasures of Vincent Van Gogh by Cornelia
Homburg (Deutsch £30). Longer, and more of an adult read, is the superb Degas:
A Dialogue of Difference by Werner Hofmann (Thames & Hudson £45),
which sets the achievement of this complex artist against the background of
19th-century French art. It is the best monograph I have read all year.
Such well-written books are easy to recommend as Christmas presents. But what
about George Stubbs: Painter by Judy Egerton (Yale £95), in which
every painting he ever created (plus a selection of his drawings) is
reproduced and discussed in an impressively scholarly fashion? The price is
eyewatering, but I would be thrilled to be given it. It’s one of the most
handsome books among the current crop, and its authoritative introduction
and commentaries are brilliant.
Can the same be said of another catalogue raisonné, Euan Uglow: The
Complete Paintings by Catherine Lampert (Yale £65)? Uglow, who died in
2000, developed a laborious dot-and-carry method of transcribing reality on
to canvas that isn’t to everyone’s taste. He was, however, a fine colourist,
and although his agonisingly posed nudes can seem little more than
exercises, his landscapes and still lifes are often delightful. Sometimes, a
strong sense of humour also comes through. Uglow recently made the tabloids
because of his unfinished full-length, seminude painting of Cherie Blair,
reproduced here as number 296. The commentary fails to mention that Uglow
made such an impression on the Blairs that they named their eldest son after
him.
In Another Light by Patricia G Berman (Thames & Hudson £38) can be
wholeheartedly recommended. It’s an engagingly written, attractively
illustrated study of what for most people is entirely uncharted territory:
Danish painting in the 19th century. Some of the illustrations seem
conventional enough, but others may well surprise you. If you weren’t
previously aware of Vilhelm Hammershøi, you’ll be grateful for the
introduction to his mysterious, muted interiors, as well as to the
refreshingly cool, clear light in Christian Købke’s portraits and
landscapes, among the most appealing done anywhere at the time. Curiously,
this remarkable artistic flowering occurred during a low point in Danish
history, when wars were lost and the economy ruined.
Almost any art lover would be delighted to be given this book.
Excited recipients of James Stourton’s Great Collectors of Our Time
(Scala £45) will be, I dare say, smaller in number, restricted to the great
collectors themselves. Their dazzling taste, appetite for risk-taking and
towering social importance are fully advertised by the author, who happens
to be the chairman of Sotheby’s UK. He would also make a perfect gossip
columnist for some upmarket glossy. Who would have guessed that Ted Power,
the founder of Murphy radios and the most important postwar collector of
contemporary art in Britain, had tattoos on his arm? All this book lacks is
a critical sense. You would never learn from it, for instance, that Swiss
collectors such as Emil Bührle benefited from selling arms to the Germans
during the war or from the Nazi campaign against “degenerate” art that
resulted in modernist masterpieces being auctioned at knockdown prices in
Lucerne.
On the other hand, 30,000 Years of Art (Phaidon £29.95) has much wider
appeal. What sounds and at first sight looks like a gimmick is, in fact, an
engrossing educational journey through the world’s art from the paleolithic
period to the present day. Each of the 1,000 chronologically arranged
illustrations and their accompanying long captions occupy a page – which
results in the book’s only weakness. It’s the size and weight of one of
those doorsteps that northern housewives used to scrub in films by John
Schlesinger. Easier to lift, hold and move are two monographs, Raphael
by Bette Talvacchia (Phaidon £24.95) and Titian by Peter
Humphrey (Phaidon £24.95). Both volumes have something of the look and feel
of the prewar monographs with which Phaidon, then still based in Vienna,
established a reputation in this country. These present monographs have
lower-quality reproductions but look splendid nevertheless, not least
because of their real silk bindings.
The texts of both these books are by acknowledged experts and are extremely
readable. It would, however, be unwise to claim that the words will be
widely read. Most people prefer looking at pictures than reading the greyish
bits in between. This is one reason why I’d choose to give the
straightforward and easily digestible 30,000 Years of Art to a first-year
art-history undergraduate rather than Julian Bell’s Mirror of the
World: A New History of Art (Thames & Hudson £24.95). This sets out
to discover a way of presenting the history of art in a new and culturally
more inclusive way. By a painter and third-generation Bloomsberry, it’s a
worthy but needlessly complicated and confusing effort. The philosopher’s
stone of art publishing, a modern equivalent of Gombrich’s Story of Art, has
still to be discovered. How to Read a Modern Painting by Jon Thompson
(Thames & Hudson £19.95) also promises more than it delivers. The title
holds out the tantalising prospect of explaining something that has
bewildered and frustrated several generations of art lovers. Yet what we get
is a series of short essays on individual pictures, intelligent enough
certainly, but entirely avoiding the fundamental questions shared by most
modern paintings.
What about presents for art lovers who like to shut themselves away at
Christmas to indulge in a long, continuous read? Far and away the best
candidate is the third volume of John Richardson’s A Life of
Picasso: The Triumphant Years (Cape £30), which covers the years between
1917 and 1932, the period when the artist became rich and famous. The book
begins with him chasing the frosty Russian ballerina Olga, who became his
wife, and ends with a discussion of his – surely naive – politics.
In between are his often hilarious, Feydeau-like assignations with the
compliant and gorgeous Marie-Thérèse Walter. After reading this enthralling
mixture of glorious anecdote, fact and interpretation, nobody can doubt the
value of biography in understanding an artist’s work.
Finally, it is a pleasure to report that Thames & Hudson’s World of Art
series, which has been a little neglected lately, is right back on form.
John Gage’s Colour in Art gives a brilliant account of its
subject. The text is staggeringly erudite but accessible, and the
illustrations are as varied as they are informative. Yet it costs just
£9.95. These days, that’s almost as cheap as a Christmas card.
BESTSELLERS
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3 www HR Giger Com by HR Giger
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4 Dali
(Taschen) 3,710
5 Graffiti World: Street Art from Five Continents by Nicholas Ganz and
Tristan Manco
(Thames & Hudson) 3,645
Bestsellers list prepared by The Bookseller using data supplied by and
copyright to Nielsen BookScan taken from the TCM 02/01/07-10/11/07
