I picked up a new book titled Medieval and Renaissance Art: People and Possessions, published by the Victoria and Albert Museum. The Victoria and Albert is a museum of decorative arts, such as ceramics and furniture. In decorative arts, the art is usually part of a useful object. In a way, the object--let’s say a table--can be used just like any other table. But it can also be unique piece of furniture, with a beauty unlike any other table. Early books were unique objects too. Illumination, or painting of the page was done by hand, and the early printing press produced a much less consistent product than more recent mass-production technologies.

It seems like we are seeing a renewed interest in the handmade book. Here at the library, we are seeing that books on hand book binding, artistic journal making, and scrapbooking are wildly popular. We are also seeing ...

Euclid Public Library has a good book on Pierre Bonnard, the early twentieth century painter of gardens and interior scenes. I think there are three important characteristics of Bonnard’s ability that made his paintings very good and highly influential on art of the later twentieth century. These points are:

1. Exemplary compositions. A common fault, even of great artist like Monet and Cezanne, is an attentiveness to one area in the painting and neglect of surrounding areas. For example, some of Cezanne’s landscape paintings appear to slide off at the bottom of the picture because the artist does not expand on the space in the foreground. Bonnard constructed his compositions deliberately and added objects and patterns to areas outside the central focus. In fact, his paintings increasingly incorporated the kind of “all-over” composition more recently associated with Jackson Pollock and Robert Rauschenberg.

2. Handling of paint and color. Bonnard built ...

I’ve been running into a little block lately as I try to put together more entries on art history, so I want to spend a few of my next entries discussing some art instruction books that I think are especially good. I’d like to recommend a book I’ve picked up a few times titled Rethinking Acrylic by Patti Brady. My paintings during the past two years have been mostly garden scenes, in which I focus on the textures of flowers and leaves. I have worked a lot on gessoed panel with oil and beeswax mixtures. In recent months, I have moved back to stretched canvas and to using oil and resin mixtures. I have also been using acrylic on paper more and more because of its versatility. Acrylic dries fast and can be applied extensively in multiple layers.

This book gives some nice ideas for the extreme textural possibilities of acrylic. ...

I was working recently in the Readers Advisory area. If you visit our actual library, you might know that this is an area near the New Books Area with a wall that is painted red. In this area, there is a picture hanging above this desk that depicts men with tuxedos and umbrellas. It’s a reproduction of a painting titled “Singing Butler” by a Scottish artist named Jack Vettriano. The same day I noticed that we have a new book on paintings by Mark Rothko (American, 1903-70) edited by Achim Borchardt-Hume of the Tate Modern, London. This volume, titled Rothko: The Late Series, focuses specifically on a series of canvases painted mainly with reds.

So the red wall, the red Rothko paintings, and the picture with the umbrellas got me thinking about depth in painting, and about the way some artists have explored the effects of layered, fields of color. ...

I’d like to compare Rembrandt and Lucian Freud. If you are unfamiliar, Freud (grandson of Sigmund) is a British painter known for his paintings of nudes with very heavy applications of oil color. I think it is natural to make a comparison between Freud and Rembrandt, because they both used heavy brushwork and are both known for being able to capture the life behind the likeness on the surface of the artwork. I want to go a step further and look more closely at the technique of each artist and how it succeeds in brining vitality to the person in the picture.

It should be remembered that Rembrandt did not have paint in tubes like we do now. So, he was altering the proportions of pigment to oil more than most painters do today. His main approach was to draw on the panel or canvas with very heavy paint and ...

In one of my favorite poems, Emily Dickinson wrote,

"There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes."

It's a poem I begin to think about this time of year, when I notice the slanting shadows of autumn.  To me, there is a heavy feeling that is also echoed in the austere city scapes and office scenes of Edward Hopper's paintings.  The brightness of the sun and leaves are nice in a way, but the glare that beams through the windows and the long shadows that appear on the walls also have an oppressive feeling, as Dickinson suggests.  It used to strike me especially when I worked for the East Cleveland Public Library, where the architecture of the old Carnegie library resembled the interiors of Hopper's paintings. 

Back in the '90s I saw an combined exhibit of Hopper's paintings displayed alongside those of Winslow Homer.  I can't ...

I’ve been pondering my challenge of selecting an artist to design posters and book covers for Oscar Wilde’s plays. I have decided upon Edgar Degas. I was drawn a lot to Whistler because the Japonisme is affected and overly decorative, much like Wilde. But I think Wilde was more complicated than Whistler. Wilde was an accomplished writer, and the irony and parody in his plays resulted, I think, from years of education and self-discipline. So, as witty, flashy, and snobbish as he was on the surface, his dedication to writing was more ponderous.
Degas is usually cited for his paintings of ballet dancers. They are delicate, pretty subjects, whose graceful movements are nicely captured. To fully appreciate Degas, you need to understand the discipline that went into his work. He was primarily a draughtsman, a draw-er, who committed the motions of people and animals to memory as he recorded them ...

I went to the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown last Saturday, and I was inspired by a room full of works on paper by Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008). In fact, the exhibit got me thinking about the stacks of books that get published on altered book art, collage, sketchbook art, etc. The ideas of Rauschenberg, who is known for merging paper collage, found objects, and paint, are often suggested in books that merge scrapbooking , “sketch-booking,” and book making. Crafts enthusiasts love these books because they offer ideas for adding a personal touch to their work. Artists can reference these books because they suggest ways to express artistic processes within the finished work.
A new book that is worth taking a look at is Sketchbooks: the Hidden Art of Designers, Illustrators & Creatives by Richard Brereton. Brereton’s reveals the content of sketchbooks kept by established designers and illustrators from ...

Joan Templeton, from the English faculty at Long Island University, looks at Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, and his artworks that are related to scenes from the plays of Henrik Ibsen. The author has done a good job here of considering the full scope of Munch’s approaches, including painting, woodcut printing, and drawing. Furthermore, she is effective in analyzing the character of Munch as it compares with Ibsen and some of the playwright’s characters, notably Peer Gynt. I can say that the book has given me a better appreciation of Munch’s work. As a painter, I tend to view paintings from a technical standpoint, and I have been critical of Munch’s brushwork as being too linear. However, it is this curvy, linear approach that gives the paintings an ethereal quality. Really, the objects in Munch’s works are not exactly on the physical plane, but they sort of float between here and ...

   Welcome to my blog! I’m Eric Linderman, a librarian and manager here at Euclid Public Library. I’ve been writing book reviews for Library Journal (LJ) for ten years now, so I can easily say that I am interested in giving my thoughts on new art books. In recent years, LJ has been mostly sending me books on photography and graphic design. As much as I like these areas, I’d like to begin this blog with some thoughts on painting and drawing, which are also serious interests of mine.

 
   A book that recently caught my eye is titled Cezanne and Beyond edited by Philadelphia Museum of Art curators, Joseph J. Rishel Katherine Sachs. This book, which weighs about 200 pounds, pulls together a wide range of essays that discuss the effect of Cezanne on twentieth century art. The big idea with Cezanne is that he constructed a sense ...