Breath-taking Beauty
Werner, Alfred
Breath-taking Beauty by ALFRED WERNER Despite the recession, art lovers continue to fill their shelves with the season's lovely, illustrated volumes. The firm of Skira has remained a leader in...
...Judging by the magnificent plates (many in color) in the large volume, Pre-Columbian Art (Phaidon Press, $30), the Maya, Toltec, and Aztec metal workers, jewelers, potters, sculptors, and weavers fused fervid imagination with exquisite taste...
...Giotto, Leonardi da Vinci, Duerer, Velasquez, and Rubens are some whose works are reproduced here...
...Entering the realm of contemporary life with Armin Haab's Mexican Graphic Art (Wittenborn, $8) we note that there is more south of the Rio Grande than the widely publicized frescoes by Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros...
...Most of the 33 artists placed graphic art in the service of revolutionary ideas...
...To Giedion, the architect is more than just a builder of houses...
...We are led to another continent by The Arts and Civilizations of Angkor (Praeger, $15...
...The firm of Skira has remained a leader in this branch of publishing, as witness the splendid new book, Romanesque Painting ($22.50...
...By leafing through this unusual book, we may, in an armchair, enjoy the brutal splendor of a virile barbaric art...
...Of all paintings ever done in the Cubist vein, those of Gris are the most pleasing—perfect in the clarity and purity of their geometric statement...
...While the ancestors of America's settlers were worshipping in the lofty cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the ancestors of the Latin American Indians were building empires with civilizations not inferior to those of Christian Europe...
...The text is divided between Andre Grabar, whose theme is mural painting, and Carl Nordenfalk, who discusses book illumination...
...Since ancient Egypt, painters and sculptors have been fascinated by individuals "deformed" physically, mentally, or both...
...The term "fool," however, often included wise men who served the powerful and rich as actors, minstrels, or jesters...
...His place is next to those painters whom he loved, next to Jean Fouquet, Le Nain, Boucher, Ingres, Cezanne...
...Bernard Groslier and Jacques Arthaud introduce us to the significant buildings and sculptures of a ruined city that many centuries ago was the center of the ancient kingdom of Cambodia...
...Included are works by many promising young printmakers...
...Dwarfs and Jesters in Art, by Erica Tietze-Conrat (Phaidon Press, $5.50) is the first monograph published on this subject...
...No, the architect himself must conceive it as an integrated whole...
...In the monograph by James Thrall Soby (Museum of Modern Art, $5.50), the artist's dealer and champion, Kahnweiler, is quoted: "This Juan Gris, who lived only a short time, had little good fortune and never pushed his way to the fore, was one of the very great ones...
...Since 1947 the collection has been loaned to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C...
...Since the so-called Khmer civilization is far less known to the layman than the cultures of India or China, we welcome the long text giving the geography and history of southern Indo-China, and dwelling at length on the Khmers' religion to which is owed the temples, richly ornamented with bas-reliefs and sculptures in the round...
...Architecture, You and Me, by S. Giedion (Harvard University Press, $5) is a collection of articles that have appeared between 1937 and 1956, and, flitting from one subject to another, lacks the unity and cohesiveness expected of a serious book...
...Looking at the 126 illustrations (19 in color), one must agree with Kahnweiler...
...The frescoes and illuminated manuscript pages (reproduced with great fidelity to the originals) reveal artistic power closely linked with an unwavering faith...
...Major creations of Western art, including buildings from the Pantheon to Frank Lloyd Wright's John C. Pew house, are reproduced...
...The original church, consecrated in 1882, and still used by the Benedictine community, imitates a variety of medieval styles, is terribly over-decorated, and has bad seating arrangements and acoustics...
...Recommended reading for those who want to enjoy art but are a bit timid: Learning to Look, by Joshua C. Taylor (University of Chicago Press, $4.50...
...The building and its creator are the subjects of Adventure in Architecture, by Whitney S. Stoddard (Longmans, $8.50) which contains many photographs and some of Breuer's plans...
...The actual work of building will start sometime this year...
...Of these big three, only Siqueiros is to be found here...
...The text is written by S. K. Lothrop, W. F. Foshag, and Joy Mahler...
...All these illustrations are of objects owned by Robert Woods Bliss, who began his collection with an ancient Mexican statuette found in a Paris shop in 1912 when the enormous aesthetic values of pre-Columbian art were almost unappreciated...
...The tipped-in color plates offer a feast of the religious art sponsored by the Church from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century and reaching from Sicily as far north as Sweden, a highly stylized, decorative art, with borrowings from Greco-Roman and Byzantine art, yet often going beyond these sources to anticipate Renaissance notions and solutions...
...The 112 illustrations in superb photogravure and the six color plates reveal an art and The PROGRESSIVE architecture of an unsurpassed subtlety and sophistication...
...he is also "a builder of contemporary life . . . the architect of today refuses to consider himself a mere confiseur employed to attack some trimmings within and without after the structure has been delivered to him by the engineer...
...The father of Mexico's graphic art was Jose Guadelupe Posada (1851-1913), an autodidact who, through very expressive and imaginative etchings, fought the dictatorship of President Diaz while earning his livelihood by illustrations for advertisements, songs, prayers, and church leaflets...
...The witty text concentrates on the period from the middle of the Fifteenth to the middle of the Seventeenth Century, an era "in which the world of fools finds its widest reflection in art...
...In the biography, Gris' extraordinary modesty and fervent dedication to his art are noted...
...The proposed new church, however, has all the advantages of contemporary techniques and achieves great spiritual dignity through simplicity and restraint...
...An architect to fit Giedion's ideal is Marcel Breuer, who designed the new Saint John's Abbey at College-ville, Minnesota...
...Works of art are analyzed, color, perspective, materials and techniques explained and discussed...
...While the content of Juan Gris is largely taken from the life of the nation, with emphasis on revolutionary and counter-revolutionary activities, the Spaniard Juan Gris (1887-1927), who belonged to the Ecole de Paris, in his oils conjured up an entirely peaceful world of still lifes with musical instruments, books, bottles, fruit bowls, and playing cards...
...The occasional human figures are pierrots, musicians, or harlequins...
Vol. 22 • June 1958 • No. 6
