Matisse: Master of Pure Color--His Life in Paintings

Traces the life of the French artist, analyzes his works, and explains the historical and social context of his painting

These three books are part of a series of brief monographs on big-name artists that also includes titles on Rembrandt, Monet, Bosch, da Vinci, Caravaggio, Gauguin, van Gogh, Titian, and C?zanne. The popularity of the artists, the glitzy format, and the low price will probably guarantee sales. Reading these three installments, however, was more bewildering than enlightening. The publisher states that they are a perfect gift or study companion for art history students and art lovers alike. Yet art history students expect and deserve bibliographies and citations (neither of which are present), and art lovers will probably not appreciate the number of illustrations printed right into the book gutters. The text portions are well written, but editorial negligence in other areas is distracting: inconsistencies, typographical errors, and incorrect headings appear throughout, and illustrations are included in sections where they do not seem to belong. Even the covers have misleading juxtapositions. The Matisse volume features his portrait prominently under his name, but under Goya's name there appears a servant from one of his paintings. And whoever is pictured under D?rer's name is a mystery, since he does not look like D?rer, but no identification appears anywhere. Some mistakes are glaring; for example, a section headed "Matisse and etching" discusses his lithographs instead. Conversely, D?rer's famous woodcut of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" is noted as one of a series of lithographsAa process not even invented yet. The layout of the books is overly complex, with snippets of information under small illustrations scattered about in irregularly alternating color-coded sections. Although the colored sidebars suggest a distinction between "Life and Works," "Background," and "Masterpieces," there is often overlap, and some of the illustrations do not fall into whatever date span distractingly heads each page. Every facing two-page spread is concerned with a particular theme. Although these themes are relevant and interesting, when over 50 of them are presented this way in each book, the end result feels superficial rather than thorough. On top of all this, the film layer over the paperback covers peels away from the edges as one reads the books. Not recommended.AAnn Marie Lane, Univ. of Wyoming, Laramie
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.