Art Lovers discussion

Wow! Can you believe it is going to be 2012??? I can't, and I don't know if I want to, either.

Should we or shouldn't we start another book?

Please post your comments, suggestions, and thoughts. And if you are for reading something together come the following month, I would love more of your suggestions on books on which we should vote.

I know I'm a little late in starting this, I have been busy, too.

Let's get those thoughts rolling!

Tell me about it! I can barely breathe with all the activities and functions I have to go to. If you have a kid, that's even worse. I'm focusing on specific authors, so I will not be participating in monthly reads for a while.

Thanks, Aloha, for letting us know. Good luck this month! Sounds like you'll need it!

Thanks, Heather.

January is a wee bit hard for us. As we are parents of the Bride this year, I may be scattered until we get June out of the way. I will check in.

Love, Jeannie

I would suggest new releases--

BIG READS--
"Van Gogh: The Life" by Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith (953 pp/ published 10.18.2011)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...

Some of my friends at the museum liked "The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris" by David McCullough (558 pp/ published 5.24.2011)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...

"Bernini: His Life and His Rome" by Franco Mormando (416 pp/ published 11.1.2011)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...

OR A SHORT READ: "A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney" by Martin Gayford (248 pp/ published 10.24.2011)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...

I'm reading the Van Gogh book now and might even be done by January! (It seems to me that books should be finished rather than started by the time the discussion begins as there can't be much discussion until a book is read.)
I have the McCullough book on my list to read, so I wouldn't mind discussing that either.

Dvora wrote: "It seems to me that books should be finished rather than started by the time the discussion begins as there can't be much discussion until a book is read."

So true. Maybe we should try that in 2012.

That is a good idea. Hmmm, so do we vote on a book for January, then depending on the length and difficulty of the book decide when we should begin a discussion? Did I understand that correctly?

So far among personal messages and the above comments, the decisions for or against the book read are about 50/50. Just a thought, I will do a poll to find out exactly how many people want to read. Maybe this is just for my own curious information...personally, for the benefit of those who are wanting to read in January, we will do the book read anyway. What do you say?

Starting from tonight (Sunday Dec 11, 2011 Mountain Standard Time) we can submit suggestions like Carol did above. We will commence a vote on, let's see...Friday, Dec 16. Does that give us enough time to submit our suggestions? too much? I don't want to run the poll/voting into the heart of the festivities.'

Even if you have commented above or sent me personal messages, please vote in the poll anyway. Thank you!

I'm not home by my books. I don't know what I'll feel like reading. Right now I'm loving The Queen Ann House. i'll vote in the poll when i see it. i like shorter academic works. I'm so picky. Hockney isn't for me but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate everyone here!

I think the general consensus is to have a short, lighter read for January. Maybe we do need a little breather from the holidays.

Thank you to Carol for her recommendations. Anyone else?
I will think about it, too.

OK here's a list of links. List members have probably seen many of them suggested by me before. I don't expect anyone to be interested in Andrea del Sarto or the painters of Ireland but it's what I have on hand and I should get around to reading them.


SHORT
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15...


LONG
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25...

MEDIUM
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27...

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/95... *

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14...


All the best,
Monica

Wow, Monica. That's quite a list! But thank you for the recommendations. I think I will only include The 'short' list for the voting, is that ok? But I did go through all of them and I am glad you have introduced them!

For some a 300 page book with photos is a short book. I don't have them handy so i can't verify their length. The groups wish is my command.

Celtic Art in Pagan Times is probably a medium/long book.

Frida Kahlo 1907-1954: Pain and Passion ---96 pages




The Philosophy of Andy Warhol ---276 pages


The private Andy Warhol talks: about love, sex, food, beauty, fame, work, money, success; about New York and America; about himself- his childhood in McKeesprot, Pennsylvania, good times and bad times in the Big Apple, the explosion of his career in the sixties, and life among celebrities.


Lives of the Artists ---272 pages


Whether writing about Jasper Johns or Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman or Richard Serra, Calvin Tomkins shows why it is both easier and more difficult to make art today. If art can be anything, where do you begin?

(I don't know about this one...)
Abstraction in Art and Nature ---288 pages


Stimulating, thought-provoking guide shows how to discover a rich new design source in the abstractions inherent in natural forms. Lines of growth and structure, water and liquid forms, weather and atmospheric patterns, luminosity, earth colors, many other elements are shown to be wellsprings of creative abstraction. Over 370 photographs and other illustrations.

Perusals into (Post) Modern Thought --120 pages
Perusals Into (Post) Modern Thought provides a literary and scholarly introduction to the multi-faceted movement of postmodernism. Building on close readings of important Enlightenment and postmodern texts, Claudia Moscovici explores Enlightenment theories of knowledge and postmodern ethics, offering a cogent introduction to contemporary scholarly debates...

Matisse, His Art and His Textiles ---216 pages


Henri Matisse's ancestors had been weavers for generations: textiles, a key to his visual imagination, were in his blood. Although he was to outgrow every other influence, textiles retained their power for him throughout his life. His studio in Nice was a treasure house of exotic Persian carpets, delicate Arab embroideries, richly hued African wall hangings, and any number of colorful cushions, curtains, costumes, patterned screens, and backcloths.

Dvora wrote: "I have the McCullough book on my list to read, so I wouldn't mind discussing that either."

A friend of mine on FB just suggested the "The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris" by David McCullough

I am very interested in that one, I think it might be a bit too long for the beginning of the year, maybe later on?

McCullough's book was very popular at the museum. I found a few short books that look interesting to me . . .

256pp
Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton

Thornton plunges into a full-immersion study of seven radically different environments of the art world, from a Christie's auction to an open crit session at CalArt, from the Japanese studios of Takashi Murakami to the Venice Biennale, and records what she sees and hears. Several sets of wonderful stories emerge, with occasional overlap as a few figures move from one scene to another, but for the most part these are highly disparate snapshots which demonstrate that there is no one "art world," but a whole range of overlapping subcultures, each with its own hierarchies and protocols. -Ron Hogan
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34...


248pp
Pilgrimage by Annie Leibovitz, Doris Kearns Goodwin (intro)

Pilgrimage took Annie Leibovitz to places that she could explore with no agenda. She wasn’t on assignment. She chose the subjects simply because they meant something to her. The first place was Emily Dickinson’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts, which Leibovitz visited with a small digital camera . . .
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...

I do have the McCullough...

I'm picky too. I know that my interests and tastes are rather narrow. That's why I dropped out of my face-to-face bookgroup. I didn't like most of the choices and wasn't going to continue reading books that didn't interest me. Online groups are great in that way.
Monica wrote: "I'm not home by my books. I don't know what I'll feel like reading. Right now I'm loving The Queen Ann House. i'll vote in the poll when i see it. i like shorter academic works. I'm so picky. Hockn..."

Looks like 20 people will do a short read in January. Could we vote on a book by Friday?

Thanks for the reminder Carol. I'll post the poll tonight.

I think we've got a winner!

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

I will start the thread for this next read.
For those of you who voted on other books, you are welcome to read your own chosen book and can share your reviews with us, or in our next book read vote, we will list the same books which have received votes this time and hopefully read your next. Sound ok?

588 pages is a short book?

Monica wrote: "588 pages is a short book?"

We are traveling in January so I only have time for a short read so I will read Seven days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton (253 pp.)

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris is on my TBR so I will probably read it in February.

I know, Monica. I said in another thread that I wasn't sure if I should add it to the 'short book' poll list. But I have had many messages and comments from people who are interested in reading it anyway. And from the outcome of the poll, it looks like it is in the majority.
But that is also why I invited anyone who didn't vote for the longer book, to feel free to read any of the other shorter books, or even a book of their own, as Carol just mentioned above.
I would really look forward to reviews also of other books that people choose to read in January. I will start a thread for 'other books', too. If anyone wants to add progress, thoughts or reviews. That is only if they want to. Hey, maybe the thread will stay empty, but the option is there.

It seems The Greater Journey is not yet out in paperback (scheduled for May 2012), so since I cannot obtain any books in English here from the library and buy all my books, I won't be reading it when the paperback edition comes out.

Although it's an interesting subject I don't have the stamina for nearly 600 pages. I'll enjoy everyones comments instead.

Oops. I meant to say that I WILL be reading it when the paperback edition comes out. It's been on my TBR list for a while already.

If you are interested Dvora -- Seven days in the Art World is out in paperback (it was first published in 2008.) I have so many books to read right now that I could wait to read The Greater Journey in May.

Thanks Carol, but it was Paris and the people who went there that interested me. I've recently read Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, a biography on Hadley Hemingway, and Being Geniuses Together (Robert McAlmon and ay Boyle). I've also read several other books related to the same in the last few years. That place and time and those people interested me very much.

Have you read Bohemian Paris: Picasso, Modigliani, Matisse, and the Birth of Modern Art, Dvora? It was on my "recommendations" for art history, and looked interesting.

Susanne, never heard of it. Thanks for bring it up.

Neither had I, until it popped up on my "recommended" list. Looks interesting, though. And my local library has it, too.

I just added it, thanks Susanna!

The three books on my Santa list, which I am now reading are:

Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter
de Kooning: An American Master
Van Gogh: The Life

These are all very good. (The de Kooning bio got the Pulitzer, and the van Gogh bio author got a Pulizter for a previous book.)

One of the things I learned about in the de Kooning and van Gogh bios is the Dutch class system, which was pretty dire: either terror of falling in status (van Gogh's mother and her husband, a minister, and her obsession with propriety--they were a small barely Protestant enclave in a largely incredibly poor Catholic village; de Kooning's mother who was desperately poor and abusive). Holland is now such an enlightened and prosperous country we don't really think about where they came from.

I think that Heather, with her interest in the psychology of artists would find the Mitchell bio interesting. Joan Mitchell was an eidetic synesthete. She could literally hear colors and sounds, see the color of emotions and mentally photograph and preserve memories. There are some very beautiful descriptions of colors. She was also highly unstable, and I would say certainly bipolar.

Do we use this thread to post about other art-related books we are reading?
I'm still reading the new Van Gogh biography and liking it a lot. Besides providing a lot of new information about Vincent, the part I just read talked about Gauguin. He (Gauguin) turns out to be just as despicable as I thought he was. They don't think much of him as an artist either.
Vincent was much more difficult than I thought he was. Poor man.

Not to get into a long discussion about it, why was Gauguin despicable?

He was self-serving, scheming, dishonest. He adopted different painting styles in order to ingratiate himself into groups or markets. He abused his friends and abandoned his family -- not just that he left his wife and four of their children, but he took one of them with him to Paris and then abandoned him there. Although the Naifeh book is about Vincent, they talk about Gauguin as he figures in Vincent's biography. So far they've given a bunch of his background and I have yet to read anything positive about him (as of page 672).

LOL but unlike Picasso I DO like Gauguins art.

I don't care much for Picasso's art or Gauguin's, actually. But I would admit that Picasso was a genius and an innovator, whereas Gauguin wasn't.

Dvora I took a couple classes on Picasso and grew to hate him intensely. He was a repeat offender in his relationships. Slept with the woman with whom his best friend was madly in love, hence a suicide and he capitalized on the tragedy by painting Carlos Casagemas on his death bed. He stole ideas from Braque and Gris. They refused to let him in their studios but he already had co-opted their inventions and it was too late, the damage had been done. He drove his shopping cart through other styles and made it look like the innovations were his own. He was a philanderer who impregnated women and left them. He left more than one woman when they were pregnant. How can you be the co-inventor of cubism or the co-inventor of collage?

Monica, I had no idea. Thanks for telling me. Like I said, I'm not a Picasso fan, so I'm not disappointed, but it's interesting to know more about him. I feel about Salvador Dali the way you feel about Picasso. I'm not a Gauguin fan either, still, the more I learn about him, the more I despise him. In fact, I think he probably hastened Vincent's illness. Vincent had been weird and possibly ill all his life, but he never had an "attack" until Gauguin came.

Yes, I understand. It was not wonderful that Gauguin left his family. I don't want to know more bad things about him. I do like his painting, I dare say some more than van Goghs. I am fond of the music of Mike Heron he wrote a song called Gauguin of the South Seas that incorporates a trad island tune so I'll stay in my shell and listen to the ocean breezes. Happy new year, art lovers!