The Art of Arts: Rediscovering Painting [Anglais] [Relié]

The lovingly crafted little tome The Art of Arts might become a cult classic if there are enough Jan van Eyck fans out there--or enough readers who can chew their way through 775 footnotes--to make this work of special genius even an underground bestseller. It is filled with delectable details (for example, that an image of a mill in a landscape connotes a wanton woman, complete with a page of explanations why) and myriad perspicacious observations. In discussing such masterworks as van Eyck's Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, author Anita Albus draws the reader into a vanished world of alternative perspectives, painterly depths of color and atmosphere, and the mesmerizing minutiae of late-medieval and Renaissance symbolism. The last chapter of the book, "Of Lost Colors," combines metallurgy, history, meticulous scholarship, and the author's passionate comprehension of colors in a discussion of antique pigments and their physical properties and pictorial uses.

The book's mostly paragraph-long sentences may put off some readers, and the warm, wry, even sly prose--its liveliness, in other words--may raise the hackles of the dowdy art-historical crowd (not the stylish, open-minded one). But this miniaturist's view of the northern Renaissance will copiously reward those who peruse it slowly, especially artists. Although it is possible to become lost in some chapters, as Albus tiptoes unhurriedly toward some arcane, elusive point, in the end it's hard to resist the sort of book that declares of the late 17th century: "Research into arthropods was in the air." This volume is a work of art, complete in itself, meticulously ordered according to the artist's unique vision, and handsomely "framed" by a sensitive designer. --Peggy Moorman

Painter and writer Albus (The Botanical Drama) has translated writings by the Goncourt brothers into German, and has illustrated books, including one by Claude L?vi-Strauss. This seems to have been insufficient preparation for tackling the present project, an examination of how the invention of oil painting by Jan van Eyck and his followers changed human perception. Secondary sources, particularly the great Erwin Panofsky, are quoted so heavily as to almost overshadow the project, especially since Albus's own reflections are often banal. We are told, for example, that on seeing van Eyck's Madonna of Chancellor Rolin at the Louvre Museum, "you have to rub your eyes." The prose is often redundant. In one instance, a kind of paint is called "a senile dotard." Some of this may be clumsy translation, which also refers to a "thick-as-a-fist black eye," but observations such as "[j]ust as not all art is art, not all science is science" don't help. Discussions of some painters less well known than van Eyck, such as still-life masters Georg Flegel, Johannes Goedaeart and Otto van Schriek, are somewhat more engaging, and in the last 60 pages, painters' colors are described in some detail and to some point. These pages might have made an interesting short book or pamphlet, instead of a welcome respite from a tedious treatise. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Artist and writer Albus presents us with an interesting little enigma of a book. Ostensibly tracing the birth of oil painting, Albus cloaks this story in a complex and often opaque cultural history of the 15th and 16th centuries. Focusing on a few key painters Jan Van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Gerard David, Hans Memlinc, and a few others Albus attempts to clarify how two features of modern painting three-dimensionality and the vivid colors of oil paints transformed the art form. Though the reader is occasionally caught up in her interesting stories (on the art of curing tobacco, for instance), they detract rather than add to the coherence of her thesis. The combination of a specialized focus and diffuse style result in an ultimately unsatisfying book. Recommended only for large collections of aesthetic history. Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

"Albus doesn't just show you things; she teaches you how to see for yourself." --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Broché .

In this utterly original book, Anita Albus tells the story--in the birth and triumph of oil painting, the creation of perspective, and the very nature of paint itself--of how, when, and why the eye became king of all the senses.

Albus's subjects are the inventors of easel painting in oils, the van Eyck brothers and their followers. It was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in northern Europe that oil painting radically changed the way we perceived the world: the ear, through which we had previously received all knowledge, was replaced in importance by the eye. A painter of distinction herself, Albus re- creates this revolutionary time in all its intricacies, its familiarity, and its strangeness.

The Art of Arts is thus both a dazzling cultural history and the story of two explosive inventions: the so-called third dimension of deep space through perspective, and the shockingly vivid colors of a new kind of paint. Albus makes abundantly clear how, taken together, these breakthroughs not only created a new art but altered forever our perception of the world. --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Broché .

"I haven't seen such a fascinating work in years. Nobody has ever studied Erwin Panofsky so accurately and sensitively as Anita Albus has here."-- Gerda Panofsky

"With Albus's book, we have been given a masterpiece. The author is a versatile genius, and this mighty work is unique in its highly original combination of knowledge of art history and technical experience." --William S. Heckscher, coauthor of Art and Literature: Studies in Relationship

"This book enchants me with its revelations. I do not think anyone has ever succeeded so well in making clear that--contrary to popular belief--painting does not consist of taking three-dimensional objects and representing them in a two-dimensional way, but rather in the transformation of three-dimensional objects into another object which also has three dimensions--namely, the picture itself."--Claude LŽvi-Strauss --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Broché .

Anita Albus is a writer and artist based in Munich and Burgundy. Her publications include The Botanical Drama, The Garden of Songs, and the translation into German of Flashlights by Jules and Edmond de Goncourt. She has illustrated The Passionate Gardener by Rudolph Borchardt and The Jealous Potter by Claude Lévi-Strauss. Michael Robertson is a freelance translator based in Augsburg, Germany. Previous translations include Ralph Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School (1994); Anne-Marie Bonnet, Auguste Rodin: Erotic Drawings (1995); Thea Vignau-Wilberg, Music for a While: Music and Dance in 16th-Century Prints (1999). --Ce texte fait référence à l'édition Broché .