I keep checking out books about Van Gogh, who is one of my favorite artists, without actually reading them. This time I did. The book is good because it has nice glossy photos and gives background on the man and his surroundings. It's a little muddled at times, they don't give much explanation about things. I would recommend it for people looking for just a brief overview of the man and his art, but I will keep looking for more info and a book with a nice picture of my favorite piece of art - a crab on its back. ( )

The reason I love the DK Art Book series is the way they are formatted. Each page is marked with a colored bar (yellow, blue, or pink) which indicates which topic the page is discussing. Yellow is Life and Works, which gives general information about the title artist; blue are Background pages, which give historical and cultural background information about the time period the artist lived in; and pink pages are for Masterpieces, which show a specific work by the artist and analyzes it, hi-lighting certain aspects of the work and offering interesting details about it.

I remember seeing van Gogh's artwork in high school and not really 'getting' it, and I still had the false impression that it was a lesser form of art before reading this book. However, after seeing so much of the art for the first time and being able to compare it to others, I can say I have a newfound appreciation for it. I'm also officially a big fan of Vincent van Gogh, not so much for his artwork but for being such an interesting person. ( )