Françoise Barbe-Gall

Wonderful introduction to Greco. I picked up this booklet at the recent exhibition at Le Grand Palais in Paris, where some of his masterpieces were collected. Greco always touches me; when I am in a museum, I can already get ‘struck’ by him from afar: those elongated figures, that intense colorite, and especially that accent on the inner expression of faces and hands, body postures, the break with classical iconographic rules. No wonder Greco was rediscovered and cultivated by modernists in the early 20th century. This booklet introduces Greco in a very practical way, based on a few highlights. I hope this also gets an English edition.… (meer)

How to Talk to Children about Modern Art was a Christmas present. I was interested to see what I would think of it, despite quite clearly not being part of the intended target audience.
The book consists of two parts: a general introduction to how one might talk to children about modern art, and commentary on specific works. The latter makes up most of the book, and is by far the most interesting part. Pictures of the works are presented, along with questions young children might (allegedly) ask when observing it, as well as an answer one could give to such a question. Fortunately, as well as being questions children might ask, the questions are also the kind of questions I think adults may be afraid to ask. This makes most of the answers quite interesting even though many of them are, of course, rather childish. This is a bit of a pity, as this question and answer thing seems like quite an efficient way to explain modern art to a novice such as myself. I can't complain though. For a book with content aimed at children up to "age group 11+" I got more out of it than I would have expected.… (meer)