Rosalind Ormiston

As with all art books, I was frustrated at points while reading this book from all the flipping back and forth between sections to be able to look at the illustrations that matched the text, but I will forgive this volume since its pages collect an absolutely stunning array of Mucha's work. Unlike some Mucha books that I've read, the colour representation was absolutely spot on, and the size of the images adequately represented Mucha's artwork (with specially blown up sections to zoom in on some of the more intricate pices). I could have maybe used less written material during the second section (it seemed to duplicate some of the information that was covered in the first section) for a focus specifically on thematics, but for the most part the text was minimal and simple enough that it acted more as a white space counterpoint to the saturation of the artwork.… (meer)

Hem Rönesans'ı daha iyi anlayabilmek hem de Da Vinci ile başlayarak sanat alanındaki cahilliğimi azaltmak için bu kitabı okudum.

Kitapta Da Vinci'nin hem hayatından ayrıntılı olarak bahsedilmiş hem de Da Vinci'nin eserlerinden en ufak detaylarına kadar bahsedilmiş. Ayrıca çağdaşı olan sanatçıların ürettiği eserlerden de hem bahsedildiği hem de bu eserlerin fotoğrafları konulduğu için Da Vinci'nin çağdaşlarına göre olan konumu çok iyi anlatılmış.

Kitapta Da Vinci'nin sadece resimlerinden bahsedilmemiş ayrıca çizdiği ve hayata geçmeyen savaş aletleri ve diğer mühendislik alanlarına dair tasarımlarına da bolca yer verilmiş. Bunların dışında insan ve hayvan anatomilerine dair çizimleriyle birlikte matematik ve geometri takıntısı nedeniyle yaptığı çizimlerine dair bolca fotoğraf ve açıklama da yer alıyordu.

Kitap içerik yönünden beni tatmin etti, sanat tarihçisi olmadığım için fazla yorum yapamam ama benim seviyemdeki birisi için çok doyurucu bir kitaptı. Ayrıca kitabın hem çevirisi hem de baskısı mükemmeldi. Kitapta Da Vinci'nin Michelangelo ile olan rekabetine bolca vurgu yapıldığı için Michelangelo'yu da çok merak ettim, onu da bu seriden okumayı planlıyorum.… (meer)

This is a lovely book in many ways. There is an absolute wealth of Mucha's graphic works ..including a lot of his commercial work for biscuit manufactures and chocolate manufacturers. And, because it is a large book, one has the opportunity to really examine the detail. In some cases enlargements are given which is quite fascinating to see. It is accompanied by a nice, if slightly stilted, biographical section and a second section which focuses on his work at the height of the period 1893-1905. However, it is greatly weakened by the fact that there appears to have been no coordination between the writers of the prose and the placement of the pictures. I found I had to frequently turn back 100 pages to view the particular work the was being described in detail. And one can look in vain for any connection between the script and the illustrations on or nearby that page.
It is also frustrating to find (as on p132 that the book describes "two lithographs that are noteworthy, for they show the wide illustrative range that Muncha possessed. The first is the image of Salome ,1897 (see page 134)". Ok so far so good. ....."The second is Salammbo, 1897......." But I looked in vain for a picture of Salammbo. Now this is just plain annoying. To be invited to compare but not being given anything to compare apart from words.
In fact the word descriptions are quite detailed ..and this is a bit of a give-away when "The Moon" is described as ..."dressed in a beautiful blue gown"...when the actual print is a murky brown. In fact, clearly the blues have dropped out of the printing process or the originals from which the plates were printed have lost their blue tones. There are a number of prints described as blue or turquoise ...which are just brown. And when I googled some of these images...sure enough they appear in blue and turquoise.
There is very little here .....if anything of his work outside the period 1893-1905. I don't recall anything from his period in America or for his work on the Slavic Epic or for his early work...pre-Paris. So, in a lot of ways, this book is a disappointment. The complete disjunction between the graphic work and the text is seriously problematic. Even for the relatively few graphics that are referred to in the text, one has to be continually turning backwards and forwards to see them. It seems to me that the graphics have been laid out first and the text has simply been inserted in the spaces left behind with no thought given to integrating the two. A pity, this book could have been much better.… (meer)