Turner, Tom Thomson, Paul Cezanne & Cindy Sherman

Turner in the North

For this beautifully illustrated book, David Hill has photographed many of the actual sites J.M.W. Turner sketched two hundred years ago while touring the north of England. Hill`s photographs, Turner`s first sketches (many previously unpublished), and the finished oils and watercolors that derived from them, together provide an intriguing look at the whole of Turner`s creative process as well as the quality and intensity of his travel experience.
Turner in the North: A Tour Through Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, the Scottish Borders, the Lake District, Lancashire, and Lincolnshire in the Year 1797 by David Hill
Yale Univ Press, 1998, ISBN: 0300069448

Tom Thomson by Dennis Reid

To the notion that everything has been said about the iconic Canadian artist Tom Thomson (1877-1917), colleague of the famed Group of Seven, this book brings many surprises. Six expertly written essays contribute to a new understanding of Thomson's place in the rise of a truly national art. For the first time, here is the artist's oeuvre at tentively considered in the context of the period in which he lived.
Andrew Hunter's essay views Thomson in life, as a participating artist of his time, and after his death, as he was defined by his colleagues, family and friends, through exhibitions and the popular media.
John Wadland positions Thomson in Ontario locales just when the meaning of the North as useful land was significantly changing from the service of one industry, logging, to another, tourism. Dennis Reid situates Thomson's aesthetic in the Arts and Crafts movement as it was practised in Toronto in 1905, the year he settled in the city.
Charles C. Hill's lead essay is structured biographically. It offers an insightful interpretation and stylistic analysis of Thomson's work, looking at the paintings in chronological order, thus considering them season by season, to track the artist's development.
Both thoroughly familiar with artists' techniques and materials in their professional capacity, Sandra Webster-Cook and Anne Ruggles write about Thomson's methods and palette, showing how he made use of typical painting supports but manipulated color in ways that affected, to varyin g degrees, the design surface. This thoughtfully conceived book, with 140 color illustrations, and accompanying a major Tom Thomson exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Winnipeg Art Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery, clearly marks an important advance in the appreciation of the work of this signal Canadian artist and reflects with vivacity the times that produced him.
Tom Thomson by Dennis Reid
ISBN: 1550548980

Paul Cezanne's Composition: Analysis of His Form With Diagrams

This meaty book fulfills its stated purposes, namely, to reveal exactly what is meant by the organization of space. Enigmatic terms such as "space organization," "picture plane," "volume solidity," are so fully explained that never again can they be considered aesthetic mysteries.
Erle Loran's definitive technique is ingenious and almost foolproof.
Cezanne's Composition: Analysis of His Form With Diagrams And Photgraphs of His Motifs by Erle Loran
University of California Press, 1990

Cindy Sherman Centerfolds

One of Cindy Sherman's most popular series - the Centerfolds were created in 1981 as a special project for Artforum at the invitation of Ingrid Sischy who was then the Editor.
Composed by Sherman to utilize the "centerfold" format of the magazine, the 12 images feature self-portraits, which fill the frame. In the end Artforum chose not to run them, but they have since become both an integral point in the oeuvre of Cindy Sherman and a part of our contemporary visual iconography. The twelve images are featured in this handsome hardcover catalogue. Lisa Phillips, Director of The New Museum of Contemporary Art contributes the text. Issued in a relatively small print run this book should only increase in value over time.
Cindy Sherman: Centerfolds by Cindy Sherman, Lisa Phillips, Peter Grundberg, Roberta Smith, Andy Grundberg and Peter Schjeldahl
ISBN: 0970909020

Byzantine Art

Mostly religious in function, but preserving the classicism of Greco-Roman art, Byzantine buildings and art objects communicate the purity and certainties of the public face of early Christian art. Focusing on the art of Constantinople between 330 and 1453, this book probes the underlying motives and attitudes of the society, which produced such rich and delicate art forms. Byzantine Art examines the stages this art went through as the city progressed from being the Christian center of the Eastern Roman Empire, to its crisis during attack from the new religion of Islam. It examines also its revived medieval splendor and then, after the Latin capture of 1204 and the Byzantine reoccupation after 1261, to its arrival at a period of cultural reconciliation with east and west.
Byzantine Art by Robin Cormack
Oxford, 2000

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