Pablo Picasso: Metamorphoses of the Human Form (Art & Design S.)
Pablo Picasso: Metamorphoses of the Human Form (Art & Design S.)
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Customer Review: Brief history of the lost cities being re-discovered
This book tells of the ‘modern world’ discovering the lost cities of the Maya. It lists the sequence of modern travellers to the district, starting with the Spanish explorers, and the progressive compilation and understanding of the discoveries made at the sites through to the 20th century. It has some excellent early photographs of the cities prior to their recovery from the jungle and makes some interesting comparisons of the views each explorer made. While providing an account of who, how and when these discoveries were made it holds little information on the cities themselves. Thus this is not a book for those looking to get in depth information on the Mayans and understand what is believed to have happened in these cites. One other interesting factor of the book is that it contains the transcripts of early documents written by the explorers - including letters to the Spanish king - which give a good idea of how impressive these cities were to the earliest discoverers.
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Picasso’s War: The Extraordinary Story of an Artist, an Atrocity and a Painting That Shook the World Customer Review: Fascinating story of a masterpiece
As all the reviews have said, this is a fascinating story of a masterpiece. The Spanish Civil War and Picasso’s life are well explainedto put the story of the painting itself into both contexts.
I’ll justadd that the book is let down by a lack of illustrations (the only one isof the painting itself), and by the lack of an index.
Customer Review: Flawed masterpiece
As ‘Guernica’ was the painting that introduced me to the works of Picasso, I was really looking forward to this book.
And it’s a convincing tale well told - with such a work of art (still) inextricably linked to international politics and war (both world and civil) Russell Martin does a competent job of placing the work into the necessary socio-political context.
The illustrations don’t do the painting justice - but how can you adequately illustrate Guernica in a small book anyway? Even weighty art books about the painting stuggle with this.
It’s a history of ‘Guernica’ as symbolic art rather than an analysis of the painting per se, whereas some fans may want to know more about the creative processes behind the production of the painting.
More ‘art’ and a larger format may have made this a great book, but as it stands it’s certainly a good book about the trials and tribulations of a great painting.
