Gift Ideas for the Art Lover
Art Talk with Edward Goldman They’re Big, They’re Heavy and, Boy, They’re Gorgeous!!! TUE NOV 29, 2011 Holidays are upon us. We hardly finished digesting Thanksgiving turkey but Santa…
By Connie Alvarez • • 1 min readArt Talk with Edward Goldman
TUE NOV 29, 2011
Holidays are upon us. We hardly finished digesting Thanksgiving turkey but Santa Clause’s bells are ringing louder and louder. Have you already made up your list and decided how much you can spend on all the gifts? So, ladies and gentlemen, let me make it easier for you and, as in previous years, suggest that instead of the torture of shopping in the crowded malls, you might want to escape into an old-fashioned heaven of a bookstore. Of course, if you are lucky enough to still have one of those in your neighborhood… |
Let’s start with three deliciously heavy page-turners, biographies of
bigger-than-life personalities — cultural icons — each of whom looms
larger and larger as years and centuries go by.
I.
Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman
II.
Van Gogh: The Life
III.
Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter
And how about coffee table art books to show your friends, cousins, aunts and uncles how cool, smart and adventurous you are?
I. Did you like
Midnight in Paris
II. The
Gaugin: Maker of Myth
. Poor us, who missed this exhibition in London and then in Washington. But at least the catalogue is here to console us.
III. Of the many talented artists whose stars shine over the Los Angeles art scene, Mark Bradford
is among the brightest and definitely the tallest of them all. His
monumental, almost operatic in scale paintings, stand in welcome
contrast to the sweet, low-key persona of their creator. The irony is
that the catalogue of his traveling exhibition lists five host cities in the U.S., with the exception of L.A.
IV. Have you met any art lover who hasn’t succumbed to the temptation of
Lari Pittman‘s mysterious, colorful, multi-layered fantasies, executed by the artist
monograph celebrating this Angelino whose fame has spread far and wide.
Happy Holidays my friends.
To see images discussed in Art Talk, go to KCRW.com/ArtTalk.
Banner image: (L-R) Catherine The Great: Portrait of a Lady by Robert Massie, published by Random House; Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter, published by Knopf; Van Gogh: The Life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, published by Random House