Artist Francis Bacon's Lifetime Accumulated Mess Transported Intact to Irish Museum

I got my DSLR a few years back, and for a while was desperately looking for ways to improve my photography skills, particularly in composition. Photography is such an integral part of travelling. When I come home from a trip, sorting out my photographs and picking out good ones is one of the things I enjoy most. And so I went on the hunt for some of the best photography books on composition. While there are many factors involved in creating a great photograph, I believe that composition is as important as knowing all the dials on your camera and when or how to use them. After all, a great photograph that evokes strong emotions is most powerful, thus the image has to be something special that tells a story too.

Knowing how to compose a good photo is a priceless art and I have never been convinced it could really be taught. I strongly believed at one point that composition had more to do with the sheer talent and imagination of the person behind the lens. That is, until I read Bryan Peterson's book, 'Learning to See Creatively: Design, Color & Composition in Photography', which happened to be on a few professional photographers' reading lists. All the components that go into a well composed photograph is covered here, such as design, shapes, lines, colours and patterns. Subject placement and focus is one of the most important elements in designing a photograph. He invites readers to think critically when composing, so as when to realise that it is acceptable to 'break' basic compositional rules, such as the times when it is wise to place the subject in the centre of the photograph as opposed to following the common 'rule of thirds'. The bonus is that he includes many fabulous images from his portfolio.


Francis Bacon's Studio
By Margarita Cappock
Merrell Publishers Limited, 2005, 240 pages, hardbound, $59.95

Francis Bacon (1909-1992) was born in Ireland to British parents and today is recognized as one of the most significant post-war painters, his disturbing oil portraits acquired by major museum collections worldwide. Bacon is remembered primarily for his symbolic, macabre portrait of Pope Innocent X. London/New York publisher Merrell has produced a definitive, retrospective coffee-table volume on Bacon using the device of his unique (read unimaginably messy) studio as the springboard into his career and lifework.

Six years after his death in 1992 the contents of his rather cramped London studio were donated to the Dublin City Council in Ireland with the understanding that it would be recreated there with all its contents intact for public viewing. Easier said than done, because the studio, Bacon's home and workplace since 1961, contained 7,500 items - a treasure trove of precious artifacts to an art historian. There are two absorbing stories here: the challenge of cataloging, transporting and reassembling the contents of the studio (front door, paint-encrusted walls and all) across the Irish Sea to Dublin, and then the significance of each uncovered item as it related historically to Bacon's oeuvre.

"Maintaining the studio exactly as it stood was crucial to the experience," Dr. Cappock writes. So a team of photographers, archeologists, conservators and curators went to work, launching an indoor archeological dig to create a detailed diagram of exactly where each item lay/stood/hung so that the recreated space would be precisely accurate. Today the reconstructed studio is open to the public at Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane, Charlemont House, Parnell Square, Dublin 1, Ireland.

Needless to say, the piles and piles of clippings, photos, sketches, catalogs, books and even slashed canvases speak volumes to the historic arc of Bacon's work and Dr. Cappock finds in this detritus the inspiration for each phase of his artistic development. Some of the many graphic images Bacon collected over his lifetime reveal the macabre basis for much of his output: massacres, meat carcasses and the assassination of President Kennedy. Other photos show the subjects of his commissioned portraits including Mick Jagger. By the last page the reader has received a detailed, insider's view of the creative evolution of Francis Bacon.

For anyone building a library on 20th century art this impressive, heavy book, Francis Bacon's Studio, is a must.


Peterson further shows readers how to work with, and get the best out of different lighting conditions. He also writes on the various types of lenses and how to select the appropriate one to use on the field.

A highly regarded professional photographer, teacher and author, Peterson's writing style is engaging and his book is highly readable and easy to digest without being too wordy. While seemingly elementary, budding photographers and more advanced ones alike will likely find Peterson's book a great source of reference. I did find this book highly readable and a worthy investment in helping me improve my own photography skills. I do habitually try to visualise a powerful image in my mind's eye first before I release the shutter these days.

oil paintings watercolor paintings drawings photography articles composition and ... home about contact photo art books articles. art and photography articles ...

Composing Great Photographs

I got my DSLR a few years back, and for a while was desperately looking for ways to improve my photography skills, particularly in composition. Photography is such an integral part of travelling. When I come home from a trip, sorting out my photographs and picking out good ones is one of the things I enjoy most. And so I went on the hunt for some of the best photography books on composition. While there are many factors involved in creating a great photograph, I believe that composition is as important as knowing all the dials on your camera and when or how to use them. After all, a great photograph that evokes strong emotions is most powerful, thus the image has to be something special that tells a story too.

Knowing how to compose a good photo is a priceless art and I have never been convinced it could really be taught. I strongly believed at one point that composition had more to do with the sheer talent and imagination of the person behind the lens. That is, until I read Bryan Peterson's book, 'Learning to See Creatively: Design, Color & Composition in Photography', which happened to be on a few professional photographers' reading lists. All the components that go into a well composed photograph is covered here, such as design, shapes, lines, colours and patterns. Subject placement and focus is one of the most important elements in designing a photograph. He invites readers to think critically when composing, so as when to realise that it is acceptable to 'break' basic compositional rules, such as the times when it is wise to place the subject in the centre of the photograph as opposed to following the common 'rule of thirds'. The bonus is that he includes many fabulous images from his portfolio.

Peterson further shows readers how to work with, and get the best out of different lighting conditions. He also writes on the various types of lenses and how to select the appropriate one to use on the field.

A highly regarded professional photographer, teacher and author, Peterson's writing style is engaging and his book is highly readable and easy to digest without being too wordy. While seemingly elementary, budding photographers and more advanced ones alike will likely find Peterson's book a great source of reference. I did find this book highly readable and a worthy investment in helping me improve my own photography skills. I do habitually try to visualise a powerful image in my mind's eye first before I release the shutter these days.

Origami Book Reviews

There are a number of origami books available which provide beautiful pictures, easy to follow guides and design ideas for all your origami decoration occasions. Origami books range from beginner origami difficulty with simple creations to advanced and expert design books incorporating mathematics and intricate detail into origami decoration production. To decide which book is best for you, here are my recommendations for which origami book you should choose depending on your skill and experience level:

Beginner - For beginners, the best origami book to get you started is the Absolute Beginner's Origami book by Nick Robinson. If online articles or other books with complex diagrams and confusing fold lines have previously deterred you from making origami decorations, then this is definitely the book for you. Featuring colour photos and a simple three step system, Absolute Beginner's Origami teaches even the most amateur of origami decoration makers to make some fantastic sculptures and models. The book can be purchased from Amazon with 20% off it's retail price, and is a great start for origami beginners.

Absolute Beginners Book
Intermediate -If you have some experience with making origami decorations, or want to challenge yourself with some trickier designs, then Ornamental Origami: Exploring 3D Geometric Designs is the book for you. Featuring beautiful colour images on glossy high quality pages, Ornamental Origami: Exploring 3D Geometric Designs has 40 projects for origami enthusiasts to create, with structured advice making creation as easy as possible. This book is best purchased off Amazon, where it can be picked up with a saving of over 10% on it's original price.

Ornamental Book
Advanced - If you are experienced with making origami decorations, and want to make some designs that really will impress and dazzle your friends and family, then Advanced Origami: An Artist's Guide to Performances in Paper is the book for you. This book goes beyond basic "how-to" origami guides, and looks into advanced techniques in origami paper and visionary art needed to make truly spectacular origami decorations. There are ten unique origami designs in the book which cannot be found elsewhere, with complete instructions, photographs and advice on advanced techniques such as wet folding. This book can be purchased for cheap on Amazon, with a 33% saving on it's RRP.

Advanced book
Expert - If you are a master of origami or want to become an expert in the art to produce spectacular origami decorations, then Origami Design Secrets: Mathematical Methods for an Ancient Art is the book for you. Origami Design Secrets is written by Robert J. Lang, one of the world's leading origami artists, and in the book you will learn to make your own unique and expert origami designs and origami sculptures. Techniques are explained in great detail using some fantastic diagrams, and include expert origami methods such as combining uniaxial bases, the circle/river method and tree theory. This expert origami book can be purchased most cheaply from Amazon, with a saving of 16% on it's standard price.

Origami Design Secrets Book
So whatever your origami skill level there is a book for you, each of which will give you the information you need to make some impressive origami decorations for all occasions.

Ebooks on Art Collections, Catalogs, Exhibitions and Color Theory

With the passage of time, electronic books are gaining immense popularity among people of all age groups. The reason behind is their easy availability on eBook stores, which also offer discounts to regular customers. Be it science, sports, history, law, communication or media, electronic books are available on almost all topics. Today, ebooks on art collections, catalogs, exhibitions are highly demanded as these provide an insight into the work done by different artists and their impact on society. These books also contain information about finished works that have not been collected by art collectors.

Exhibition 36 is one of the popular ebooks on art collections, catalogs, exhibitions that is written by Susan Tuttle. This book showcases the altered and repurposed art of 36 mixed-media artists. Through this book, readers will get to know the thoughts of various artists and the articles written by them. Some other electronic books on art collections, catalogs, exhibitions are Civilizing Rituals; Aesthetic Journalism: How to Inform Without Informing; Heritage, Museums and Galleries and New Museum Theory and Practise.

Documents of the 1913 Armory Show: The Electrifying Moment of Modern Art's American Debut contains original publications from the Armory Show (1913). Published by Hol Art Books, this book states how Armory Show changes the perception of American people about art. It also contains "A Layman's Views of an Art Exhibition", a popular essay by Theodore Roosevelt. Readers will also find the entire content of "For and Against: Views on the Infamous 1913 Armory Show" in this book.

Art and Its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium is an admired book, which contains various essays by museum professionals as well as academics. This book presents contemporary concerns for art and addresses issues related to museum community. Art and Its Publics: Museum Studies at the Millennium is written in an interesting manner and can be easily downloaded on Mac, Android, Windows, iPad, iphone and various other operating systems.

Colors are always an important part of the art and therefore color theory ebooks are also in huge demand. These book are very useful for beginners as these have important information about proper use of colors and their importance. Paint Along with Jerry Yarnell Learning Composition is a famous electronic book, which contains simple instructions for creating impressive compositions. Through this book, Jerry describes three different composition types, appropriate utilization of negative space and principles of flawless design. Some other books written on color theory are The Complete Color Harmony; Colour and Humanism: Colour Expression over History and Colro Design Workbook.

Barcelona Enshrined - Antoni Gaudi - The Complete Architectural Works by Rainer Zerbst

Rainer Zerbst's book, Antoni Gaudí - The Complete Architectural Works, is just what it says, the complete works. Treated chronologically and in turn, each of the architect's major projects is reviewed, described and analysed. Copious illustrations allow the reader to appreciate the often fascinating -and usually fantastic - detail that Gaudí used. The text, elaborate, itself florid in its description, conveys not only the colour and the shape of Gaudí's work, but also its intent and derivation.

Though it concentrates on the buildings, their features, their detail and their innovations, Rainer Zerbst's book does deal quite adequately with Gaudí's background and inspiration, though it does not attempt to be a biography. It may come as a surprise to many readers that it was England and English art that provided the young architect with his model. The theories of Ruskin advised a return to direct contact with nature. The Pre-Raphaelites resurrected both the Gothic and colour, and also employed minute detail throughout a work rather than invite total concentration on a single, artificially-lit central subject. And then William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement provided the social and industrial model that aspired to put art at the centre of everyday life. Finally, and not least, it was the English tradition of the ornamental garden that inspired Gaudí's treatment of broader settings.

All of these influenced the young Gaudí. And at the time he was seen as a something of a radical. Later, when, if anything, the architect's style became more fluid and less self-conscious, he had already shaved off his beard and cut his hair in order to aspire to membership of the local establishment. In England, the once revolutionary Pre-Raphs had largely done the same.

In presenting Gaudí's woks chronologically, Rainer Zerbst is able to chart the development of the artist's style, both personal and professional. The reader can follow the development of a style, see how ideas came to maturity and then were re-used and re-applied. The reader can also clearly understand how Gaudí's work anticipates both Dalí and Miró, both in its content and its use of colour. Placing minor works together in a final chapter, however, has the feel of afterthought and does detract from the overall experience.

For anyone who has visited Barcelona and has seen some of these buildings close up, this book is a must. It really does fill in the detail that a casual observation would surely miss. And for anyone who has not yet visited the Catalan capital, Rainer Zerbst's book, Antoni Gaudí, could conceivably provide the stimulus to make that visit at the first available opportunity. Gaudí's work is something that is thoroughly worth real-life experience. Only in the rather scant treatment of Sagrada Familia is the book rather wanting, but then an adequate description of such a project would be a book in itself. Sagrada Familia, like the man who conceived it, is unique.

How to Collect Museum Catalogues From the Netherlands

Collecting Crouwel, Sanberg and Wissing is not only valuable but fun too!

How to start your collection of (dutch) MUSEUM catalogues from the most important designers from last century.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

- focus on the great names in dutch typography and layout. Sandberg, Crouwel, Piet Zwart, Benno Wissing and Paul Schuitema are all worldwide known for their quality.
- always look at the quality of the item offered. Pristine items are practically non existent, but mint can be found. Better to pay a few dollars extra than to collect an item which is less perfect.
- Larger museums have always been in a position to commission their best catalogues to the best designers.
- The edition size is also important and makes a publication even more wanted than when the edition is small. Please note that many Museum publications are from edition sizes between 500 and 1700 which are small already. You can expect that many of these will be destroyed in the 50 years that they were shelved and only a small number survived.
- Early catalogues for startin, but now famous artists, are sought after and deserve a premium.
- signed copies are even more collectable and sometimes they are signed and numbered from a special edition which makes them more scarce and highly collectable.

- Then there is what I call "a secret ingredient" which in many cases is not recognised by others. These great designers included in their designs sometimes original art. Silkscreens were used as covers. Sometimes a special inlay with lithography, etching or silkscreen was inserted. In the best cases these were signed which makes them outright valuable, but can in most cases be had at a fraction of the price of an original work of art. (examples are Escher, Miro, Calder and Arp for their Stedelijk Museum catalogues and other publications).

As noted before the larger museums commissioned their best catalogues to the best designers.
First you must focus in these designers who worked with the largest museums in the Netherlands.

THE DESIGNERS:

Probably the most important and well known is Willem Sandberg. Director and designer for the Stedelijk Museum in the 50's and early 60's. Known for his bold use of lettering and recognisable lay out with thorn letters used as illustrations. Many of the designed Sandberg catalogues have become classics.

About 350 catalogues were designed for the Stedelijk Museum by Sandberg

Secondly there is Wim Crouwel, who was responsible for many catalogues from the sixties and seventies and later become director of the Museum Boymans van Beuningen. He designed some 300 catalogues for the Stedelijk Museum.

In Rotterdam there was also Benno Wissing who later started with Wim Crouwel Total Design. There are some similarities between Sandberg and early Wissing but both have a style of their own.

Piet Zwart and Paul Schuitema are known for their lay outs with photo collage and are highly collectable too.

THE MUSEUMS

The largest museum in the Netherlands are:

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, published ca. 1100 catalogues over 60 years. Designers were Sandberg, Piet Zwart and Wim Crouwel

Museum Boymans van Beuningen. Main designers were Benno Wissing and 3VO

Haags Gemeentemuseum. Published ca. 600 catalogues over 60 years. Designers were Foppe, Janssen, Lebbink ao.

Van Abbemuseum. Is the small museum with the great designers. Wim Crouwel worked for them in his early days, but do not forget Jan van Toorn who is also know for his seventies exhibition designs.

Changing Tastes - A Text-Book on the History of Painting by John Charles Van Dyke

A Text-Book on the History of Painting by John Charles Van Dyke was published a century ago. Today it offers the modern reader not only potted, period critiques of important artists, but also a remarkable insight into how aesthetics change from generation to generation. John Charles Van Dyke's assessments of some work will surprise today's reader, especially his attitudes towards some contemporary artists who received rather hostile reactions from some quarters when their work was first exhibited.

The book deals with the European tradition. It makes no excuses for this. At the time, non-European art was perhaps less well known in Western critical circles. Perhaps also, it was regarded as somehow inferior, perhaps also merely because it was not European in origin. But Van Dyke does offer us a working distinction that excludes most non-European art from his survey, that of the difference between observation and expression. Only that which aims at expression, for van Dyke at least, is worthy of the label "art". Somehow ancient Egyptian art makes it into the oeuvre, probably because it was also represented in museums that were close at hand and accessible.

Two painters in particular illustrate the difference in treatment between van Dyke's age and our own, El Greco and Alma-Tadema. El Greco is hardly mentioned as a figure in sixteenth century Spain, his achievements apparently being regarded as rather localised on Toledo. Thus a figure now regarded as a unique stylist and visionary hardly figures in this text. Alma-Tadema, whose academicism and detail might today offer summary and epitome of the staid Victorian England that toyed euphemistically with the erotic is also dismissed. And one of the few English painters to be raised to the peerage, Frederick Leighton, also did not impress Professor Van Dyke. Neither, it seems, did Albrecht Durer.

Central to Van Dyke's aesthetic is a judgment as to whether the painter not only represents, interprets and expresses, but also constructs a painting. Mere reality is never enough, it seems, life requiring the skill of an editor or architect to render its experience communicable. It is interesting to reflect on how much or little we still value this aspect of aesthetics in today's painting.

Some of Van Dyke's observations will at least entertain. Franz Hals, we learn, lived a rather careless life. William Blake was hardly a painter at all. A Dutchman is attributed with the faint praise of being a unique painter of poultry. Matthew Maris is criticised for being a recorder of visions and dreams rather than the substantial things of earth, while Turner is dismissed as bizarre and extravagant, qualities that today might enhance rather than diminish his reputation.

But Van Dyke's book remains an interesting, informative and rewarding read, despite its distance from contemporary thinking. He is especially strong in his summary descriptions of the different Italian schools of the late Gothic and Renaissance eras. It is more than useful to be reminded of how independent these city states were at the time and how little they managed to influence one another. A Text-Book on the History of Painting by John Charles Van Dyke remains, then, an essential read for anyone interested in the history of art. Much has changed, but then there is much that has not.