Welcome news for art lovers weary of coffee-table prices: Vintage will be launching a new line of paperback art books, with each volume devoted to one artist and featuring a Richard Avedon cover photo; an interview with and foreword about the artist by a critic; exhibition and bibliographic information; and at least five black-and-white and four color, full-page, reproductions of the artist's work. If the series continues to display the excellence manifest in the first four volumes, cheers!--the selection of artists shows taste and, except for the choice of Rauschenberg, an avoidance of the obvious; the foreword/interviews are probing and provocative (Francesco Clemente: ""I like to see the body as the place between the external world and the inner world. . .the skin is the place in common between the space of the room and the space inside the body. . . A painting is a film. A kind of skin, yes""), and the few illustrations seen are of very high quality. Full value, here.