A handsome, appealing, informative look at an artist who continues to fascinate.
This import is a refreshing graphic-novel–inflected collaboration by two living artists about a third.
Ascari (aka Elfo) has enjoyed a long career as a cartoonist and illustrator in his native Italy. Writer and illustrator Valentinis has won the prestigious Italian Hans Christian Andersen illustration award. Their focus? The ever accessible French impressionist Claude Monet and his amazing, carefully planned, created garden in Giverny. This garden is at once the culmination of his life’s work, his preferred canvas, and an enduring inspiration. The spare text is well-paced with carefully selected details. Illustrations feature strong, black graphic lines and wonderful flat expanses of color that echo the Japanese prints that inspired the impressionists. The real star here is the garden. Ascari and Valentinis help readers see Monet’s vision and watch the garden develop and grow. They meet Monet’s dedicated team of gardeners and see how they went off to fight in World War I (clad in distinctive red Zouave pantaloons). The book’s design uses the interior front and back cover boards to amplify the text with information on the belle époque and Giverny’s seasonal flowers and shrubs. A few seemingly dropped-in pages include brief biographies of major impressionists, gardening tools, and a précis of Monet’s life.
A handsome, appealing, informative look at an artist who continues to fascinate. (Informational picture book. 6-10)Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-910350-19-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Royal Academy of Arts
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Sellier (Matisse from A to Z, 1995, etc.) has created another succinct biography told in ABC form, by matching one relevant French word to an aspect of the artist's life (Bulles for bubbles, as well as Ubu and Winterthur). Unlike the art of Matisse and Monet, Bonnard's work hasn't been replicated to an excess; perhaps that's why his paintings seem such a breath of fresh air. A friend of Vuillard and Roussel, Bonnard was included in a group of artists called the Nabis (the Hebrew word for prophet), who believed everything should be a work of art. Bonnard put this theory to practice, painting on fans, room screens, and dressers, as well as canvas. His work often portrayed domestic subjects—children, pets, and his wife, Marthe. From such details, Sellier arranges a touching homage to a painter whose brush recorded the many crucial details necessary to create un petit monde—the ``small world'' that was Bonnard's definition of a painting. (Picture book. 7-10)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-87226-479-3
Page Count: 60
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
On thick, roughly textured paper, a gallery of highly stylized felines created by over a dozen Indian folk artists in as many primitivist styles pose gracefully or are caught in mid-leap, staring steadily up at viewers with authentically catlike directness. The uniformly applied colors also seem to leap out, printed in a silkscreen process that gives them a lambent intensity that is heightened by sinuous, deep black lines defining each creature’s distinctive shape and finely patterned fur. Paper, printing and binding all done by hand, this numbered edition of a 2009 title is a multisensory delight, as pleasing to the hand as it is to the eye. The deep red reflects light, the inky black absorbs it and each line provides a tactile experience, all demonstrating eloquently what is lost in the mass production of an art book. “Thin cats…Fat cats…Saintly cats…Brat cats,” as Ravishankar’s minimalist and sometimes arbitrary captions suggest all cavort across these pages. The slow cats (one red, one green) march in stately fashion; the dazed cats (done in an intricate pattern of tiny lines and spots in red, green, blue and yellow) stare glassily out at readers. A key at the back provides information about the artists and their styles. Packaged with an extra illustration laid in and a die-cut wrapping strip, this lovely artifact will be received eagerly by both cat lovers and connoisseurs of bookmaking. (Picture book. 6-9, adult)
Pub Date: April 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-93-80340-08-1
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Tara Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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