notanotherbookreview

                         Doesn't the Paint Say It All?    DORTHEA TANNING  (KASMIN GALLERY)  " Andre Breton, poet and critic, published The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924.  Surrealism was to unite conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in 'an absolute reality, a surreality.'  " Brittanica   Dorthea Tanning, known as a surrealist artis, along with her husband, Max Ernest, would not describe her later paintings as surrealism.   But these paintings are akin to the "trance between two worlds" that Breton described as "the magic dictation: of automatic revelation."   Doesn't the Paint Say It All?  DORTHEA TANNING  (KASMIN GALLERY), a  new book about Tanning's later work, examines these singular paintings from  a pivotal one-woman show. ...

I am a lover of landscapes. I have painted them in oils, watercolors, pastels, colored pencils, ink, even collage and the results vary with mood and the weather--often the same.  I have spent many hours in the same place at the same time. Losing myself in a scene is essential, whether finished from a photo later or not. I've been told that losing awareness of time and self, while completely focused on an external scene is outward meditation. Whatever you call it. Landscape artists often exchange knowing looks about how good it feels to paint nature, especially outside. When a friend told me she had a photograph in Las Laguna Gallery's landscape show, I was curious about the work. Here were landscapes, seascapes, dreamscapes in paint, acrylic, wax, pastel, gauche, prints, pottery, photographs, (digital prints, silverpoint and images mixed with paint.). Whether literal or abstract, engineered or imagined ,work seemed to glory less in human perception than the unknowable mystery ...

Cat Seto's IMPRESSIONS OF PARIS: An Artist's Sketchbook (Harper Design, April) is precious in the sense of rare and valuable, a jewel of a book that sparkles with wit, insight, and beauty.  This artist's book is organized around themes; color, pattern, perspective and rhythm. As Seto meanders curiously through Paris neighborhoods, local wonders take shape under her sure paint brush--whimsical, striking and often good enough to eat. The book begins with Monet's quote about color as .."my day-long obsession, joy and torment" and begins her journey at BERTHILLON.  Seto is in agreement with Monet, but with the addition of ice cream. As she said, "when you lay down a good oil or or watercolor that you can literally feel the purity of the color wash onto the canvas, The artful glaces did just that to my mouth." And of course she visually deconstructs the colors of the glace. Pattern takes us to JARDINS DES PLANTES, where she "spiraled up a st...

Maira Kalman is a phenomenonal author/illustrator, painter, whose work is loved by both adults and children, with the categories often overlapping. Whether her story's about a fireboat or the Alphabet, she narrates the fantastic in the everyday world. In MY FAVORITE THINGS (Harper Design) she paints scenes that tickle our imagination with an ironic wit and affection for the secret lives of objects. What a brilliant idea for The Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum to invite her to choose objects from the Museum's more than 200,000 pieces for its inaugural exhibit. Kalman chose more than 40 objects which can be viewed in the Music Room of The Carnegie Museum. Her book weaves these objects into a story of Kalman's life made vivid with more than 50 paintings. Maira Kalman begins with her family's fairy tale story. Her painting shows her mother drowning in a river in a Russian village  She's saved by her father's very long beard. That same wonder and fear is p...