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Title: Jackson Pollock by Kirk Varnedoe, Pepe Karmel, Jackson Pollock, Museum of Modern Art, Tate Gallery ISBN: 0-87070-069-3 Publisher: Distributed Art Pub (Dap) Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: THIS BOOK OFFERS GREAT INSIGHT INTO POLLOCK'S ARTISTIC MIND
Comment: ________________________________________________________________________________________________
I purchased this book when it first came out and refer back to it often. A person could spend hours at a time pouring over the plates and fold-out pictures (pun intended). Not only does this particular book provide the best collection of absolutely superb quality Jackson Pollock reproductions that I'm aware of, but the narrative is extremely well written and essential to understanding many things regarding Pollock's thought process and artistic technique.
Pepe Karmel's chapter imparticular, in which he analyzes Hans Namuth's photographs, is nothing less than brilliant detective work. I found it fascinating to find that underlying the lacy layers of at least one of Pollock's drip paintings are figurative images which he made within a narrative context. Although the complete details of this "narrative" may never be fully known, Pepe speculates that Pollock may have been acting out the destruction of some of his inward demons by first physically acknowledging and creating them and then systematically covering them within the confines of the finished painting. I'll leave it to you to get the book and both read and see for yourself all of the findings which include the deciphering of some of the figures and their meanings. With this discovery, the creation of the painting involved (Number 27, 1950) becomes not only a very strenuous and at once both spontaneous and preplanned action - but a true "ritual." Was he destroying these figures or merely absorbing them into a larger and more complex environment? We'll probably never know all the details. I wonder if Pollock would have disclosed answers to these questions had he been confronted with them during his life? Perhaps this would have been too personal. But maybe he did confide the details of what he was doing to someone and another good researcher might come across a total revelation in a hidden diary someday. I'm sure this is just wishful thinking on my part, but how I love a good mystery!
Rating: 5
Summary: simply the best
Comment: This breathtaking catalogue is simply the best single volume available on Jackson Pollock, and this is primarily--but not only--because of the number and quality of the reproductions it offers. Almost every one of the dozen or so Pollock books in my library contains a painting not available in the others, but this book collects and beautifully photographs the greatest number and variety of his canvases--outside of a catalogue raisonee.
As the other reviewers state, there are many generously-sized fold-out pages here, and the crispness and resolution of these big reprints and of the more modest pages are simply amazing. To take two essential examples, this book's reprints of "One: Number 31, 1950" and "Blue Poles: Number 11, 1952" are astoundingly clear, better than any of the many other versions I've seen in art books, even in Ellen Landau's large-format survey, a book which also includes gatefolds.
(Another reviewer, by the by, states that "Lucifer" is not available in any other book, which is not true. Among other places, it appears in Landau, in Elizabeth's Frank's concise volume, and as the sole color reproduction in the book for the 1965 MOMA retrospective. Anyway, it gets terrific treatment here.)
Another invaluable inclusion in this book is a great number of full-sized detail photos of the canvases. For example, on a page adjacent to "Lucifer" and "Autumn Rhythm" and "Full Fathom Five," we see another photo of just one small section of that same painting but in 1-to-1 scale; these details reveal much of the dynamic, kinetic, urgent quality of these works, their encrustations of sand, glass, pennies, paint caps--traits which even this book could otherwise never offer a livingroom Pollock-viewer.
Further, having seen the exhibit in January of 1999, I can attest to the generally excellent fidelity of the color-balance. (Curiously, no one seems to be able to capture "Autumn Rhythm"'s grey-teal passages in a book, but if you were at this show or have viewed the painting at the Met you've seen them.)
The accompanying articles are excellent. Kirk Varnedoe overviews of Pollock's life, artistic aims, his accomplishments, all illustrated with family and archival photographs and drawing on Pollock quotations. Pepe Karmel uses the extensive photographic and film record of Pollock painting to analyze Pollock's physical movements. Most wonderful are Karmel's computer reconstructions of early states of the painting "Autumn Rythm," based on Hans Namuth's photos of Pollock at work.
In sum, this book gives the finest, fullest offering of both Pollock's life and art.
Rating: 5
Summary: Best Reproductions and Most Complete
Comment: I picked this book up at the MOMA Pollock retrospective a couple years ago and have used it extensively. Having seen many of the paintings in this book firsthand, I can say that these are some of the best reproductions offerred in book form on Pollock's work. Another plus is that several paintings are printed on fold-out pages, so that the work doesn't cross the book's seam. So many of his paintings are extremely wide that this makes a lot of sense (otherwise, there would be hardly any resolution in the height dimension).
If you're interested in Pollock and need to refer to the reproductions, I absolutely recommend this book above all others out there.
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Title: Jackson Pollock: Key Interviews, Articles, and Reviews by Pepe Karmel ISBN: 0870700375 Publisher: Museum of Modern Art, New York Pub. Date: 15 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Mark Rothko: The Works on Canvas : Catalogue Raisonne by David Anfam ISBN: 0300074891 Publisher: Yale University Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $185.00 |
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Title: Mark Rothko by Jeffrey Weiss, Marjorie B. Cohn, Franz Meyer, Eliza E. Rathbone, Oliver Wick ISBN: 3775710272 Publisher: Hatje Cantz Publishers Pub. Date: 15 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $55.00 |
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Title: Jackson Pollock by Ellen G. Landau ISBN: 0810981866 Publisher: Harry N Abrams Pub. Date: 01 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $34.98 |
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Title: Jackson Pollock: New Approaches by Kirk Varnedoe ISBN: 0870700863 Publisher: Museum of Modern Art, New York Pub. Date: 15 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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