My fave. Book., 29 Apr 2003
I would recomend this book to anyone with a intrest in fashion. It is presonaly my favarate book i own. the images are outstanding and the content is to my mind fasternating. i have leart so much about the history of the unwearable garmant from this book, the wrighter is easy to understand and detail is exstencive. this book to me contains every piece of avent-gard fashion i would consider of value to modern fashion and the history behind it /how it as a piece of work it placed within history. I would have loved to have seen this exibition but feel that this is really the next best thing. This is most def. the most exciting book i have had the plesure to come across.

My fave. Book., 29 Apr 2003
I would recomend this book to anyone with a intrest in fashion. It is presonaly my favarate book i own. the images are outstanding and the content is to my mind fasternating. i have leart so much about the history of the unwearable garmant from this book, the wrighter is easy to understand and detail is exstencive. this book to me contains every piece of avent-gard fashion i would consider of value to modern fashion and the history behind it /how it as a piece of work it placed within history. I would have loved to have seen this exibition but feel that this is really the next best thing. This is most def. the most exciting book i have had the plesure to come across.

Wonderful book with necessarily limited scope, 26 Mar 2004
This is a beautiful, sumptuous book, crammed with detail and excellent colour reproductions. Other readers mightn't go for all the technical information but I can't get enough of it. I also prefer the discussions of individual works which occupy a large part of this volume -- its companion, 'Dürer to Veronese', takes a more synoptic view, which tends to obscure the fact that these are surveys of a collection.

That's my only quibble, and it isn't really with the book, which is about as accomplished at it could be -- so good, in fact, that it's tempting to read it as a textbook of the whole period. Much of the material is of general relevance, of course; but don't forget that many of the major works from this period aren't in galleries at all: they're still in the places they were meant to be.

Giotto to Durer, 05 Feb 2004
Not cheap, but excellent value for money for anyone interested in the period and especially those who can get to the National Gallery to look at the works in detail.

Well printed and with good illustrations. The text covers not only the technical details of art production but also provides explanations of the stories shown in the pictures, so it works well both for both beginners and more advanced readers.

Discussions of technique dominate the artworks themselves, 03 Feb 2001
I have to say I'm really in two minds about this book. On the one hand, it explores the world of the early renaissance artist (primarily in Italy, the core of the Gallery's collection) in fascinating detail - the workshop, the methods and techniques, from the preparation of the panels through grinding the paints to the sequence of activities in preparing the finished work. On the other, it becomes almost possible to lose sight of the overall impact of the artworks in this welter of close-up detail. I don't for a minute regret buying this book; but I don't return to it as often as I'd hoped.

My fave. Book., 29 Apr 2003
I would recomend this book to anyone with a intrest in fashion. It is presonaly my favarate book i own. the images are outstanding and the content is to my mind fasternating. i have leart so much about the history of the unwearable garmant from this book, the wrighter is easy to understand and detail is exstencive. this book to me contains every piece of avent-gard fashion i would consider of value to modern fashion and the history behind it /how it as a piece of work it placed within history. I would have loved to have seen this exibition but feel that this is really the next best thing. This is most def. the most exciting book i have had the plesure to come across.

Wonderful book with necessarily limited scope, 26 Mar 2004
This is a beautiful, sumptuous book, crammed with detail and excellent colour reproductions. Other readers mightn't go for all the technical information but I can't get enough of it. I also prefer the discussions of individual works which occupy a large part of this volume -- its companion, 'Dürer to Veronese', takes a more synoptic view, which tends to obscure the fact that these are surveys of a collection.

That's my only quibble, and it isn't really with the book, which is about as accomplished at it could be -- so good, in fact, that it's tempting to read it as a textbook of the whole period. Much of the material is of general relevance, of course; but don't forget that many of the major works from this period aren't in galleries at all: they're still in the places they were meant to be.

Giotto to Durer, 05 Feb 2004
Not cheap, but excellent value for money for anyone interested in the period and especially those who can get to the National Gallery to look at the works in detail.

Well printed and with good illustrations. The text covers not only the technical details of art production but also provides explanations of the stories shown in the pictures, so it works well both for both beginners and more advanced readers.

Discussions of technique dominate the artworks themselves, 03 Feb 2001
I have to say I'm really in two minds about this book. On the one hand, it explores the world of the early renaissance artist (primarily in Italy, the core of the Gallery's collection) in fascinating detail - the workshop, the methods and techniques, from the preparation of the panels through grinding the paints to the sequence of activities in preparing the finished work. On the other, it becomes almost possible to lose sight of the overall impact of the artworks in this welter of close-up detail. I don't for a minute regret buying this book; but I don't return to it as often as I'd hoped.

Glorious images, beautiful ideas, 03 Jan 2006
This book is without doubt one of the more beautifully prepared and printed books in my collection. Done by the Yale University Press in association with the National Gallery of London, virtually every page is a treasure. There are nearly two hundred full-colour-process reproductions of artworks throughout the text, and every page (not just the colour plates) are heavy bond, high-gloss stock that shows the ink and colour with vibrancy and depth.

John Drury spent a career at both Cambridge and Oxford dealing in matters of theology, ecclesiology, liturgy, and art. I discovered Drury's book while attending a course at my own seminary on the church and the arts, and kept finding myself frustrated at the rapid pace we would go through topics (a frustration I know the professor teaching the course shared - how does one do justice to 2000 years of music, architecture, and art in a mere 15 sessions?). I sought out supplemental materials to help fill out the outline, and Drury's text serves the purpose in many ways.

Drury states his purpose early in the text. `This is a book about how Christian paintings convey their messages. It takes on whole paintings. It is not content with just picking symbols out of them for identification. Composition, colour, contents (including architecture and landscape as well as figures) and the ways in which the paint itself is handled - all are treated as part and parcel of their religious meanings.' This is a holy and holistic approach.

Drury adopts a kind of picture-describing approach (one that he terms `historically iconographical'). This involves absorbing details while understanding context and material. This is the same kind of attention that worship requires (and indeed, the Eastern church has always had this kind of physical artistic interplay with the tradition of use of icons for prayer, meditation and worship purposes) - it requires an openness to experience and feeling while also benefitting from understanding and guidance.

Major artists and works studied in detail in this text include the work of Tiepolo (c. 1750s), the Wilton Diptych (anonymous, c. 1390s), Titian (c. 1510-40s), Duccio (c. 1310s), Filippo Lippi (c. 1450s), Poussin (c. 1630-50s), Rembrandt (c. 1640s), Piero della Francesca (c. 1450-70s), Caravaggio (c. 1600s), Rubens (c. 1630s), Velazquez (c. 1610s), Cezanne (c. 1900s), and others. Most presentations begin by showing the whole work, then proceeding to look at individual characteristics or highlights often pulled aside in side images or isolated for greater emphasis. The text and artwork is arranged in good pattern throughout the text.

Throughout his text, Drury makes a repeated call for care, meditation and attention to be given to the artwork as well as the response to the artwork. He makes that statement that we should stay in front of the images `longer than people usually do' - noticing in museums, art shops, churches and other places that people tend to shuffle past rather than give attention to the most stunning and sublime works of art. Drury draws in history, theology, philosophy, literature, biblical references and images, and other cultural and contextual references to make the experience of these works a full and profound one. This is not a book to be read quickly or glanced over lightly.

Drury includes a narrative annotated bibliography rather than a simple list; he provides both a general bibliography for the entire text as well as a selected bibliography for each chapter/topic.

This is a wonderful book, a great gift for oneself or for others. It is particularly good for those who want a deeper experience and understanding of the way in which art has and can interact and enhance one's relationship with Christianity and its message.

My fave. Book., 29 Apr 2003
I would recomend this book to anyone with a intrest in fashion. It is presonaly my favarate book i own. the images are outstanding and the content is to my mind fasternating. i have leart so much about the history of the unwearable garmant from this book, the wrighter is easy to understand and detail is exstencive. this book to me contains every piece of avent-gard fashion i would consider of value to modern fashion and the history behind it /how it as a piece of work it placed within history. I would have loved to have seen this exibition but feel that this is really the next best thing. This is most def. the most exciting book i have had the plesure to come across.

Wonderful book with necessarily limited scope, 26 Mar 2004
This is a beautiful, sumptuous book, crammed with detail and excellent colour reproductions. Other readers mightn't go for all the technical information but I can't get enough of it. I also prefer the discussions of individual works which occupy a large part of this volume -- its companion, 'Dürer to Veronese', takes a more synoptic view, which tends to obscure the fact that these are surveys of a collection.

That's my only quibble, and it isn't really with the book, which is about as accomplished at it could be -- so good, in fact, that it's tempting to read it as a textbook of the whole period. Much of the material is of general relevance, of course; but don't forget that many of the major works from this period aren't in galleries at all: they're still in the places they were meant to be.

Giotto to Durer, 05 Feb 2004
Not cheap, but excellent value for money for anyone interested in the period and especially those who can get to the National Gallery to look at the works in detail.

Well printed and with good illustrations. The text covers not only the technical details of art production but also provides explanations of the stories shown in the pictures, so it works well both for both beginners and more advanced readers.

Discussions of technique dominate the artworks themselves, 03 Feb 2001
I have to say I'm really in two minds about this book. On the one hand, it explores the world of the early renaissance artist (primarily in Italy, the core of the Gallery's collection) in fascinating detail - the workshop, the methods and techniques, from the preparation of the panels through grinding the paints to the sequence of activities in preparing the finished work. On the other, it becomes almost possible to lose sight of the overall impact of the artworks in this welter of close-up detail. I don't for a minute regret buying this book; but I don't return to it as often as I'd hoped.

Glorious images, beautiful ideas, 03 Jan 2006
This book is without doubt one of the more beautifully prepared and printed books in my collection. Done by the Yale University Press in association with the National Gallery of London, virtually every page is a treasure. There are nearly two hundred full-colour-process reproductions of artworks throughout the text, and every page (not just the colour plates) are heavy bond, high-gloss stock that shows the ink and colour with vibrancy and depth.

John Drury spent a career at both Cambridge and Oxford dealing in matters of theology, ecclesiology, liturgy, and art. I discovered Drury's book while attending a course at my own seminary on the church and the arts, and kept finding myself frustrated at the rapid pace we would go through topics (a frustration I know the professor teaching the course shared - how does one do justice to 2000 years of music, architecture, and art in a mere 15 sessions?). I sought out supplemental materials to help fill out the outline, and Drury's text serves the purpose in many ways.

Drury states his purpose early in the text. `This is a book about how Christian paintings convey their messages. It takes on whole paintings. It is not content with just picking symbols out of them for identification. Composition, colour, contents (including architecture and landscape as well as figures) and the ways in which the paint itself is handled - all are treated as part and parcel of their religious meanings.' This is a holy and holistic approach.

Drury adopts a kind of picture-describing approach (one that he terms `historically iconographical'). This involves absorbing details while understanding context and material. This is the same kind of attention that worship requires (and indeed, the Eastern church has always had this kind of physical artistic interplay with the tradition of use of icons for prayer, meditation and worship purposes) - it requires an openness to experience and feeling while also benefitting from understanding and guidance.

Major artists and works studied in detail in this text include the work of Tiepolo (c. 1750s), the Wilton Diptych (anonymous, c. 1390s), Titian (c. 1510-40s), Duccio (c. 1310s), Filippo Lippi (c. 1450s), Poussin (c. 1630-50s), Rembrandt (c. 1640s), Piero della Francesca (c. 1450-70s), Caravaggio (c. 1600s), Rubens (c. 1630s), Velazquez (c. 1610s), Cezanne (c. 1900s), and others. Most presentations begin by showing the whole work, then proceeding to look at individual characteristics or highlights often pulled aside in side images or isolated for greater emphasis. The text and artwork is arranged in good pattern throughout the text.

Throughout his text, Drury makes a repeated call for care, meditation and attention to be given to the artwork as well as the response to the artwork. He makes that statement that we should stay in front of the images `longer than people usually do' - noticing in museums, art shops, churches and other places that people tend to shuffle past rather than give attention to the most stunning and sublime works of art. Drury draws in history, theology, philosophy, literature, biblical references and images, and other cultural and contextual references to make the experience of these works a full and profound one. This is not a book to be read quickly or glanced over lightly.

Drury includes a narrative annotated bibliography rather than a simple list; he provides both a general bibliography for the entire text as well as a selected bibliography for each chapter/topic.

This is a wonderful book, a great gift for oneself or for others. It is particularly good for those who want a deeper experience and understanding of the way in which art has and can interact and enhance one's relationship with Christianity and its message.

Addiction indeed - and not only to Art!, 09 Jan 2006
What a self-indulgent, rackety and restless life this woman has led, and she makes no bones about it! As a young woman she was part of a bohemian set in Paris, promiscuous, often drunk, dancing the night through, almost like a caricature of a flapper. She was quite neurotic, often had hysterical weeping fits, and her relationships were usually stormy and quarrelsome, punctuated by long sulks when she wouldn't speak to her husbands. The first of these, Laurence Vail, was as neurotic as she was and very violent, as often as not in public places. But she was obviously not easy to live with either, and tactful restraint in behaviour or utterance was never one of her qualities, even with men on whom she was dependent. (The book, too, is "frank" and completely lacking in reticence.)

Her immense wealth enabled her to travel constantly all across Europe (we always learn in which motor-car), and much of this book is an account of every journey she made. What she chooses to record seems quite undiscriminating, often jejune and sometimes positively verges on the Pooterish, not least because of its uninspired style.

She knew nothing about art or music until John Holms, her partner after her first divorce, began to teach her about it, and one always suspects that it was artists rather than art that really attracted her. She admits that even when in 1938 she decided to open an art gallery in London, at the time "I couldn't distinguish one thing in art from another" and acted on the advice of Marcel Duchamp who "taught me the difference between Abstract and Surrealist art"! (p.161). And "in spite of the fact that I was opening a modern art gallery in London, I much preferred old masters" (p.163). These of course were no longer sexually available, while living artists were. She slept with an amazing number of them (as well as with, for example, Samuel Beckett and the kinky Roland Penrose), so there must have been some powerful allure about her into her forties and beyond, which does not come across in the book.

She soon began to collect not only artists but also their works, making it a principle to buy at least one work of art from every show she gave (p.166), but in the whole book there is no genuine appraisal of any work of art - only an account of her perpetual acquisitiveness. However, one has to admit that her investments were excellent in commercial terms. She bought and gave the first showings to a number of modern artists whose work would become immensely more valuable in time, and she especially prides herself on having made Jackson Pollock famous.

She was living in occupied and then in Vichy France during the early years of the German occupation, getting out not long before the United States entered the war; but she never sets down any reflections on the war as such, not then nor after Pearl Harbour, commenting only on how bureaucratic matters (visas, currency transfers, restrictions on the movements in the United States of her second husband, Max Ernst, as "an enemy alien") affected her own activities. While France was in torment, she can write, "During the summer [of 1940] I got rather bored and started having my hair dyed a different color every few weeks to amuse myself. First it was chestnut ... but then I got the wild idea of having it bleached bright orange... As a result of all the time I spent in the beauty parlor, I conceived a sort of weakness for the little hairdresser who worked so hard on my beauty. From re-reading D.H.Lawrence I also got a romantic idea that I should have a man who belonged to a lower class" (p.221/2) and we are led to assume that she had a fling with him. "Soon this got boring, and I needed a change". (p.222). She was as promiscuous in her forties as she had been in her twenties.

The bulk of this book - 324 out of 385 pages - was first published in 1946 when she was 48 years old. One part of the rest she published first in 1960 when she was 62 and the other part in 1977 when she was nearly eighty. Those parts show her in a much more sober light, when she has become the grande dame of Venice. By that time she has no taste for what was then the avant garde: "I do not like art today. I think it has gone to hell, as the result of the financial attitude. People blame me for what is painted today because I had encouraged and helped this new movement to be born. In the early 1940s there was a pure pioneering spirit in America. A new art had to be born - Abstract Expressionism. I fostered it. I do not regret it. It produced Pollock or rather Pollock produced it. This alone justifies my effort. As to the others, I don't know what got into them. Some people say that I got stuck. Maybe it is true.... Today is the age of collecting, not of creating." H'm!

So at the end we have a rare moment of reflection. For the rest, this is basically a shallow, tedious and excessively long book written by a spoilt, wealthy and rather silly woman; and it would not have been worth persevering with if the incidents she records did not throw some light on the weird personalities and behaviour of some very famous people in the artistic world, most of whom were psychologically as mixed-up and temperamental as she was. One feels there must have been more to her than that, and perhaps the recent biographies written about her by Anton Gill or Mary Dearborn reveal another side of her; but after having read her own book, I have no interest in reading any more about her.

My fave. Book., 29 Apr 2003
I would recomend this book to anyone with a intrest in fashion. It is presonaly my favarate book i own. the images are outstanding and the content is to my mind fasternating. i have leart so much about the history of the unwearable garmant from this book, the wrighter is easy to understand and detail is exstencive. this book to me contains every piece of avent-gard fashion i would consider of value to modern fashion and the history behind it /how it as a piece of work it placed within history. I would have loved to have seen this exibition but feel that this is really the next best thing. This is most def. the most exciting book i have had the plesure to come across.

Wonderful book with necessarily limited scope, 26 Mar 2004
This is a beautiful, sumptuous book, crammed with detail and excellent colour reproductions. Other readers mightn't go for all the technical information but I can't get enough of it. I also prefer the discussions of individual works which occupy a large part of this volume -- its companion, 'Dürer to Veronese', takes a more synoptic view, which tends to obscure the fact that these are surveys of a collection.

That's my only quibble, and it isn't really with the book, which is about as accomplished at it could be -- so good, in fact, that it's tempting to read it as a textbook of the whole period. Much of the material is of general relevance, of course; but don't forget that many of the major works from this period aren't in galleries at all: they're still in the places they were meant to be.

Giotto to Durer, 05 Feb 2004
Not cheap, but excellent value for money for anyone interested in the period and especially those who can get to the National Gallery to look at the works in detail.

Well printed and with good illustrations. The text covers not only the technical details of art production but also provides explanations of the stories shown in the pictures, so it works well both for both beginners and more advanced readers.

Discussions of technique dominate the artworks themselves, 03 Feb 2001
I have to say I'm really in two minds about this book. On the one hand, it explores the world of the early renaissance artist (primarily in Italy, the core of the Gallery's collection) in fascinating detail - the workshop, the methods and techniques, from the preparation of the panels through grinding the paints to the sequence of activities in preparing the finished work. On the other, it becomes almost possible to lose sight of the overall impact of the artworks in this welter of close-up detail. I don't for a minute regret buying this book; but I don't return to it as often as I'd hoped.

Glorious images, beautiful ideas, 03 Jan 2006
This book is without doubt one of the more beautifully prepared and printed books in my collection. Done by the Yale University Press in association with the National Gallery of London, virtually every page is a treasure. There are nearly two hundred full-colour-process reproductions of artworks throughout the text, and every page (not just the colour plates) are heavy bond, high-gloss stock that shows the ink and colour with vibrancy and depth.

John Drury spent a career at both Cambridge and Oxford dealing in matters of theology, ecclesiology, liturgy, and art. I discovered Drury's book while attending a course at my own seminary on the church and the arts, and kept finding myself frustrated at the rapid pace we would go through topics (a frustration I know the professor teaching the course shared - how does one do justice to 2000 years of music, architecture, and art in a mere 15 sessions?). I sought out supplemental materials to help fill out the outline, and Drury's text serves the purpose in many ways.

Drury states his purpose early in the text. `This is a book about how Christian paintings convey their messages. It takes on whole paintings. It is not content with just picking symbols out of them for identification. Composition, colour, contents (including architecture and landscape as well as figures) and the ways in which the paint itself is handled - all are treated as part and parcel of their religious meanings.' This is a holy and holistic approach.

Drury adopts a kind of picture-describing approach (one that he terms `historically iconographical'). This involves absorbing details while understanding context and material. This is the same kind of attention that worship requires (and indeed, the Eastern church has always had this kind of physical artistic interplay with the tradition of use of icons for prayer, meditation and worship purposes) - it requires an openness to experience and feeling while also benefitting from understanding and guidance.

Major artists and works studied in detail in this text include the work of Tiepolo (c. 1750s), the Wilton Diptych (anonymous, c. 1390s), Titian (c. 1510-40s), Duccio (c. 1310s), Filippo Lippi (c. 1450s), Poussin (c. 1630-50s), Rembrandt (c. 1640s), Piero della Francesca (c. 1450-70s), Caravaggio (c. 1600s), Rubens (c. 1630s), Velazquez (c. 1610s), Cezanne (c. 1900s), and others. Most presentations begin by showing the whole work, then proceeding to look at individual characteristics or highlights often pulled aside in side images or isolated for greater emphasis. The text and artwork is arranged in good pattern throughout the text.

Throughout his text, Drury makes a repeated call for care, meditation and attention to be given to the artwork as well as the response to the artwork. He makes that statement that we should stay in front of the images `longer than people usually do' - noticing in museums, art shops, churches and other places that people tend to shuffle past rather than give attention to the most stunning and sublime works of art. Drury draws in history, theology, philosophy, literature, biblical references and images, and other cultural and contextual references to make the experience of these works a full and profound one. This is not a book to be read quickly or glanced over lightly.

Drury includes a narrative annotated bibliography rather than a simple list; he provides both a general bibliography for the entire text as well as a selected bibliography for each chapter/topic.

This is a wonderful book, a great gift for oneself or for others. It is particularly good for those who want a deeper experience and understanding of the way in which art has and can interact and enhance one's relationship with Christianity and its message.

Addiction indeed - and not only to Art!, 09 Jan 2006
What a self-indulgent, rackety and restless life this woman has led, and she makes no bones about it! As a young woman she was part of a bohemian set in Paris, promiscuous, often drunk, dancing the night through, almost like a caricature of a flapper. She was quite neurotic, often had hysterical weeping fits, and her relationships were usually stormy and quarrelsome, punctuated by long sulks when she wouldn't speak to her husbands. The first of these, Laurence Vail, was as neurotic as she was and very violent, as often as not in public places. But she was obviously not easy to live with either, and tactful restraint in behaviour or utterance was never one of her qualities, even with men on whom she was dependent. (The book, too, is "frank" and completely lacking in reticence.)

Her immense wealth enabled her to travel constantly all across Europe (we always learn in which motor-car), and much of this book is an account of every journey she made. What she chooses to record seems quite undiscriminating, often jejune and sometimes positively verges on the Pooterish, not least because of its uninspired style.

She knew nothing about art or music until John Holms, her partner after her first divorce, began to teach her about it, and one always suspects that it was artists rather than art that really attracted her. She admits that even when in 1938 she decided to open an art gallery in London, at the time "I couldn't distinguish one thing in art from another" and acted on the advice of Marcel Duchamp who "taught me the difference between Abstract and Surrealist art"! (p.161). And "in spite of the fact that I was opening a modern art gallery in London, I much preferred old masters" (p.163). These of course were no longer sexually available, while living artists were. She slept with an amazing number of them (as well as with, for example, Samuel Beckett and the kinky Roland Penrose), so there must have been some powerful allure about her into her forties and beyond, which does not come across in the book.

She soon began to collect not only artists but also their works, making it a principle to buy at least one work of art from every show she gave (p.166), but in the whole book there is no genuine appraisal of any work of art - only an account of her perpetual acquisitiveness. However, one has to admit that her investments were excellent in commercial terms. She bought and gave the first showings to a number of modern artists whose work would become immensely more valuable in time, and she especially prides herself on having made Jackson Pollock famous.

She was living in occupied and then in Vichy France during the early years of the German occupation, getting out not long before the United States entered the war; but she never sets down any reflections on the war as such, not then nor after Pearl Harbour, commenting only on how bureaucratic matters (visas, currency transfers, restrictions on the movements in the United States of her second husband, Max Ernst, as "an enemy alien") affected her own activities. While France was in torment, she can write, "During the summer [of 1940] I got rather bored and started having my hair dyed a different color every few weeks to amuse myself. First it was chestnut ... but then I got the wild idea of having it bleached bright orange... As a result of all the time I spent in the beauty parlor, I conceived a sort of weakness for the little hairdresser who worked so hard on my beauty. From re-reading D.H.Lawrence I also got a romantic idea that I should have a man who belonged to a lower class" (p.221/2) and we are led to assume that she had a fling with him. "Soon this got boring, and I needed a change". (p.222). She was as promiscuous in her forties as she had been in her twenties.

The bulk of this book - 324 out of 385 pages - was first published in 1946 when she was 48 years old. One part of the rest she published first in 1960 when she was 62 and the other part in 1977 when she was nearly eighty. Those parts show her in a much more sober light, when she has become the grande dame of Venice. By that time she has no taste for what was then the avant garde: "I do not like art today. I think it has gone to hell, as the result of the financial attitude. People blame me for what is painted today because I had encouraged and helped this new movement to be born. In the early 1940s there was a pure pioneering spirit in America. A new art had to be born - Abstract Expressionism. I fostered it. I do not regret it. It produced Pollock or rather Pollock produced it. This alone justifies my effort. As to the others, I don't know what got into them. Some people say that I got stuck. Maybe it is true.... Today is the age of collecting, not of creating." H'm!

So at the end we have a rare moment of reflection. For the rest, this is basically a shallow, tedious and excessively long book written by a spoilt, wealthy and rather silly woman; and it would not have been worth persevering with if the incidents she records did not throw some light on the weird personalities and behaviour of some very famous people in the artistic world, most of whom were psychologically as mixed-up and temperamental as she was. One feels there must have been more to her than that, and perhaps the recent biographies written about her by Anton Gill or Mary Dearborn reveal another side of her; but after having read her own book, I have no interest in reading any more about her.


14 stories to discover in a guide, 06 Sep 2008
Not just a colourful and imaginative guide to the South Bank, there are 14 hidden stories waiting to be discovered. Take the man walking a dog...well, it WAS a dog; and has Grandma lost Grandpa? And what are those policeman getting up to?

This a book you can pick up over coffee, and come teatime you will still be discovering new things in Tommy's world. Great, and subtle fun.

Tate 2 Tate, 06 Jul 2008
Genius! Tommy Penton offers us his own unique take on London and the South Bank. Read front to back he follows the path from Tate Britain to Tate Modern, but it can also be read backwards (East to West). Tommy's take on the vista remains true yet in his own style - the excellently written guide at the back of the book helping to identify the buildings further. Even if you think you know the South Bank well Tommy's book will throw new light on it.

The Image of Christ by Gabriele Finaldi is a beautifully illustrated, colourful history of how Christ has been portrayed by artists from the early Church to the present. It is not, however, a life of Christ told in pictures. Instead, the book explores the challenges Christian artists have faced as they have tried to imagine what Jesus looked like. Since no eyewitness descriptions of Jesus' physical appearance survived, the earliest artists' depictions of Christ played on the symbols and images that he used in his parables--such as the Good Shepherd, the Light, and the Vine. Later, artists became concerned with capturing Christ's true physical likeness, based on miraculous relics such as the cloth that Saint Veronica offered him on his way to Calvary, which was believed to be imprinted with an image of his face. These stages in the history of Christian art are described by several art historians in brief essays, each of which is lavishly illustrated. The book, which was inspired by "Seeing Salvation: The Image of Christ", an exhibition at the National Gallery, London, will be treasured by secular and believing readers alike. A deeper understanding of these works' religious context will sharpen viewers' experience of their universal relevance. The dozens of pictures, paintings and sculptures reproduced here bear profound witness not only to the events of Jesus' life, but also to such universal themes as the enduring power of a mother's love for her children, the suffering of innocents and love's triumph over death. --Michael Joseph Gross

My fave. Book., 29 Apr 2003
I would recomend this book to anyone with a intrest in fashion. It is presonaly my favarate book i own. the images are outstanding and the content is to my mind fasternating. i have leart so much about the history of the unwearable garmant from this book, the wrighter is easy to understand and detail is exstencive. this book to me contains every piece of avent-gard fashion i would consider of value to modern fashion and the history behind it /how it as a piece of work it placed within history. I would have loved to have seen this exibition but feel that this is really the next best thing. This is most def. the most exciting book i have had the plesure to come across.

Wonderful book with necessarily limited scope, 26 Mar 2004
This is a beautiful, sumptuous book, crammed with detail and excellent colour reproductions. Other readers mightn't go for all the technical information but I can't get enough of it. I also prefer the discussions of individual works which occupy a large part of this volume -- its companion, 'Dürer to Veronese', takes a more synoptic view, which tends to obscure the fact that these are surveys of a collection.

That's my only quibble, and it isn't really with the book, which is about as accomplished at it could be -- so good, in fact, that it's tempting to read it as a textbook of the whole period. Much of the material is of general relevance, of course; but don't forget that many of the major works from this period aren't in galleries at all: they're still in the places they were meant to be.

Giotto to Durer, 05 Feb 2004
Not cheap, but excellent value for money for anyone interested in the period and especially those who can get to the National Gallery to look at the works in detail.

Well printed and with good illustrations. The text covers not only the technical details of art production but also provides explanations of the stories shown in the pictures, so it works well both for both beginners and more advanced readers.

Discussions of technique dominate the artworks themselves, 03 Feb 2001
I have to say I'm really in two minds about this book. On the one hand, it explores the world of the early renaissance artist (primarily in Italy, the core of the Gallery's collection) in fascinating detail - the workshop, the methods and techniques, from the preparation of the panels through grinding the paints to the sequence of activities in preparing the finished work. On the other, it becomes almost possible to lose sight of the overall impact of the artworks in this welter of close-up detail. I don't for a minute regret buying this book; but I don't return to it as often as I'd hoped.

Glorious images, beautiful ideas, 03 Jan 2006
This book is without doubt one of the more beautifully prepared and printed books in my collection. Done by the Yale University Press in association with the National Gallery of London, virtually every page is a treasure. There are nearly two hundred full-colour-process reproductions of artworks throughout the text, and every page (not just the colour plates) are heavy bond, high-gloss stock that shows the ink and colour with vibrancy and depth.

John Drury spent a career at both Cambridge and Oxford dealing in matters of theology, ecclesiology, liturgy, and art. I discovered Drury's book while attending a course at my own seminary on the church and the arts, and kept finding myself frustrated at the rapid pace we would go through topics (a frustration I know the professor teaching the course shared - how does one do justice to 2000 years of music, architecture, and art in a mere 15 sessions?). I sought out supplemental materials to help fill out the outline, and Drury's text serves the purpose in many ways.

Drury states his purpose early in the text. `This is a book about how Christian paintings convey their messages. It takes on whole paintings. It is not content with just picking symbols out of them for identification. Composition, colour, contents (including architecture and landscape as well as figures) and the ways in which the paint itself is handled - all are treated as part and parcel of their religious meanings.' This is a holy and holistic approach.

Drury adopts a kind of picture-describing approach (one that he terms `historically iconographical'). This involves absorbing details while understanding context and material. This is the same kind of attention that worship requires (and indeed, the Eastern church has always had this kind of physical artistic interplay with the tradition of use of icons for prayer, meditation and worship purposes) - it requires an openness to experience and feeling while also benefitting from understanding and guidance.

Major artists and works studied in detail in this text include the work of Tiepolo (c. 1750s), the Wilton Diptych (anonymous, c. 1390s), Titian (c. 1510-40s), Duccio (c. 1310s), Filippo Lippi (c. 1450s), Poussin (c. 1630-50s), Rembrandt (c. 1640s), Piero della Francesca (c. 1450-70s), Caravaggio (c. 1600s), Rubens (c. 1630s), Velazquez (c. 1610s), Cezanne (c. 1900s), and others. Most presentations begin by showing the whole work, then proceeding to look at individual characteristics or highlights often pulled aside in side images or isolated for greater emphasis. The text and artwork is arranged in good pattern throughout the text.

Throughout his text, Drury makes a repeated call for care, meditation and attention to be given to the artwork as well as the response to the artwork. He makes that statement that we should stay in front of the images `longer than people usually do' - noticing in museums, art shops, churches and other places that people tend to shuffle past rather than give attention to the most stunning and sublime works of art. Drury draws in history, theology, philosophy, literature, biblical references and images, and other cultural and contextual references to make the experience of these works a full and profound one. This is not a book to be read quickly or glanced over lightly.

Drury includes a narrative annotated bibliography rather than a simple list; he provides both a general bibliography for the entire text as well as a selected bibliography for each chapter/topic.

This is a wonderful book, a great gift for oneself or for others. It is particularly good for those who want a deeper experience and understanding of the way in which art has and can interact and enhance one's relationship with Christianity and its message.

Addiction indeed - and not only to Art!, 09 Jan 2006
What a self-indulgent, rackety and restless life this woman has led, and she makes no bones about it! As a young woman she was part of a bohemian set in Paris, promiscuous, often drunk, dancing the night through, almost like a caricature of a flapper. She was quite neurotic, often had hysterical weeping fits, and her relationships were usually stormy and quarrelsome, punctuated by long sulks when she wouldn't speak to her husbands. The first of these, Laurence Vail, was as neurotic as she was and very violent, as often as not in public places. But she was obviously not easy to live with either, and tactful restraint in behaviour or utterance was never one of her qualities, even with men on whom she was dependent. (The book, too, is "frank" and completely lacking in reticence.)

Her immense wealth enabled her to travel constantly all across Europe (we always learn in which motor-car), and much of this book is an account of every journey she made. What she chooses to record seems quite undiscriminating, often jejune and sometimes positively verges on the Pooterish, not least because of its uninspired style.

She knew nothing about art or music until John Holms, her partner after her first divorce, began to teach her about it, and one always suspects that it was artists rather than art that really attracted her. She admits that even when in 1938 she decided to open an art gallery in London, at the time "I couldn't distinguish one thing in art from another" and acted on the advice of Marcel Duchamp who "taught me the difference between Abstract and Surrealist art"! (p.161). And "in spite of the fact that I was opening a modern art gallery in London, I much preferred old masters" (p.163). These of course were no longer sexually available, while living artists were. She slept with an amazing number of them (as well as with, for example, Samuel Beckett and the kinky Roland Penrose), so there must have been some powerful allure about her into her forties and beyond, which does not come across in the book.

She soon began to collect not only artists but also their works, making it a principle to buy at least one work of art from every show she gave (p.166), but in the whole book there is no genuine appraisal of any work of art - only an account of her perpetual acquisitiveness. However, one has to admit that her investments were excellent in commercial terms. She bought and gave the first showings to a number of modern artists whose work would become immensely more valuable in time, and she especially prides herself on having made Jackson Pollock famous.

She was living in occupied and then in Vichy France during the early years of the German occupation, getting out not long before the United States entered the war; but she never sets down any reflections on the war as such, not then nor after Pearl Harbour, commenting only on how bureaucratic matters (visas, currency transfers, restrictions on the movements in the United States of her second husband, Max Ernst, as "an enemy alien") affected her own activities. While France was in torment, she can write, "During the summer [of 1940] I got rather bored and started having my hair dyed a different color every few weeks to amuse myself. First it was chestnut ... but then I got the wild idea of having it bleached bright orange... As a result of all the time I spent in the beauty parlor, I conceived a sort of weakness for the little hairdresser who worked so hard on my beauty. From re-reading D.H.Lawrence I also got a romantic idea that I should have a man who belonged to a lower class" (p.221/2) and we are led to assume that she had a fling with him. "Soon this got boring, and I needed a change". (p.222). She was as promiscuous in her forties as she had been in her twenties.

The bulk of this book - 324 out of 385 pages - was first published in 1946 when she was 48 years old. One part of the rest she published first in 1960 when she was 62 and the other part in 1977 when she was nearly eighty. Those parts show her in a much more sober light, when she has become the grande dame of Venice. By that time she has no taste for what was then the avant garde: "I do not like art today. I think it has gone to hell, as the result of the financial attitude. People blame me for what is painted today because I had encouraged and helped this new movement to be born. In the early 1940s there was a pure pioneering spirit in America. A new art had to be born - Abstract Expressionism. I fostered it. I do not regret it. It produced Pollock or rather Pollock produced it. This alone justifies my effort. As to the others, I don't know what got into them. Some people say that I got stuck. Maybe it is true.... Today is the age of collecting, not of creating." H'm!

So at the end we have a rare moment of reflection. For the rest, this is basically a shallow, tedious and excessively long book written by a spoilt, wealthy and rather silly woman; and it would not have been worth persevering with if the incidents she records did not throw some light on the weird personalities and behaviour of some very famous people in the artistic world, most of whom were psychologically as mixed-up and temperamental as she was. One feels there must have been more to her than that, and perhaps the recent biographies written about her by Anton Gill or Mary Dearborn reveal another side of her; but after having read her own book, I have no interest in reading any more about her.


14 stories to discover in a guide, 06 Sep 2008
Not just a colourful and imaginative guide to the South Bank, there are 14 hidden stories waiting to be discovered. Take the man walking a dog...well, it WAS a dog; and has Grandma lost Grandpa? And what are those policeman getting up to?

This a book you can pick up over coffee, and come teatime you will still be discovering new things in Tommy's world. Great, and subtle fun.

Tate 2 Tate, 06 Jul 2008
Genius! Tommy Penton offers us his own unique take on London and the South Bank. Read front to back he follows the path from Tate Britain to Tate Modern, but it can also be read backwards (East to West). Tommy's take on the vista remains true yet in his own style - the excellently written guide at the back of the book helping to identify the buildings further. Even if you think you know the South Bank well Tommy's book will throw new light on it.

This catalogue deserves 6 stars, 21 Sep 2003
This beautifully presented catalogue accompanied the exhibition at the National Gallery in February - May 2000 and BBC Series presented by the Gallery's Director, Mr Neil McGregor, before he moved to the British Museum. It is a book of great interest and influence in the History of Art, or if one simply enjoys looking at paintings of great beauty. Don't be put off by the religious connotations - I nearly was. If you love art, enjoyed the exhibition or BBC programmes - you'll almost certainly be delighted with this book.

My fave. Book., 29 Apr 2003
I would recomend this book to anyone with a intrest in fashion. It is presonaly my favarate book i own. the images are outstanding and the content is to my mind fasternating. i have leart so much about the history of the unwearable garmant from this book, the wrighter is easy to understand and detail is exstencive. this book to me contains every piece of avent-gard fashion i would consider of value to modern fashion and the history behind it /how it as a piece of work it placed within history. I would have loved to have seen this exibition but feel that this is really the next best thing. This is most def. the most exciting book i have had the plesure to come across.

Wonderful book with necessarily limited scope, 26 Mar 2004
This is a beautiful, sumptuous book, crammed with detail and excellent colour reproductions. Other readers mightn't go for all the technical information but I can't get enough of it. I also prefer the discussions of individual works which occupy a large part of this volume -- its companion, 'Dürer to Veronese', takes a more synoptic view, which tends to obscure the fact that these are surveys of a collection.

That's my only quibble, and it isn't really with the book, which is about as accomplished at it could be -- so good, in fact, that it's tempting to read it as a textbook of the whole period. Much of the material is of general relevance, of course; but don't forget that many of the major works from this period aren't in galleries at all: they're still in the places they were meant to be.

Giotto to Durer, 05 Feb 2004
Not cheap, but excellent value for money for anyone interested in the period and especially those who can get to the National Gallery to look at the works in detail.

Well printed and with good illustrations. The text covers not only the technical details of art production but also provides explanations of the stories shown in the pictures, so it works well both for both beginners and more advanced readers.

Discussions of technique dominate the artworks themselves, 03 Feb 2001
I have to say I'm really in two minds about this book. On the one hand, it explores the world of the early renaissance artist (primarily in Italy, the core of the Gallery's collection) in fascinating detail - the workshop, the methods and techniques, from the preparation of the panels through grinding the paints to the sequence of activities in preparing the finished work. On the other, it becomes almost possible to lose sight of the overall impact of the artworks in this welter of close-up detail. I don't for a minute regret buying this book; but I don't return to it as often as I'd hoped.

Glorious images, beautiful ideas, 03 Jan 2006
This book is without doubt one of the more beautifully prepared and printed books in my collection. Done by the Yale University Press in association with the National Gallery of London, virtually every page is a treasure. There are nearly two hundred full-colour-process reproductions of artworks throughout the text, and every page (not just the colour plates) are heavy bond, high-gloss stock that shows the ink and colour with vibrancy and depth.

John Drury spent a career at both Cambridge and Oxford dealing in matters of theology, ecclesiology, liturgy, and art. I discovered Drury's book while attending a course at my own seminary on the church and the arts, and kept finding myself frustrated at the rapid pace we would go through topics (a frustration I know the professor teaching the course shared - how does one do justice to 2000 years of music, architecture, and art in a mere 15 sessions?). I sought out supplemental materials to help fill out the outline, and Drury's text serves the purpose in many ways.

Drury states his purpose early in the text. `This is a book about how Christian paintings convey their messages. It takes on whole paintings. It is not content with just picking symbols out of them for identification. Composition, colour, contents (including architecture and landscape as well as figures) and the ways in which the paint itself is handled - all are treated as part and parcel of their religious meanings.' This is a holy and holistic approach.

Drury adopts a kind of picture-describing approach (one that he terms `historically iconographical'). This involves absorbing details while understanding context and material. This is the same kind of attention that worship requires (and indeed, the Eastern church has always had this kind of physical artistic interplay with the tradition of use of icons for prayer, meditation and worship purposes) - it requires an openness to experience and feeling while also benefitting from understanding and guidance.

Major artists and works studied in detail in this text include the work of Tiepolo (c. 1750s), the Wilton Diptych (anonymous, c. 1390s), Titian (c. 1510-40s), Duccio (c. 1310s), Filippo Lippi (c. 1450s), Poussin (c. 1630-50s), Rembrandt (c. 1640s), Piero della Francesca (c. 1450-70s), Caravaggio (c. 1600s), Rubens (c. 1630s), Velazquez (c. 1610s), Cezanne (c. 1900s), and others. Most presentations begin by showing the whole work, then proceeding to look at individual characteristics or highlights often pulled aside in side images or isolated for greater emphasis. The text and artwork is arranged in good pattern throughout the text.

Throughout his text, Drury makes a repeated call for care, meditation and attention to be given to the artwork as well as the response to the artwork. He makes that statement that we should stay in front of the images `longer than people usually do' - noticing in museums, art shops, churches and other places that people tend to shuffle past rather than give attention to the most stunning and sublime works of art. Drury draws in history, theology, philosophy, literature, biblical references and images, and other cultural and contextual references to make the experience of these works a full and profound one. This is not a book to be read quickly or glanced over lightly.

Drury includes a narrative annotated bibliography rather than a simple list; he provides both a general bibliography for the entire text as well as a selected bibliography for each chapter/topic.

This is a wonderful book, a great gift for oneself or for others. It is particularly good for those who want a deeper experience and understanding of the way in which art has and can interact and enhance one's relationship with Christianity and its message.

Addiction indeed - and not only to Art!, 09 Jan 2006
What a self-indulgent, rackety and restless life this woman has led, and she makes no bones about it! As a young woman she was part of a bohemian set in Paris, promiscuous, often drunk, dancing the night through, almost like a caricature of a flapper. She was quite neurotic, often had hysterical weeping fits, and her relationships were usually stormy and quarrelsome, punctuated by long sulks when she wouldn't speak to her husbands. The first of these, Laurence Vail, was as neurotic as she was and very violent, as often as not in public places. But she was obviously not easy to live with either, and tactful restraint in behaviour or utterance was never one of her qualities, even with men on whom she was dependent. (The book, too, is "frank" and completely lacking in reticence.)

Her immense wealth enabled her to travel constantly all across Europe (we always learn in which motor-car), and much of this book is an account of every journey she made. What she chooses to record seems quite undiscriminating, often jejune and sometimes positively verges on the Pooterish, not least because of its uninspired style.

She knew nothing about art or music until John Holms, her partner after her first divorce, began to teach her about it, and one always suspects that it was artists rather than art that really attracted her. She admits that even when in 1938 she decided to open an art gallery in London, at the time "I couldn't distinguish one thing in art from another" and acted on the advice of Marcel Duchamp who "taught me the difference between Abstract and Surrealist art"! (p.161). And "in spite of the fact that I was opening a modern art gallery in London, I much preferred old masters" (p.163). These of course were no longer sexually available, while living artists were. She slept with an amazing number of them (as well as with, for example, Samuel Beckett and the kinky Roland Penrose), so there must have been some powerful allure about her into her forties and beyond, which does not come across in the book.

She soon began to collect not only artists but also their works, making it a principle to buy at least one work of art from every show she gave (p.166), but in the whole book there is no genuine appraisal of any work of art - only an account of her perpetual acquisitiveness. However, one has to admit that her investments were excellent in commercial terms. She bought and gave the first showings to a number of modern artists whose work would become immensely more valuable in time, and she especially prides herself on having made Jackson Pollock famous.

She was living in occupied and then in Vichy France during the early years of the German occupation, getting out not long before the United States entered the war; but she never sets down any reflections on the war as such, not then nor after Pearl Harbour, commenting only on how bureaucratic matters (visas, currency transfers, restrictions on the movements in the United States of her second husband, Max Ernst, as "an enemy alien") affected her own activities. While France was in torment, she can write, "During the summer [of 1940] I got rather bored and started having my hair dyed a different color every few weeks to amuse myself. First it was chestnut ... but then I got the wild idea of having it bleached bright orange... As a result of all the time I spent in the beauty parlor, I conceived a sort of weakness for the little hairdresser who worked so hard on my beauty. From re-reading D.H.Lawrence I also got a romantic idea that I should have a man who belonged to a lower class" (p.221/2) and we are led to assume that she had a fling with him. "Soon this got boring, and I needed a change". (p.222). She was as promiscuous in her forties as she had been in her twenties.

The bulk of this book - 324 out of 385 pages - was first published in 1946 when she was 48 years old. One part of the rest she published first in 1960 when she was 62 and the other part in 1977 when she was nearly eighty. Those parts show her in a much more sober light, when she has become the grande dame of Venice. By that time she has no taste for what was then the avant garde: "I do not like art today. I think it has gone to hell, as the result of the financial attitude. People blame me for what is painted today because I had encouraged and helped this new movement to be born. In the early 1940s there was a pure pioneering spirit in America. A new art had to be born - Abstract Expressionism. I fostered it. I do not regret it. It produced Pollock or rather Pollock produced it. This alone justifies my effort. As to the others, I don't know what got into them. Some people say that I got stuck. Maybe it is true.... Today is the age of collecting, not of creating." H'm!

So at the end we have a rare moment of reflection. For the rest, this is basically a shallow, tedious and excessively long book written by a spoilt, wealthy and rather silly woman; and it would not have been worth persevering with if the incidents she records did not throw some light on the weird personalities and behaviour of some very famous people in the artistic world, most of whom were psychologically as mixed-up and temperamental as she was. One feels there must have been more to her than that, and perhaps the recent biographies written about her by Anton Gill or Mary Dearborn reveal another side of her; but after having read her own book, I have no interest in reading any more about her.


14 stories to discover in a guide, 06 Sep 2008
Not just a colourful and imaginative guide to the South Bank, there are 14 hidden stories waiting to be discovered. Take the man walking a dog...well, it WAS a dog; and has Grandma lost Grandpa? And what are those policeman getting up to?

This a book you can pick up over coffee, and come teatime you will still be discovering new things in Tommy's world. Great, and subtle fun.

Tate 2 Tate, 06 Jul 2008
Genius! Tommy Penton offers us his own unique take on London and the South Bank. Read front to back he follows the path from Tate Britain to Tate Modern, but it can also be read backwards (East to West). Tommy's take on the vista remains true yet in his own style - the excellently written guide at the back of the book helping to identify the buildings further. Even if you think you know the South Bank well Tommy's book will throw new light on it.

This catalogue deserves 6 stars, 21 Sep 2003
This beautifully presented catalogue accompanied the exhibition at the National Gallery in February - May 2000 and BBC Series presented by the Gallery's Director, Mr Neil McGregor, before he moved to the British Museum. It is a book of great interest and influence in the History of Art, or if one simply enjoys looking at paintings of great beauty. Don't be put off by the religious connotations - I nearly was. If you love art, enjoyed the exhibition or BBC programmes - you'll almost certainly be delighted with this book.

A Delight to Own, 28 Apr 2007
This book was produced to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, between the 14th November 2006 and 19th February 2007. The book contains 135 full colour reproductions of paintings, watercolours and sketches and many archive photographs of the people represented in the works. A chronology of the Weimar Republic and three essays on the period are included. The reproductions in the catalogue are excellent and the accompanying commentary by Sabine Rewald is both concise and very informative, and provides a fascinating insight into the lives of the various sitters. Many portraits by Otto Dix and George Grosz are reproduced together with smaller numbers by Max Beckmann, Rudolf Schlichter and Christian Schad. A beautifully produced book that has a clarity and straightforwardness in stark contrast to the verbose nonsense that has packed the bulky catalogues of recent London exhibitions. A delight to own.