Art books are a marvel ! For centuries, art by Rembrandt, as seen in Rembrandt's Life of Christ, a hardback in slipcase with several hundred paintings (in color), drawings and etchings, was available mostly to the very wealthy who would own a painting in their home, or in public spaces like churches. With the present printing technology found in books, an art lover now can have hundreds of beautiful images for $15, in the case of this book. I can offer a respectable history of the art of Manet, published by Skira, in paperback, for $5.  For $5 I also have a fascinating little paperback by David Douglas Duncan, a friend of Pablo Picasso, of photographs and text of some of the 500 paintings that Picasso, at the heighth of his fame, kept stored away in his own possession - paintings that had been seen by only three or four other people previous to the publication of Picasso's Picassos.  Picasso's talent and creativity were so fecund that I fully expect one of these days to find a book reproducing his art done, in spare moments, on cocktail napkins !  An example of how huge was the output of his mind, I have a wonderful little paperback from Dover, entitled Pablo Picasso, Designs for "The Three-Cornered Hat", (Le Tricorne) for $18.

       I also have scarcer collections such as Frederic Remington, A Catalogue Raisonne of Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings, $80 for two hardback volumes, in dust jacket, and in a slip case which was moisture damaged on the back but did it's job and protected both volumes published by the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. This two volume work is the product of decades of research and lists and illustrates over 3,000 works by Remington, many of them in color. Also included is a CD rom of the art works, many of which are just thumbnails in the book. This seems like a good marriage of the art book and technology which allows the prodigious storage capabilities of a CD rom to expand what a book alone can do. I wonder if there is a catalog raisonne of the works of Picasso and how many volumes and CDs would be necessary to create such a massive work.

       I have a wonderful collection  of many volumes of New American Paintings, Juried Exhibiton-in-Print, a bimonthly paperback publication which features about 50 artists, each of whom has three full page paintings, followed by a page of biography, listings of exhibitions and publications and an artists statement. Most of them are about $10. When Cynthia saw I was including a sample in this blog, she said "Good, they're so cool. They're like going to a gallery." They are a wonderful way to see how varied and marvelous the art world is these days. Speaking of galleries, we also have quite a few exhibition catalogues, both current and from the more distant past which may have art images that might not be available elsewhere. One example is Romare Bearden: Work with Paper, a $30 paperback from a showing at the Baruch College Gallery in New York, in 1991. In the introduction, I learned that Bearden was born in North Carolina but grew up in New York, where his family lived in Harlem across from the Lafayette Theater and where he met Duke Ellington, Langston Hughes, and Fats Waller. Bearden's day work, as an adult was as a social worker in Harlem, working particularly with the Gypsies of New York City. Interestingly, in the 40's Bearden turned away from his earlier themes and concentrated on studying the work of Rembrandt which informed much of his later work.

       I'd like to close with the art work that most resonates with me, children's picture books. I love them ! One of my favorite children book artists is the Russian emigre Feodor Rojankovsky, who came to the U.S. in 1941 and had a brilliant career illustrating over 100 children's books, including Frog Went A'Courting, for which he won the Caldecott Medal for the best illustrated book of the year, in this case, 1956. We don't have that book but we do have a first edition in dust jacket of a tale by one of his fellow Russians, M. Prishvin, The Treasure Trove of the Sun, which highlights one of Rojankovsky's passions, illustrating animals. Rojankovsky visited the zoo in Russia, as a child, fell in love with all the exotic animals, and, as luck would have it, soon after got a present of some crayons with which to record what he saw. His work is brilliant.

        Stephanie, one of our customers, turned me on to what looks like a wonderful exhibit about the work of another of my favorite illustrators, Ezra Jack Keats. The Jewish Museum, in New York, has an exhibit of his original art as well as recreations of the neighborhood of Peter, Keat's most famous hero, running through January 29 and Cynthia and I are plotting how we might get away to go see it. I had always assumed that Keats was African American since Peter, his main character in so many brilliant books was a black boy who lived in Harlem. I discovered that Keats was a European Jew who had suffered isolation and racism himself and ended up portraying the life of Peter, the first African American hero in a children's picture book, brilliantly through his collage techniques. The New York Times, in a review of the show, wrote "In 1962, Ezra Jack Keats started a quiet revolution that in its own way has as much influence as some of  the decade's louder protests." Ends up that Ezra Jack Keats and Romare Bearden were contemporaries though I haven't found anything to say that their paths crossed. However, there is an exhibit on Bearden's work at the Schomburg, also in New York that runs through January 12, 2012. We presently have in stock a hardback, first edition without dust jacket, copy of Whistle for Willie, $18, by Keats,  from which this image comes. Hope it brightens your day like it does mine. Art books are a marvel !

Greg and Cynthia