Customer Reviews

20th-Century Dreams

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There is no word to qualify such a masterpiece!It's beautiful, it's intelligent, it's brilliant.One of the smartest books ever made!

"Rock Dreams" by Nik Cohn and Guy Peellaert sold over a million copies in the Seventies. To say that it was an artistic masterpiece is an understatement. It was tantamount to an aesthetic earthquake. Yet over a quarter century passed before they would combine their talents once again in "20th Century Dreams," which was published in 1999, at the end of the century and the second millennium. As you might expect, "20th Century Dreams" pulls no punches. It implies that every bad dream is a rude awakening. The only escape is to wake up. Reality then seems downright tame by comparison.

Surreality is another thing entirely. In this book we see scandal juxtaposed with respectability, the glamorous as only another form of degradation. The ugly, the poor, the heartless and the kind are jumbled together with the crowned heads of international pop culture. This is the swollen underbelly of raw humanity denuded for all to see. The psychosis of fortune and fame, the megalomania of power and privilege are never far away from the forgotten, the obscure, the down and out, or the losers sobbing in the darkest alley.

Meanwhile, the straight and narrow path may lead to Nirvana, but the limelight always burns brighter, attracting the moths to the flame. And we see generation after generation playing the same old games, but always with fresh new faces.

Every molecule of that century has left its indelible residue in our memory, and Nik Cohn and Guy Peellaert have managed to illustrate it, and very faithfully indeed. You may wince at some of the images and what they mean but their value lies in their compression of space and time into one iconic flash of global theater. It really is as Shakespeare said:

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages..."

Politicians, artists, movie stars, royalty, athletes, scientists, tycoons, even killers and exotic dancers all play their greatest roles and tell us the secrets we've never heard.

With Cohn and Peellaert it's as if Dante Alighieri has met Salvador Dali: We see "The Divine Comedy" and "The Persistence of Memory" commingled in their work, albeit they choose to focus on Purgatory most of all. Flesh surrenders to art in Purgatorio and we get the bends as we sink down into the lower depths of our souls.

But this is "The World as Will and Idea," Schopenhauer's revenge upon a secular universe that banishes its greatest prophets. So there has to be some way to tell the tale, to reveal the pearls of wisdom that the tabloids can only cast before swine. And this is it!

This book is really stunning and I don't think I've ever seen anything like that! It isn't quite photography, it isn't quite drawing, it isn't painting....It's something completely new: I guess this was made with a computer but the result is impressive.

I never thought I would ever see Princess Diana about to wed Prince, or Madonna naked on Marlene Dietrich's graveyard...This hyped book deserves the raves it is getting and it's a refreshing breathe among all those boring millenium books!

From Marlon Brando to Courtney Love and Madonna, from Marilyn to Hitler and Diana....Every personality is represented in a most surprising way! The book everyone is talking about is definitely worth the hype!You have to at least see it!

This controversial book is a gem: you'll rediscover the people that made the 20th century in a way you never expected to see them! The illustrations by Guy Peellaert ar truly fabulous and the texts by english writer Nik Cohn match perfectly with them. A must-have!

I just can't get enough of this tremendous masterpiece. These collages are superb and so creative. You can tell the artist is REALLY cultured and talented! Bravo!

This book is really stunning and I don't think I've ever seen anything like that! It isn't quite photography, it isn't quite drawing, it isn't painting....It's something completely new: I guess this was made with a computer but the result is impressive.

I agree with everyone: this si a truly smart book filled with unexpected and intriguing images. I thought Rock Dreams would remain Guy Peellaert's one masterpiece, but this one is for me even better because it doesn't just deal with the history of Rock, but with the history of the whole century. The 20th century has been the wildest, craziest one ever aand the artist knew how to capture the eseence of the great people of our time!Good job!

This is the kind of book that you'll want to keep proudly in your art books collection...I'm sure it's on its way to become a classic.