Customer Reviews

Art Now: Volume 2

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As is sometime the case with Amazon, they group reviews for different editions of a book together. For the record there are several editions of ART NOW:

"ART NOW 137 Artists at the Rise of the New Millennium", ISBN 382281444X (pub June 2002)

This reasonable size book, it measures 25.5cmm x 20cm (10"x8"), 640 pages, and is packed full if images. It covers the work of 137 different artists from the areas of painting, photography, film and video, sculpture, performance art and installation. Each artist is allotted four pages, has a brief introduction of one paragraph (printed in English, German and French), along with a thumb-nail photograph of the artist and a short list of selected exhibitions and bibliography. The pictures fill the pages, sometimes several to a page; in total I estimate there are around 750 illustrations almost entirely in colour. The book concludes with a glossary and brief biographical notes on the authors, plus a section entitled The Art Newspaper which provides art market details and facts about leading art cities in the world.

It covers many well known names including Jeff Koons, Damien Hurst, Luc Tuymans, John Currin, Peter Doig, Tracey Emin to mention a few, plus some less familiar, providing a very useful if brief summary of art today

"ART NOW Artist at the rise of the new Millennium" ISBN 9783822840931 (pub April 2005)

A scaled down version of the above; this is fairly compact book with around 360 pages, it measures 22.5cmm x 18cm (8.75"x7"). It covers the work of just 81 of the artists from the original edition, exactly as they appear there. There are over 500 illustrations almost entirely in colour. The book concludes with a glossary and brief biographical notes on the authors, but there is no "Art Newspaper"

"ART NOW VOL 2 137 Artists at the Rise of the New Millennium" ISBN 3822839965 (pub Dec 2005)

This edition I have not seen, but I understand that the format is the same as before; however all the artists covered are entirely new, none is repeated from previous issues. It is listed as having 640 pages and as being the same size as the original edition.

Great value, very concise writing, almost too concise but a great image reference of who's who. Excellent reference to have especially for the price.

I purchased this book out of curiosity, because I enjoy art. I am by no means an aficionado. It is quite a thick volume with a number of artists covered. For each artist there is a brief description of the artist and their work. The description is reiterated in three languages, which means that each description is actually quite short. For each artist there is at least one picture of their work. My biggest problem with the book is that I was not inspired by most of the artists in the book. Although, in all fairness it is difficult to capture the feeling of a large art installation in one small picture. In general, paintings and prints are well captured in the book, but other types of art are not. I also did not like the fact that there are usually only two images for each artist. I would have preferred fewer artists and more images for each. I think this book is more geared towards people who work in the art world and need to keep up with new artists, and is less suitable for the lay person who just has a general interest in art.