5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Pity..., March 30, 2005
This review is from: Bakst: The Art of Theatre and Dance (Temporis) (Hardcover)
To my mind, this book is designed and published in the most amateur way. The page layouts seem not to be carefully thought through. Some pictures are laid one upon another in the most unfavourable way, others are cut and/or placed too close to the binding in the center. What is the most annoying, several pics are "broken" - placed in such a way that the most part of the picture is on one page and 1/6 of it is on the opposite one (whereas the binding is quite tight), though could be zoomed in to see it as a whole.
Some pictures are magnified to such extend that lose their sharpness and really look like the pictures I sometimes print out using my DeskJet printer (even the photographs of ballet scenes are grainy!)
At least one picture is mistakenly described as the costume design for Salome, though is is clearly written on the drawing itself by the hand of Bakst: "Swan Lake" (in Russian). This leaves me wondering whether the author made a thorough investigation.
What I cannot understand is that if the book is about Bakst and his art, why there are so many reproductions of other painters' works (Serov, Bilibin, Shishkin, Chagall, Matisse, Gauguin, etc.)? No doubt, it is important to mention in the narrative all the influences on Bakst's art as well as the historical preconditions of his development as an artist, but why to include all these works, especially in such a large format?! For example, it is just briefly mentioned that Bakst was invited to teach at Zvantseva's school of art where Marc Chagall later studied, and there is a huge ("broken") Chagall's painting on the opposite page! I cannot get rid of the impression that the author didn't know how to fill in the pages.
On the brighter side, there are a lot of beautiful Bakst's works and despite of all its faults, I do not really regret bying the book, especially as there aren't (unfortunately) many books on this artist.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
mediocre, October 30, 2007
This definately has the feel of a cheap, mass-market art book, and considering what is currently available for this sort of price, is not worth what they are charging. The photos of the drawings are poor quality and generally slightly out of focus, while the layout is done in that rather annoying way of cheap art books dealing with the graphic arts - namely overlapping illustrations, drawn borders around pictures, and occasional patterned borders to the pages. The text is spare, but informative, and the book would have been much improved with more of the contemporary photos of the productions. However, as a significant number of Bakst's wonderful designs are illustrated, the book is "better than nothing". I am awaiting a high quality calalogue raisonne!
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