Customer Reviews

Clive Barker Visions of Heaven and Hell

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Clive Barker amazes me. How can one man unleash such a massive imagination on the world? First came his formidable books of horror and dark fantasy, then the movies, and now this collection of his oil paintings.

Barker doesn't make the mistake of drawing from life. His work combines surrealism, impressionism, dream logic, and psychosis. His enigmatic characters gaze out at the viewer, suggesting secrets kept and answers offered. His colors are bold and bright, dazzling the eye. Much of his work is horrifying (though rarely gory), much is erotic, much is wonderous, much is mysterious. All is excellent.

I'm a huge fan of Barker's "Abarat" books, and many of the images he created for them reappear in "Visions of Heaven and Hell." I'm incredibly pleased that this book came into being, and even happier that Clive Barker continues to share his boundless imagination with us.

The images in this book - largely supernatural characters and places from Clive Barker's imagination - show he's a bona fide double-threat - the rare artist equally comfortable in literature and visual arts. The fantastic beings and places in this book are unrestrained, frequently libidinous, and as finely crafted as the beings and worlds in his books. They resonate with emotion, vibrate with color, and push the boundaries of imagination. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys Clive Barker's fiction, and also enjoys visual art. One word of caution - there's a good deal of phantasmagorical sexual imagery in this book, so it's probably not suitable for a conservative home's coffee table.

It's breathtakingly gorgeous. $50 at full price, you can get it for about $20 online. If you have no idea what it is, it's paintings. After about the first fifty paintings I was astonished with the endless vivid creativity. I kept flipping page after page, past another fifty and then another, not taking the time to absorb everything, just flipping through the book for the first time... It's just painting after vivid painting, some folding out of the book for more space but still feeling limited by the edges of the page. After yet another fifty paintings go by, I realize this is something special, something amazing, something unbelievable, and I still have fifty more paints to flip through, and I still have to go back and take the time to really look at the 250 paints I only skimmed. If these were still-lifes, or portraits, or anything from real life, it would be like any other art book, but all of it's from Clive Barker's head. It really feels like discovering a modern day Van Gogh/Dali before the rest of the world. I've read almost all of Clive's work, novels that have their flaws but always demonstrate a singular imagination. Visions of Heaven and Hell proves that his imagination can not be over estimated.

I jumped at the opportunity to have a collection of Clive Barker's art. Sadly, when the book arrived I was immediately disappointed. Not at the art but at the construction of the book itself. Almost every page was stuck together because of the gold paint applied to the edges. I shipped the book back and quickly recieved another copy (Kudos to Amazon for the quick turnaround). Imagine my suprise when the second book had exactly the same problem. Rather than continue the order/recieve/return process indefinately I just carefully pulled the pages apart as best I could. None of the art was really affected but the edges of most of the pages were marred. Leave it to some fly-by-night publishing house to ruin what would otherwise be an amazing collection of art from one of Horror's finest authors.

The book itself was what I was hoping for. It was a gift for my son who is a Clive Barker fan and had heard about his art. But whoever bound the book did a pretty bad job. Most of the pages were stuck together along the edge, we had to be very careful turning pages so that they didn't rip.

I agree with those who say that the book is excellent but the binding is terrible. Clive Barker's art is fantastic; his depictions of deviant demons and cherubic angels are simply astonishing. And his little intro's to each chapter are quick, witty, and insightful.

The book would be 5-star perfection, if not for the ridiculous binding. The pages are bound by some sticky shiny gold thing, which makes about every fourth or fifth page stick together. It is sometimes difficult to rip them apart without damaging the ends of the pages, and it is very distracting from the art itself, because sometimes you can't tell if the pages are stuck together or not so you try to count pages and it's just very distracting. I'm shocked that no one noticed this problem before this printing was released.

But the binding problem is not Barker's fault, and his art is amazing. Perhaps not for the young or faint of heart, but amazing nonetheless.

In this book, Clive Barker shows off a selection of his artwork full of color and wonder. Angels, Demons, Sorcerors, and Landscapes from the wildest imaginations and the darkest regions of the mind. This book gave me inspiration for a couple of my more recent works of art. This book is a perfect addition for anyones personal library who loves fantastic pieces of art.

The images in the book are very to look at they range from beautiful landscapes and villages to horrible looking beasts and monsters. Because of the large number of images with nudity and sex in them this isn't something to get for kids who enjoy the "Abarat" series or "The Thief of Always." The binding is really bad about one out of every five pages is stuck to another page, my big complaint with the binding is that two of the page were stuck together in the middle where the pages meet, as a result the pictures on both pages have huge white spots on them. I still recommend getting this if you like Barker, but if a different binding comes out in the future you should get that one instead.

A great book which shows how multi talented Clive Barker really is. These various paintings contained in this volume range from one extreme to another, including, sexual extremities which adults should be aware of so they can keep it out of children's reach. Some of the paintings feature images from Barker's Abarat world, of which, I wish there were more! It's a beautiful book and a book to be treasured.

I loved the Abarat books like crazy. A big part of that love came from the art included in the pages. This book fed me more and more of that art, and new stuff on top of that... Some of it's twisted and freaky and all those words that I think Clive Barker likes to hear said about his work. There are some things that are sick but fascinating or very very far out of the ordinary. I enjoyed reading the in-betweens by Barker for whatever reason, probably because I'm such a sycophant. Even the 'twisted horror' images are beautiful. The colors I can never get enough of. Of course you probably wouldn't want to show this book to your grandma, she might not understand why there's pages of junk growing out of places it shouldn't be growing from.