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Facing Eden: 100 Years of Landscape Art in the Bay Area

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FACING EDEN: 100 Years of Landscape Art in the Bay Area was created to accompany the 1995 museum exhibition of the same name at the de Young Memeorial Museum in San Francisco. The fact that it retains popularity as a Book is a testimony of how fine the actual catalogue is. Beautifully illustrated and written, the idiosyncrasies of the Bay Area topography are first addressed with photographs and maps and drawings dating back to the 1890s. Then these seeds of ideas are followed through the great painters of the Bay Area and for many readers this will be the first exposure to the unique quality of composition, light, and stance that identifies some very major painters with a Regionalism that competes soundly with the Hudson River School! Here are the works of Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Diebenkorn, Andy Goldsworth, Stephen deStaebler, and David Park along side less well known painters such as Gordon Cook, Jess, and Michael Gregory. But the catalogue and exhibition are careful to include the three dimensional works of Bob Arneson,, Tony Cragg and Richard Shaw while introducing less well known works by such fine painters as Christopher Brown, Robert Bechtle, and Richard Estes. The book is divided into seven sections, each accompanied by a fine essay by some very fine art historians. And just as the book begins with factual photographs of the area that inspired the art, it ends with a beautifully rich section on art photographs of the 'interpreting' the lovely facts of nature. Highly recommended reading and looking.