Customer Reviews

Felice Varini: Point of View

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It still looks like the images are multiplied red and blue via Photoshop. And that's the beauty of it. In reality it's a work of a genius - astonishing and astonishingly humourous point of view indeed. Just buy the book!

Varini's art is all about ignoring context and involving the viewer in a unique way. What he does is paint lines, curves, etc., or geometric figures on architectural structures. These structures could be almost anything--old churches or homes, modern office buildings, covered parking lots, stairways, walls. Varini's paintings contrast with the architecture while at the same time accentuate its features and fundamental forms. This unique, imaginative art is introduced by comparison to Paul Klee's painting "Ad marginem" (1936) with its red circle in the center which works to seem to change the arrangement and weight of the parts of the whole depending on the angle the viewer looks at the painting. Reference to Borges' maze-like short stories and trompe l'oeil elements of paintings such as Hans Holbein the Younger's "The Ambassadors" (1533) with its distorted skull in the foreground are among other art works and artists referred to to shed light on technical, theoretical, and historical matters with Varini's novel, unexpected, and in some ways visionary art. Fabiola Lopez-Duran, author of the four essays, has an acute understanding as well as appreciation of what Varini does and is trying to do in his art; and also a broad knowledge of art history which he brings to bear in elucidating both the background of the art and its uniqueness. Along with this, Lopez-Duran also has a firm grasp of postmodern art and critical treatment of it. She is the perfect author for this state-of-the-art book on Varini. And it calls for note, the book's front cover made of wood with expanding red spirals continuing on to the page edges works too to convey the distinctiveness of Varini's art.

for those who believe painting reached its apex a century ago and that nothing truly new or innovative has been done for decades, varini has clearly proven you need to go home and start working harder. for those of us who have been searching, the book will make you smile... because painters can still break ground.