Customer Reviews

Hello, Fruit Face!: The Paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (Adventures in Art)

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

 

 

This book is very short and tells a story that kids could understand regarding the painter and the royal court he painted for. Each picture has a short story as well as a descriptive explanation of what items are in the picture. This would be a great way to teach kids that items are and still have it be fun because the faces are so silly. I highly recommend this book.

My students find Arcimboldo's fruit and flower portraits fascinating and scrutinize them at length. Here they also find the stories behind both his four seasons series and his four elements series as products of Arcimboldo's time in the Viennese imperial court in the late 16th century. (Werner Kriegeskorte's Arcimboldo, published by Taschen, reproduces many more of Arcimboldo's works and is even more popular with my students). Prestel's Adventures in Art series forms the heart of my classroom art library because of their beautiful reproductions, but the texts are of varying quality. The best in the series are: I Wish I Didn't Have to Sleep (Keith Haring), Animal Dreams (Paul Klee), Dreaming Pictures (Paul Klee), A Day in Japan with Hokusai, Visiting Vincent van Gogh, Artist in the Desert (O'Keeffe), Gustav Klimt: Silver, Gold, and Precious Stones, A Day with Picasso, Frida Kahlo: The Artist in the Blue House, Marc Chagall: What Colour is Paradise, and The Blue Rider: The Yellow Cow Sees the World in Blue.

One of the greatest surrealists of his age and what insulting title did the brilliant writers come up with? "Hello, Fruit Face!" As far as content, it's 28 pages long which shows you the depth. THANKFULLY it's out of print now, but what other imaginative titles can they come up with to desecrate other artistic geniuses of our time "Picasso's Wacky Women" "Dali's Crazy Clocks" "Pollock Hey Boozer" actually I can't even come up with a title as insulting as the one they wrote.

I never got this book, I keep receiving emails for "order update" where I am asked to confirm my order delay.
I expect this book to be great, but where is it?