Customer Reviews

Lempicka (Basic Art Series)

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I have long been a fan of Taschen art books, and that's why I was so surprised by how terrible this book is! The quality of the reproductions is fairly bad (many of the colors are dulled), but what's worse is that the author basically used one source (Passion by Design) for his autobiography of Tamara de Lempicka. Instead of doing his own biographical research, he basically copied whole paragraphs from Passion by Design, shuffled a few words around, and presented it as his own information. Frankly, I'm surprised no one has hauled him into court for plagarism. So if you're looking for a good book about Tamara de Lempicka, don't look here! You should, however, check out Passion by Design by Kizette de Lempicka-Foxhall (the artist's daughter). It has excellent color reproductions of the artist's work, as well as one of the most fascinating, well-written, and comprehensive artist biographies I have ever read.

This was the first book I bought about Tamara and I've subsequently bought (and read) the rest of the books in publication about her. I found this book comprehensive enough and an unbelievable value to boot (as all Taschen books are!) as to be a great starting point in learning about this mesmerizing artist. This book is filled to the brim with a plethora of color plates of Tamara's paintings, ranging from her most famous pieces, to her studies & sketches, to her late-life paintings. Though some of the pictures seem to have a canvas' sheen to them I think it just adds an antique quality to them, like the scratchiness of a needle on an old record album enriches the ambience of its sound. The last pages of the book contain a 2-page chronology including photographs of Tamara at many stages in her life. Throughout the book there are various photographs of her, in which she's painting, her various studios, and many of her not-so-humble glamour shots. There is just enough written about her in this book to whet your appetite for future reads about Tamara. There are not too many other books in circulation about her, but if you develop into a super-fan the cream of the crop is "Tamara de Lempicka : A Life of Deco and Decadence" by Laura Claridge.

I've always loved Art Deco. However, I never could find any good examples of portraits done in that style (this was pre-Internet). So when I stumbled across this book years ago, I was very excited to discover that Lempicka's work was exactly what I was looking for.

But over time, my book became worn and pages were torn out. I recently wanted to reference some of her work for my own paintings and decided it was time to replace my book. I still enjoy it.

NOTE: For some reason, this new copy of the book is about 1/3rd smaller than my previous copy. It is the EXACT same book, only smaller. Don't know the reason for the change. Still a great book.