Customer Reviews

Life Is Paradise

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

 

 

The portraits of Francesco Clemente may be great but you won't know from this book. The book is printed such that the binding goes through the middle of most of the portraits! Each portrait is split right in the middle. A complete travesty! The book designer has no idea how to put together a book on art!

This is wonderful painting and you will find yourself sighing over what should have been. I must agree with the other reviewers at Amazon, who say this is the worst designed book they've ever seen. It's too true. Yes, the dead center, binding portion of the book (called the gutter) is where you'll find the crucial part of many of the portraits! To say this hinders the viewing experience is about as mild a statement as one can make. If I were Clemente, I would want this book recalled as a defective product and the manufacturer (publisher) made to come up with a new one, just like with a defective automobile (The Lemon Law). So why am I giving it a 3 star rating? Clemente's art works are a 5 star event. Seeing them under these circumstances is better than not seeing them. The gorgeous cover portrait is representative of Clemente's work shown in this book. The color reproductions themselves seem quite fine; it is solely an issue of design placement of the images. I'm not sorry I bought it; I do wish I had gotten it at half price though!

Francesco Clemente is a great artist. In my opinion, he is one of the few painters today that actually has a vision and makes great art for the sake of making great art. But, as the first reviewer said, "you wouldn't know it from looking at this book"! The watercolor section is especially irritating. There are watercolored portraits of William Burroughs, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and many other beautiful pictures which you can't even view because they are set smack dab in between two different pages, with the main part of the portrait (the face) stuck in oblivion! Is this a joke? I can't believe what kind of idiot would release a book like this. I wouldn't mind if the book wasn't so expensive (for a 16 year old like me anyway), but 45 bucks is a lot to pay for a book with only about half of it's contents visible. I really hope Clemente didn't knowingly let this book be released. I realise Amazon can't examine every single book that comes in, but I really believe that they should cease selling this horrible book. Such an amazing artist as Clemente deserves much better treatment than is given with this shoddy excuse for a book. In fact, no artist deserves this kind of treatment. Buy the "Retrospective" instead.

When I was a kid Francesco Clemente lived in my building on Broadway in NYC and my father would take me downstairs to where his studio was. I was awe-stricken by the size of his huge paintings next to my 5 year-old body. For years I had the memory of his beautiful oversized interpretations of people's faces in my head and when I saw Great Expectaions I couldn't believe my eyes. His art is one of a kind and I recommend this book to everyone.

The first thing to note about this book is its gorgeousness. There is simply no other word for the stunning graphic presentation, beginning inside the front cover and continuing throughout. Orchids Unfolding could easily be a subtitle.

The portraits are compelling and would be even if many of them were not of the rich and famous. Whether oil on wood or watercolor, whether lean of line or voluptuous in intensity, they leave no doubt as to Clemente's talent.

If there is any criticism to be made of this book, it is to be directed toward the publisher. One wishes that the double-page portraits did not cleave the faces in half, making them difficult to read as they fall into the center of the spine. Surely some astute editing could have corrected this.

Otherwise it is a pleasure to feast upon the fruits of Clement's talent. If you appreciate his work you will be happy to own this book.

As a book designer and Clemente fan myself, I anxiously bought my copy at the Guggenheim exhibition. What a letdown. The cover and format of the book are beautiful, but the interior design completely misses the point. So many paintings are lost in the gutter! I have NEVER seen a fine art catalog crop or run such crucial areas of paintings across the gutter in the way that this book does. Without exaggerating, many of the paintings--which are FACIAL PORTRAITS--totally obscure the subjects' faces! Clemente's work deserves a much more accommodating design. Maybe next time...

I received this book as a gift and although I was unfamiliar with the artist I found the portraits sensitive and compelling--spectacular colors-- the book made me take a trip to the Guggenheim to see more of Clemente's work. I also enjoyed the essay which was an informative and lively complement to the pictures.

I've just seen Clemente's work (some 200 images) at the Guggenheim, and though the book isn't like standing in the presence of this powerful body of work, it is the next best thing. True, some horizontal portraits cover two pages and lose some visual experience because of that. Most do not, especially the floating images such as the one of his wife, whose face graces the cover. I especially like his series Muses, which are vertical presentations, part of which made it into this book. Clemente's portrait style tells the viewer only that which he wants told about the sitter. He removes all but the most important visual elements of physical image, leaving the viewer only his sense of that being; the figures are without encumbrance of location or time, which comes across in this book. True to the originals, each maintains its isolation from the rest, the same feeling I got at the Guggenheim. In the cleaness of each portrait, in the purposeful brushstrokes and marks, I see a clear, brief and to-the-point statement of the complex, again evoking the same feeling I had in the presence of the original. I don't think a book can capture the aliveness or presence an original work possesses, but this book certainly has captured the strength and compelling nature of Clemente's portraits.

This is a very complete and varied representation of Clemente's portraits. I concur with some of the other reviews that the page break is sometimes somewhat annoying. But this is a minor flaw. I'm particularly taken with the watercolors which are masterful: spontaneous, imaginative, dream-like at times. Highly recommend!

Fabulous! Inspiring! Incredible portraits. Excellent introduction to the artist among his other styles.
Don't miss out on it! Another must for the artist's studio. cathleen/modesto