Customer Reviews

Max Ernst: A Retrospective (Metropolitan Museum of Art Publications)

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The exhibit of Ernst's work, which is still running at the Metropolitan Museum is a stunning tribute to an artist whose styles have influenced so many others over the course of the twentieth century. His style shifted and evolved so much over time that it is hard to believe the same artist that painted "Saint Cecilia" also painted "The Kiss" and "The Robing of the Bride." Unfortunately, the poor quality of the prints in the museum's book makes it a big disappointment, especially at this price. The text is alright, but the colors in the prints are radically darker and different in tone and do no justice to the original works.

Having just seen the exhibit today (June 6 2005), and having perused copies of the book available at the exhibit, I concur that the color reproduction negates the highly informative text of this book.

I just saw the retrospective a couple of weeks ago as well and agree with the other reviewers: the exhibition is great, but the quality of the plates in the catalog is miserable.

Max Ernst was always one of those painters who resided on the periphery of my consciousness, who I never bothered to fully investigate. Probably because I put him, mistakenly, in the same category as Magritte, a painter who I know was important in the annals of art history but didn't reach me on a visceral level. As I am interested in art and artists in general I had the "Max Ernst" DVD on my Netflix list and one Sunday afternoon, having nothing better to do, I decided to watch it. I immediately fell in love with his paintings and was fascinated by his life. I searched Amazon and this book seemed to contain the best representation of his work. I was a little disconcerted with some of the reviews regarding the quality of the images. But as another reviewer stated, images in a book will never match the original art. As I have not, unfortunately, seen too many any of his paintings up close and personal this is not a problem for me. I find the quality to be quite adequate. Since acquiring the book it has become bedtime reading for me and I am thoroughly enjoying it. The first half of the book is an overview of his life and work, the second half is the catalog of the exhibit.

This book is the most comprehensive collection of Max Ernst work. Having read the other reviews, I was concerned the print quality would be less than stellar. I find the print quality and color reproduction to be fine. No art book ever captures the full impact of the actual art, and color correction is one of the more problematic aspects of printing. MOMA and the Yale University did a good job with this book. This is a good collection of work and I wouldn't hesitate buying it again.