Paint by Number: The How-To Craze that Swept the Nation [Paperback]

William L. Bird (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2001

What is the fascination of paint by numbers? Is it the intoxicating and compulsive act of filling in small pools of color? Or the easy thrill of creating your own impressionist masterpiece? Or a fond nostalgic yearning for a craze that cut across national boundaries and age groups? Invented in 1951 by Dan Robbins-based on an idea used by Leonardo da Vinci to teach painting-the paint-by-number craze reached its zenith in the 1950s but continues even today as paints and kits are avidly collected, exhibited in galleries, and traded on eBay. In Paint By Number, author Larry Bird takes us on an unbelievable journey where art meets kitsch and popular and high cultures collide in a collage of home economics, leisure time fun, and art education, Bird revisits the hobby from the vantage point of the artists and entrepreneurs who created the popular paint kits, the critics who reviled them, and the consumers who enthusiastically filled them in and hung them in their homes. Paint By Number includes over 200 examples of paint-by-number ephemera and two pull-out paintings ready to be filled-in!

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A mass culture obsessed with suburbia, leisure, and consumerism that sought access to high culture: that was 1950s America. Naturally, it was obsessed with paint by number, where all of these cross. A companion to an exhibition at the Smithsonian, Paint by Number follows the craze from its start to Andy Warhol's famous appropriation of the method in his "Do It Yourself" series. Paint by number pitted the creative against the mechanical, and deeply questioned art by giving everyone a paintbrush. This is a scholarly book and, at the same time, a comfortable read (as are most Princeton Architectural Press books), full of paintings, photographs, and ephemera such as advertisements and package designs, which alone stand as proof that one product can retell a critical part of the cultural history of America. It is a fantastic book for anyone interested in the intersection between art and culture in this fast-changing era. --Juliette Cezzar

From Publishers Weekly

In the early 1950s, paint-by-number kits became, for watchdogs of America's artistic ambition, a metaphor for the commercialization, mechanization and "dumbing-down" of American culture. But consumers paid little attention to such finger wagging; in 1954, more "number" paintings hung in American homes than did original works of art. Using 185 color and 15 b&w exemplars, William Bird (Better Living: Advertising, Media and the New Vocabulary of Business Leadership) analyzes the phenomenon in Paint by Number: The How-To Craze that Swept the Nation, which accompanies an exhibition he curated for the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (now hanging until December). Based on a Leonardo da Vinci technique for teaching painting, paint by number survives to this day, now collected, traded online and exhibited in galleries.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (March 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568982828
• ISBN-13: 978-1568982823
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 8.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #377,127 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

William L. Bird, Jr. is Curator of the Political Campaign Collection at the National Museum of American History - Smithsonian Institution. He is the author of several books and curator of exhibits, including "American Television from the Fair to the Family, 1939-1989;" "Vote: The Machinery of Democracy;" "Paint by Number: Accounting for Taste in the 1950s;" "Holidays on Display;" and "The Miniature World of Faith Bradford" that may be seen at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History indefinitely. The exhibit's companion book, "America's Doll House: The Miniature World of Faith Bradford," is published by the Smithsonian in association with Princeton Architectural Press.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fun Trip Down Memory Lane, August 16, 2001

By 

Kelley Hunt (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paint by Number: The How-To Craze that Swept the Nation (Paperback)

This is a really neat-o! book.

It's a short book, beautifully illustrated with paint-by-number paintings on almost every page (including paintings completed by J. Edgar Hoover, Nelson Rockefeller, Ethel Merman, and others). There are also lots of photos of advertisements, packaging and promotional displays used to sell the kits. The author discusses Max Klein & Dan Robbins, the men who started the paint-by-number "craze", and some of the other artists who worked on the kits. Despite heavy criticism from the art community, the kits were enormously popular in many countries.

I used to love doing these kits when I was a kid in the '60's and '70's. It may not be "art" but if nothing else I think people learn a little something about colors, shading and composition while working on these kits.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Art by kit: a retrospective, May 30, 2001

By 

Eileen Galen (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paint by Number: The How-To Craze that Swept the Nation (Paperback)

This is a beautifully-designed, lavishly illustrated, great-looking, smart book - every page a treat - that is part art book, part pop adventure story, part trenchant cultural history and analysis. Without the irony or condescension heretofore prevalent in discussions about the 1950s' remarkably popular and widespread middlebrow hobby of painting by number, William L. Bird, Jr., a curator at the Smithsonian, starts from the beginning and tells all.

Leonardo da Vinci seems to have thought of it first, as a way to teach painting. In 1952 (after considerable work in the lab and at the drawing board) mass culture combined with smart American commercialism to sell eager Americans first, the rest of the world later - this surprisingly controversial and intensely pleasurable hobby: paint by number. The paintings and their deeply satisfying means of production were denigrated by cultural critics - and loved by millions of regular folks - and Andy Warhol, too.

Students of popular and consumer culture and advertising, those curious about a popular phenomenon that provoked the critics of art and culture to attack relentlessly - or anyone interested in reading about the fun of these paintings and how they came to be - will love this perfect book. The author's mind is flexible and fertile; he takes us on a terrific tour. Clever and funny in places, with a bibliography hundreds of articles and books long. Great book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The gorgeous displays and ads for the medium are compelling, February 5, 2002

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paint by Number: The How-To Craze that Swept the Nation (Paperback)

William Bird Jr's Paint By Number traces the history of a movement which swept across the country and created many a budding novice artist. Chapters provide plenty of color photo examples of a changing industry which recognized an unfulfilled desire in the common man to be an artist. The gorgeous displays and ads for the medium are compelling, even for the non-artist reader.