Customer Reviews

The Picture in Question: Mark Tansey and the Ends of Representation

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

 

 

I would first like to address the ridiculous one star review below. The fact that this book presents no pictures of the works themselves does not prevent it from being an invaluable guide to understanding his paintings. Anyone with access to a decent arts library or a computer can quickly become familiar with his paintings. Within 10 minutes of googling Tansey's name, I found a fan site with a large bank of images, titles, and dates, and happened to contain all major works discussed in this book. I would highly recommend familiarizing yourself with his work before reading this book for a more enjoyable and educational experience.

The book's description is very accurate in stating the accomplishments of Taylor's work. His ability to put Tansey's paintings in an art historical, philosophical, and theoretical context is astonishing and necessary in order to fully appreciate the depth of the artist. This book successfully explains the fundamental argument put forth in Tansey's paintings, that representation is not dead, it has only changed form. Taylor does this by exposing the illogical reasoning behind much of modern art criticism.

Being a student of the arts (which dismisses any grammatical errors in this review) with a bias towards representational painting, I particularly enjoyed insights into his painting method, use of monochrome, and process of composing studies for new works. Some of the chapters contained information relating to chaos and complexity theory were a bit over my head but interesting nonetheless. Enjoy

Knowing that Tansey was consulted on the making of this book, it serves as a great guide for Tansey's work. The chapters are deep, and not anyone can appreciate them, but that does not discredit Taylor's in-depth precision on so much of Tansey's works. I am usually critical of criticisms of works, but that is why this book is so great. It enhances, and besides Cauley, sometimes Bloom, few critics can do this to the subject matter at hand. A must for the serious Tansey student.

I felt compelled to write a review to balance out the (somewhat silly) one-star review given by T.Swank. It is true that the book does not include any pictures of Tansey's work, but Taylor clearly explains the reason for this in the Preface (before the publishing date, Tansey changed his mind and refused to allow Taylor to reproduce any of his paintings). In opposition to the previous reviewer, I hardly think that this gives us any good reasons to simply dismiss all the content of Taylor's careful and insightful reflection on Tansey's paintings.

This book is an exceptional resource for anyone interested in Mark Tansey's work, but it is much more than that. This book is a meditation on representation itself, and like all of Taylor's work, it offers valuable thinking on the subject. This is a helpful resource for anyone interested in art theory or visual studies.

I was so excited to expect an exploration of Tansey's work and analyzation of his beautiful pieces firsthand, and was immediately let down by the lack of one essential part... PICTURES!!! Where are the pictures you may ask? IN OTHER BOOKS THAT ARE OUT OF PRINT OR DIFFICULT TO FIND! So while the exploration and interpretation of Mark Tansey as an artist and such may be fun to know and learn about, it is completely useless without any sort of immediate visual reference in the book. And so this book is truly useless unless you go and catalogue/hunt down all of the pieces Taylor is refering to...and good luck there. If you are to buy or read this book, make sure you have other visual aids.