Customer Reviews

Secret Lives of Great Artists: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Master Painters and Sculptors

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

 

 

Not too bad. It's like an art history review with some extra tips you don't learn in class. The really juicy parts don't have too much detail though, unfortunately.

This is not only a well-researched book about the great art masters' lives but also a book full of laugh-out-loud humor. Who knew, as pointed out on page 48, that several of Michelangelo's assistants quit during the four years it took to complete the ceiling of the Sistine chapel - "..hardly suprising since the team lived together and shared a single bed. Since Michelangelo believed bathing was bad for his health, the staff may have been eager to make for the door as soon as possible."

Recommended for serious art history students, teachers, and those of us that just enjoy funny stories.

I have just finished my book after reading it for mmm... maybe half a day. I have to say I had high hopes for this book at first glance. I really wanted to see what kind of dirt the writer had to offer. And I have to say that I was none to impressed with the research. I mean the title itself is a little misleading. But perhaps its because I majored in Art and am teaching it myself. But while reading the book, I felt as if the writer could have put more effort into "finding out secrets" instead of just reitterating the ones we already know. Yes she put together a nice short summary for each artist, but the illustrations in the book were probally the only interesting parts of this book. If I had wanted a short biography of each artist, this book would have been great. If your looking for more than what you learned in your College Art History classes or from Wikipedia, this book is not for you.

I found this to be succinct and fascinating. This is my 3rd 'Secret Lives' book and I think this one is right on par with the authors and composers editions. Great short reads, not meant to be a complete history of anyone, obviously, but perfect at someone at a moderate knowledge level of a subject. Makes me interested to know much more about some of these artists. Great series!

I enjoyed this book a lot. I did know a lot of the information already (I minored in Art History and teach high school art) it's kind of nice to have all of this fun information compiled into one book. I love sharing some of the (appropriate) information in this book with students because it really helps them remember artists and their work. I've also got to say, I love the illustrations in this book--they're hilarious!

I like this - I wasn't an art major, but have always been interested in art & artists. So, these stories and little snippets are new to me. I enjoyed the insights into the artist's most famous work, but wish that those images were displayed in the book - I kept having to go to the internet to get an image of what I was reading about.

This is a strange little book, apparently designed for people with ADD who are more used to busy website pages than to traditional books. We get different colored print (black, then red) for paragraphs and different font sizes on the same page. (Page 84 has a rather glaring line-setting problem that a proofreader should have caught.) We also get illustrations by Mario Zucca that look like the cartoons from underground newspapers of the 1970s. These illustrations are not of the major paintings being discussed, but they are representations of events in the artists' lives. True, we don't need to see what the Mona Lisa looks like, but there are some paintings with which I wasn't familiar, so I had to go to the internet to call the pictures up.

There is too much repetition, as if the chapters were written independently of each other. The bawdy story of Marcel Duchamp drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa gets repeated word-for-word in two different chapters.

The author's tone is very snarky. Lots of sarcasm. It's like an art student in some community college is trying to prove how above it all he really is. A little of it goes a long way. A lot of it becomes insufferable.

I'll admit that the author knows a lot about art history and delights in giving us the juicy scandals. But there are big problems in other areas, where his knowledge seems to be, shall-we-say, weak. He has King Louis XVI convening the Estates-General in 1798, five years after his decapitation. He tells us that Who the $#%& Is Jackson Pollock? is about a man trying to authenticate a garage sale purchase of a possible Pollock painting; sorry, it's about a WOMAN who made that purchase. And his command of basic grammar is shaky at best: he has no idea how to position an apostrophe in plural possessives, he uses "pour over" instead of "pore over," dangling modifiers apparently appeal to the surrealist in him.

I used to like this approach to a survey of a subject when it was written by someone like Richard Armour, but I'm older and more discerning now, so I was turned off by this infantile little book.

Secret Lives of the Great Artists is a sister volume to Secret Lives of Great Authors. These two books were recently published by Quirk Books.
This slim volume contains text and humorous drawings of the artists.
The author is Elizabeth Lunday; the artist is Mario Zucca.
Thirty-Five famous artists have their lives surveyed. Artists profiled include Leonardo, Rembrandt, Michelangelo, the Impressionist and such modern artists as Jackson Pollock, Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol. The book is a treasure trove of trivia such as these examples display:
Vincent Van Gogh enjoyed eating paint which may explain his weird behavior!
Frieda Kahlo had an affair with Leon Trotsky and enjoying bathing her 300 pound artist/husband the rotund Diego Rivera
Caravaggio murdered a man in a brawl.
Henri Rosseau was once convicted of bank fraud.
Gustav Klimt was terrified of traveling outside Vienna
Along the way the author provides tidbits about the Mona Lisa being without eyebrows; the Venus de Milo and Pre-Columbian art.
This is a fun book which pay interest young people in art.

The author doesn't seem to be very well informed on anything more than what basic school books tell us. Add to that her own personal bias of morals and values and you certainly have a one-sided view into the lives of people that have left us much more than this book every will.

This book in surprising came in sooner than i thought. It's was in good condition and no problems.