Customer Reviews

Vincent Desiderio: Paintings 1975-2005

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Vincent Desiderio's first major book - something many of his admirers have waited for some time to finally see - is fulfilling on a number of levels. The expansive, richly formatted book is a joy to hold and flip through. The images are given plenty of space and there are many fold-outs for larger works. This is definitely a studio book, a teaching book - perfect for in-class discussion as well as personal reflection.

The three texts in the book (two essays on specific works, one interview), provide a great insight into the ways and means of the artist's work. The in depth looks at specific works afford the reader/viewer with new perspectives on Desiderio's entire body of work, and offer rewards for more lengthy consideration of the poetic vision within each work.

The depth of Desiderio's engagement with his process, ideas, and the history of painting is both awe-inspiring and daunting. He is a master of his craft and a deft intellectual, able to very precisely describe what he's trying to do while never losing the absolute primacy of the act of painting. In many ways he is a conceptual artist and the facture of oil painting his most potent expressive tool, yet his intuitive responsiveness, his sensitivity to the nuances of the creative work - what happens that we can't plan - is so refreshing. The interview Donald Kuspit conducts with Desiderio is a real treat. It reflects an artist both deeply intellectual and sincerely feeling; yes, we can be both.

This book is absolutely essential for anyone interested in what's happening in figurative painting today.

Were there a possibility of a 10 Star rating, this book would easily qualify! As produced by Marlborough Gallery and published by Distributed Art Publishers, Inc. VINCENT DESIDERIO PAINTINGS 1975 - 2005 is everything a fine art monograph should be: entertaining, informative, spiritually moving, and visually illuminating.

Vincent Desiderio is one of our finest contemporary artists in America. His long and successful career has been marked by restoring life to figurative painting, creating canvases that do not shy away from social comment, philosophical investigations, or creative explorations. His paintings vary from small works on paper to huge canvases, vast triptychs, and deeply felt personal statements from drawing to canvas. He has managed to address the human spirit, the plight of survival in a society not always friendly, matters of destiny, of altered life, of illness, of death, and other tragedies and heroisms. His own son Sam born with a devastating birth defect is the subject of a series of now famous paintings that speak of suffering in a very personal way. There is nothing maudlin in his repeated paintings of Sam: what is projected is the love a father and the innocence of a child born into suffering but somehow negating the negative aspects of it all.

As if the generous number of illustrations of over one hundred of Desiderio's works weren't sufficient alone to move the reader, the book is greatly enhanced by sensitive essays by Lawrence Wechsler who wisely opens the book with a well illustrated tale of Desiderio's 'Sleep', a painting 96.5" X 288" that belongs to Seven Bridges Foundation in Greenwich, CT - the still titled 'work in progress' says volumes about the artist and the man; by Mia Fineman; and interview with the artist by Donald Kuspit, and a closing evaluation by Barry Schwabsky based on a painting 'Cockaigne' which summarizes all the influences in Desiderio's artistic mind.

The glory of this book is not only that it finally pays tribute to a brilliant genius of a painter, but that it also takes the time to include quality reproductions including five gate fold expansive depictions of his huge canvases. Words of praise fail: this book about this artist is one of the finest books to be printed in 2005. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, December 2005

If you are looking for a contemporary painter, whose craft is stunning and vision leaves you speachless, you have arrived. His love and understanding of representational imagery along with a gentle gift of irony and pathos is boundless. Gorgeous and worth every penny. The quality of printing and the design and presentation of the artist work gives you everything you could want when exploring Vincent Desidario's intimate and emotional world.

This is an excellent book covering Vincent Desiderio's work for those years mentioned on the title. My favorite subject is his own son, Samuel, who has been an inspiration to us all he has touched.

Excellent book, is a MUST, unbelievable artist, is a response to many people that surrender instead of confronting life problems, he simply takes this raw material to create ART, and he does it in a way only comparable with greatest of old times : Rembrandt, Velázquez & Caravaggio.
Photographs are amazing, the price is just a low contribution to what I have got buying the book
A modern figurative painter should buy it immediately !!!
Vincent Desiderio is undoubtedly a great master of our age, sorry : of our culture, time does not matter in this assertion