Customer Reviews

Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is an intense book filled with a lot of beautiful reproductions from some of the best contemporary painters today. It is a great resource for artists and art lovers alike. I highly recommend it; you will own this book for years and still be able to flip through it and find something new because there are SO MANY artists in it!

(On negative aspect of the book, for some people, is that the type is very small and might be hard to read for people with vision problems. This didn't really both me though.)

I wanted a resource book that spoke about contemporary painters of today. I was tired of walking into chain book stores and seeing shelves filled with books detailing works by painters such as Picasso, Marc Chagall, O'Keefe and other wonderful artists who molded the richness and wonder of modern painting. I wanted to know what's new in the art world without resorting to glossy art magazines and trips to distant galleries. I wanted to see more works by female painters. Vitimin P is my answer. I'm glad to see that female painters such as Cecily Brown, Lucy McKenzie, Elizabeth Peyton and Karen Kilimnik are highlighted in this book. The brilliant Marlene Dumas is also included within the pages of Vitamin P. Talented men such as Denis Castellas and Merlin Carpenter are givin equal time. The book is evidence that painting is alive, evolving and strong today.

Schwabsky manages to pull together precise & intelligent critical essays of an enlightening array of painters from all over the world. The selection of images from each artist's oeuvre is generous. Big names like Currin and Ghada Amer appear alongside lesser-knowns with little academic biases. The only beef, really, I have with this wonderful volume of contemporary painters is the miniscule sizing of the actual text. Tedious to acknowledge, but the problem is actually distracting. This may be natural hierarchization, but the text size is 6 or 8, at the most. Have plenty of focused light nearby when turning pages & enjoy!

As an artist, I'm glad I live now instead of at some earlier time in history because today's artist is a wonderful combination of social activist and priest or priestess. A book like Vitamin P contains a superb sampling of a huge number of the world's most talented contemporary artists, and in my opinion, everyone who wishes to understand and be inspired by the contemporary art scene could profit from owning a copy.

Everybody needs a dose of Vitamin P if you're a painter. Cutting edge. Includes almost all the painters you want to see and some you don't. Informative and knowledgeable. Highly recommended . A must for painters stuck in the '50s and '60. The only negative is that the print is tiny and difficult to read.

This book is full of images...unfortunately they are so unoriginal and overworked that it is bound to disappoint a reader looking for richness of paint and depth of content. Most of the art lies on the surface of the ground and seems very influenced by design. To my eye, a lot of photos were used as reference for the portrayal of the human figure which "deadens" the content for me. Unless you are a fan of several of these artists, I would avoid the investment.

i waited for this book with anticipation after reading the good reviews. unfortunately, the best thing about it is the cover. some of the work may push mediums in creative ways, but there is no under-girding of strong content (ideas, philosophy, world views) behind it, nor are the formal aspects very strong. it's almost all surface, and i don't mean rich paint surface. basically, there is no heart here, and very little head. i don't like giving bad reviews, but in this case i can't help it.

this could be a standard introduction to contemporary painting to art school under grads. Nearly everything current finds it's space. This fits many personalities into one space, a tough task, but accomplished well

This book is not as great as it sounds. The write ups about each artist are typeset in a very unfriendly tiny sans serif font--totally a strain to read! and it's only an OK selection of contemporary painters in my opinion. Not worth the money.

I purchased this very interesting and unique book as a review for
a grad student. It was well-received, but I regret that it had small type.