Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra: Art Edition [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Bill Buford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2, 2007 | ISBN-10: 3822851930 | ISBN-13: 978-3822851937

Natural selection ?A Ford exhibition is like a storybook in which animals have inherited the earth.? ? The New York Times, New York Walton Ford's life-sized watercolors of animals could be mistaken for 19th-century natural-science illustrations or British colonial paintings. Except they?re not. Something strange and usually sinister is happening in each of Ford's works, whether it's a turkey crushing a small parrot with its claw, a collection of monkeys wreaking havoc on a formally set dinner table, or a buffalo surrounded by a pack of bloodied white wolves? in the middle of a proper French garden. Executed with the deft skill of a natural-history artist, Ford's works vibrate with an intensity of uncanny familiarity; they are both reassuring in style and disturbing in content. With titles like Au Revoir Zaire, Dirty Dick Burton's Aide de Camp, and Space Monkey, his paintings not only blur the lines between human and animal history, but also open the doors to a world of real-life fantasy, dreams, and nightmares. For this hand crafted, limited-edition volume, Ford's paintings have been color-separated and reproduced in Pan4C, the finest reproduction technique available today, providing unequalled intensity and color range. The book includes 12 horizontal and 4 vertical foldouts, along with dozens of details, which present the work at a scale that practically allows the viewer to enter the ancient and peopled landscapes, feel the brush of a bird's feathers against flesh, and experience the hot breath of a wild cat about to go for the jugular. Collected together for the first ever in-depth exploration of Walton Ford's oeuvre, Ford's bestiary takes its name from one of the texts hefrequently cites in his work: The Pancha Tantra, the ancient Indian book of animal folktales collected from the 3rd to 5th centuries B.C. that is considered to be the precursor to Aesop's Fables. Stories derived from many of the texts that served as the germinal seed for these paintings fill the book's appendix; and an original essay by New Yorker staff writer Bill Buford substantiates the notion that this contemporary artist is more than just one to watch, but one who will stand the test of time. Presented in a handsome clamshell box and limited to a total of 1,600 copies signed by the artist, Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra?available in both Art and Collector's Editions?belongs in any serious collector's library. Special features: ? Limited to 100 individually numbered copies, each signed by Walton Ford ? Accompanied by an original six-color intaglio print, Limed Blossoms, created by Walton Ford especially for this book with the cooperation of the Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York ? Printed on acid-free paper ? Finished with a sumptuous calf-leather leather cover with gold embossing ? Packaged in a luxurious calf-leather clamshell box The print: Limed Blossoms is a six-plate hardground etching, aquatint, spit-bite aquatint, drypoint etching with scraping and burnishing. The plate size is 30.5 x 22.9 cm (12 x 9 in.) on 47 x 35.6 cm (14 x 18.5 in.) paper. Working with master printer Peter Pettengill at Wingate Studio, New Hampshire in 2007, Ford used the traditional techniques of line etching, aquatint, drypoint etching, and spit-bite aquatint to make the print. The edition of 100 copies was printed by hand on 100%-cotton archival-quality Rives BFK paper, using an American French Tool etchingpress. Each print is numbered, and personally signed by the artist. About the artist: Walton Ford grew up in Westchester County, New York, in a family of gifted storytellers. As a child he was an amateur naturalist?collecting animals, hiking, fishing, and devoting much of his free time to examining and drawing the dioramas and specimens at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He completed his studies in filmmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1982, but soon adapted his talent for storytelling to painting. His life-size watercolors, which at first glance appear to be in the vein of 19th-century natural-history painters like John J. Audubon or Edward Lear, are actually complexly layered fantasies depicting wild animals in unnatural settings and situations, and cite textual sources ranging from the letters of Benjamin Franklin to the journals of Leonardo da Vinci. Ford lived in New York City for most of the 1980s and ?90s?home base for personally and professional influential travels to countries including Italy, India, and Mexico?and for some years supported himself as a wood refinisher, carpenter, metalworker, and illustrator, while developing his craft and audience. His work has been exhibited widely since 1987 at private galleries and public institutions including The Whitney Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, Michael Cohn Gallery in Los Angeles. He has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. He now lives, works, and hikes in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts. About the author: Bill Buford was the fictioneditor of the New Yorker for eight years, where he first came upon Walton Ford's work to illustrate some of the stories he published. He is now a New Yorker staff writer. He was also the founding editor of Granta and has written two books, Among the Thugs and Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as a Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany. He lives in New York City with his wife Jessica Green, and their two sons.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Special features:
* Limited to 1,500 individually numbered copies, each signed by Walton Ford
* Printed on acid-free paper
* Finished in Luxor book cloth with a leather spine and corners with gold embossing
* Packaged in a clamshell box covered in Luxor book cloth --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

From the Author

Walton Ford grew up in Westchester County, New York, in a family of gifted storytellers. As a child he was an amateur naturalist--collecting animals, hiking, fishing, and devoting much of his free time to examining and drawing the dioramas and specimens at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He completed his studies in filmmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1982, but soon adapted his talent for storytelling to painting. His life-size watercolors, which at first glance appear to be in the vein of 19th-century natural-history painters like John J. Audubon or Edward Lear, are actually complexly layered fantasies depicting wild animals in unnatural settings and situations, and cite textual sources ranging from the letters of Benjamin Franklin to the journals of Leonardo da Vinci. Ford lived in New York City for most of the 1980s and '90s--home base for personally and professional influential travels to countries including Italy, India, and Mexico--and for some years supported himself as a wood refinisher, carpenter, metalworker, and illustrator, while developing his craft and audience. His work has been exhibited widely since 1987 at private galleries and public institutions including The Whitney Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, the Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York, Michael Cohn Gallery in Los Angeles. He has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, among others. He now lives, works, and hikes in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 354 pages
• Publisher: Taschen (December 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 3822851930
• ISBN-13: 978-3822851937
• Product Dimensions: 25 x 20.3 x 5.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 29.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #11,207,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a buy!, September 23, 2009

By 

Keith "JazzLeopard" (staten island, ny, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra (Hardcover)

I'm a huge fan of Ford's work, and I've been trying to get some printed resources for a year. All the calendars and previous boooks are out of print or too expensive, so when this edition became available at this price I almost went nuts.

And this beautiful book does not disappoint. The color plates are gorgeous, the wonderful pages showing details are crisp, and the superb text by Bill Buford is illumnating. I am ecstatic about this purchase. One of the best deals I have ever had on Amazon.com.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The 2009 Art Book of the Year, January 15, 2010

By 

Daniel Clode - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra (Hardcover)

This book at 15 inches tall is packed full of reproductions of panoramic wildlife paintings by Walton Ford. Ford is what you might loosely call a naturalist - a painter of nature with an old fashioned sense of fidelity to the anatomical proportions and whiskered details of God's creations. On top of that he is a fantasy artist who flings his animal subjects into crazy social situations of mischief, conflict and comic chaos. While some of the scenes he paints involve implausible situations, he gives the animals a credible sense of character. Vengeance, humour, calculation - these are just a few of the thought processes infused into the faces and the gestures of these animated beasts.

The original artworks reproduced in this book are monstrous large, with many of the animals (alligators, great apes, tigers etcetera) at least as large as life. Prize of the herd in this book may be the multi-panel painting of a male elephant on heat, titled Nila. At 3.66 metres tall x 5.49 wide, the original artwork is quite literally the size of a young elephant. Playing upon the intimidating size and power of many of these wild animals, Ford often paints them in situations of victory over man. A painting dated 1596 shows a lumbering polar bear triumphant over the bones and personal effects of an explorer, while in the background a shattered sailing ship creaks against an arctic shore.

Also unusual is that these works are all watercolours, painted onto huge sheets of paper. Watercolour normally lends itself to modest, even miniature work, because of the difficulty of handling the medium across large surfaces without washes drying in inconvenient places. Furthermore watercolour on paper is unforgiving when mistakes are made and the consequences of the risks are greater when the painting is on a gigantic scale. Ford works skilfully in the medium making heavy use of the "dry brush" technique - a method that avoids bleeding, helps keep brush lines precise and allows the overlay of variegated colour (for instance to paint a mass of silky fur).

To admire the original massive works, which can cover whole gallery walls, viewers would need to stand several metres back. Ford aides the viewer with some sharp linework, a technique has a secondary benefit of allowing the works to reproduce wonderfully well in book format. Pancha Tantra includes a nice mix of cropped close-ups bled to the edge of the page - allowing us to study the overlay of wash and brushstrokes, with long shots of whole works - at a size where we can still appreciate the fine detail. On my count this book displays 72 artworks on single pages and a further 41 spread across double pages. In addition there are 43 pages with crops of interesting details, plus 17 double pages devoted to cropped highlights. Some artworks have several pages devoted to them, including the wide shot and multiple close-ups.

The background washes on Ford's paintings include mock mould spotting and branching mildew, to make the paintings look ambiguously like nineteenth century prints. At first glimpse the effect is deceptive. But these artworks are far more lively than conventional stiff animal portraits. And the wit and allegory packed into some of the works can make the viewer do a double-take. While these images are show beautiful beasts and colourful fauna, the situations depicted include some moments of drama and visceral brutality.

The only disappointment to this book is the absence of any chapter on Ford's working methods or career story. There is only a two page basic `Biography' that includes a chronology of exhibitions, awards and references to previous media stories on the artist. Perhaps the Collector's Edition with its additional 34 pages has a more rounded biographical treatment? Maybe I'll have to save for it and find out!

This book provides a marvellous folio of artworks to the mass market and does this at an agreeable price. Many of the main competitors to Taschen would have charged at least twice this price for a book this scale. The post-release price won't last and shouldn't last, it is too good to be true for a book of this size and quality. This is an abridged version of my full review on Art Book News at blogspot.

Book specs: Hardcover 320 pages, 15 x 11.4 inches, 173 colour illustrations (across 231 pages)

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pancha Tantra is Amazing, September 10, 2009

By 

E. Alis (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walton Ford: Pancha Tantra (Hardcover)

This book is absolutely amazing! I only learned of Ford after seeing his work on the cover of naturalist book of essays and was instantly captivated. I am happy to finally have a book with so many wonderful images of his art, both full images of the paintings as well as close-ups of certain details. Ford's incredible work is wonderfully presented in this affordable edition.