My coffee-table is full of plates
David Ekserdjian
CCW
hat is the use of a book," thought Alice, "without pictures or con- versations?" ' The art book, with its inevit- able double-act of plates and text, would have suited her down to the ground, and I imagine she would have enjoyed this aut- umn's crop of them as much as I have. Even if good illustrations are easier to come by than good writing these days, and the successful combination of the two tends to remain an elusive ideal, almost no art books do any actual harm. In fact the only conceivable fear is that the sheer quality of their reproductions will make people re- gard them as substitutes for the real thing, whereas even the best of them turn out to be painfully inaccurate when compared with the originals. As John House puts it in his Monet: Nature into Art (Yale, £19.95): I can only hope that this text, with its illustrations, will encourage its readers to return and return again to whatever origin- als they can see.' The works are what matter, but art books are more than mere reminders: they effect juxtapositions we cannot, and allow us to see paintings that have been destroyed, that are in South America or the Soviet Union, or simply in private collections. Occasionally they re- veal details not visible in front of the objects themselves. The haul that has filled my Christmas stocking to bursting point consists of a predictable mixture of general studies, monographs, and catalogues, with a strik- ing predominance of books on the Renais- sance and the Impressionists. In the main the prices are distinctly frightening, but it may be some consolation to bear in mind the fact that while some books are far too expensive at £20., others are absolute snips at £40. The Sistine Chapel: Michelangelo Revealed (Muller, Blond & White, £40) is a case in point, and has to be top of my 11. It is the next best thing to the unique experi- ence of being on the scaffolding, and will give people the chance to make their own minds up about the controversial cleaning of the Sistine ceiling. The photographs reveal just what an inspired painter and dazzling colourist Michelangelo was, and are accompanied by eminently readable and often highly original essays on the Chapel by the acknowledged authorities in the field. All other books on the subject are now obsolete, although funnily enough the progress of the restoration means this one is already out of date too.
By contrast, Francis Ames-Lewis's The Draftsman Raphael (Yale, £25) sets out to look at its subject as the dust settles after all the exhibitions, restorations, mono- graphs, and conferences spawned by the 1983 quincentenary celebrations of the artist's birth. Drawings are considered not merely as beautiful ends in themselves, but also as parts of a process leading to a finished work of art. With an artist like Raphael, who drew for a purpose rather than for the fun of it, such an approach cannot fail to be illuminating. The third Renaissance offering, Sergio Bertelli's Ita- lian Renaissance Courts (Sidgwick & Jack- son, £25), is more history than art history In spite of its numerous and unusual illustrations, a splendid introduction to an absorbing and eccentric world of banquets, festivities, triumphal entries and state funerals. Magpie-minded lovers of charts and diagrams will find it particularly hard to resist.
Turning to the four Impressionist books, John Rewald's classic Cezanne (Thames and Hudson, £40), originally published 50 years ago, is now transformed and ex- panded from a study of the friendship between Cezanne and Zola into a straight biography of the painter. It is full of impressive colour reproductions of un- familiar as well as familiar works, and also contains a large number of photographs of Cezanne's world, many by the author, taken before it vanished forever. John House has also taken photographs, but he concentrates more on close study of Monet's technique, his work out of doors and in the studio, and his changes of mind (pentimenti), without neglecting historical considerations or subject-matter either. He reminds us that Monet's 'I would like to paint as the bird sings' was a dream, and the result is the kind of book that gives doctoral theses a good name. The Impressionist Revolution (Orbis, £25), a collection of essays on the seven big names of the movement edited by Bruce Bernard, is both less radical and less detailed in its approach, but well worth reading and brilliantly designed. Like so many Impressionist pictures, it is wider than it is tall — an obvious enough idea, but one that is all too seldom adopted. Finally, in Melissa McQuillan's Impress- ionist Portraits (Thames & Hudson, £16.95) 'Impressionist' is taken to include a number of fringe figures, 'portrait' means any picture of a person, and 'it is hoped that these images reveal the complicated and never static nature of both Impression- ism and portraiture, and that they raise questions and elude fixed readings.' I am not sure I know what 'fixed readings' are, but I do know that there are better and worse readings, and trust — for instance — that hers are better than mine. Otherwise there seems little point in filling a book, however lavishly illustrated, with them.
Degas painted a portrait of Tissot, but his friend was no Impressionist, which cannot have helped his reputation in the past. Now, on the other hand, his worth is recognised, and Christopher Wood's Tissot (Weidenfield & Nicolson, £20), an opulent study of his whole career, amounts to a confirmation as opposed to a rediscovery, and is none the worse for that.
Miro: Ninety Years (Macdonald, £19.95) is the only 20th-century volume on my list. It combines a minimal text by Lluis Per- manyer with works from every period of Miro's long life and a photographic record of the last 30 years of it taken by his friend Francesc Catala-Roca. The artist is seen walking the streets of Barcelona, dining with friends, but above all working — sploshing paint about with brushes, fin- gers, buckets, and even watering-cans. Full of joie de vivre and blessedly free of hushed reverence, this is the best sort of hagiogra- phy.
In conclusion, there are two catalogues: Ray Desmond's Wonders of Creation: Natural History Drawings in the British Library (The British Library, £25) is pre- cisely what it purports to be, an anthology that ranges from fantastical mediaeval herbals to meticulous 18th-century sheets of spiders, from Persian miniatures of the animals of the desert to prancing Mughal rhinos. Masterworks from the Gemalde- galerie Berlin (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £40) is a more conventional offering, but the reproductions are excellent and the entries are more intelligent and on the ball than the book's glossy format might lead one to suppose. The Man with the Golden Helmet, for example, is only 'attributed to Rembrandt', its genius fortunately undimi- nished by the unresolved problem of its authorship. I can hardly wait to see it again, but in the meantime my cup runneth over and my coffee-table is full.
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