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Friday, January 29, 1999

Essential Knowledge

BOOKS: True art afficionados ought to be familiar with a series of books

on artists like Van Gogh and Dali

By Harshan Jeyakumar

Daily Bruin Contributor

A small book containing around 100 pages can seldom comprehensively capture the life of a great artist. Discussion about an artist's work alone should conceivably be longer, let alone that plus a synopsis of his or her life.

Nevertheless, the "Essentials" art book series ($12.95 each) provides in each brief edition a quick but insightful overview of a great painter with a concise biography and explanation of his artwork.

Created by the Wonderland Press last year, each of four pocket-sized books is devoted to a particular artist. Salvador Dali, Jackson Pollock, Edward Hopper and Vincent Van Gogh are the first painters to be "essentialized" in the series.

Each book contains at least 50 illustrations of the painter's works. The authors spread pictures and the accompanying biography material throughout the book in a loosely chronological order, thus creating, a story book.

The discussion about the life of the artist is restricted to key turning points and interesting anecdotes, split up into small sections. Many key words and phrases are in bold, making it quite simple to simply skim through the book.

Certain pages also feature revealing quotes made by or about the artist.

"Dali is the only painter of LSD without LSD," says one of the quotations of Dali's eccentric works.

The illustrations of the works are found on almost every other page, in varying sizes and mostly in color. Aside from small sections in which the author digresses from the flow of the story for an in-depth discussion of an artist's major work or concept, "The Essential" provides easy reading. The book is full of information about the artist, his genre and how he affected the time and artistic movement in which he lived.

It is apparent that the authors of "The Essential" were interested in keeping the books short enough to keep the readers enraptured, but they have also made a conscientious effort to explain the artwork and its context to those who are (or wish to be) more knowledgeable about art.

Whenever a major artistic movement is discussed, the details are explained in separate sections that straddle the side of the page or are set aside on their own page or pages. This is also done for significant people, usually other artists, and institutions that influenced the subject significantly.

For example, due to the Sigmund Freud's huge influence on Dali, this artist's book includes a four-page section that discusses the psychoanalyst's work. The psyche, the unconscious, dream processes and Dali's own paranoiac-critical method are assessed in lengthy fashion relative to the rest of the explanations found in the book. This is followed by a one-page discussion on Dali's major form of art, surrealism.

This all suggests that the authors of "The Essential" wish to be considered serious experts about their subjects and more than simply people doing PR work for dead artists. Indeed, much can be studied and learned from these biographies, but in no way can they be substituted for textbooks for a serious study of art history.

By choosing these four artists, "The Essential" has already covered widely diverse topics such as impressionism, surrealism and modernism. The three writers behind the first four biographies seem to have the writing skill, along with a certain extent of expertise, to adequately cover an artist. They do not unnecessary praise the artists or express excessive awe of their talents; they give a fair analysis of each painter's strengths and weaknesses, in both art and life. Plus, the readers are given a chance to think for themselves and form an opinion about the artist's works and capabilities.

"So ... was Dali great? You've seen his work and considered his life. Ask your instincts; they will tell you," concludes Dali's biography, leaving readers to decide for themselves.

Overall, "The Essential" is effective in communicating basic information about very complex artists. The strength of the books lies in the way they are written, with audience as their top priority. Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

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