Robert Tanitch’s round-up of books No 2
BODY OF ART (Phaidon £39.95). This is a splendid and engrossing book, wide in its scope and each page a joy: the poise and elegance of Raphael, the bravura brushwork of Renoir, the unflinching realism of Freud, the graphic sexuality of Schiele, the rawness of Spencer, the bawdiness of Beardsley, the carnality of Balthus, the intensity of Rubens, the savage dissonance of Picasso, la gloire de Delacroix, the carcass of Bacon, the agony of Caravaggio, the Rococo of Fragonard, the chaste and the erotic of Goya, the seediness of Dix, the puberty of Munch, the despair of Grosz, the shame of Masaccio, the rape of Bernini, the elongated distortions of El Greco. There is also the Chapman Brothers courting scandal, Agnes Sorel exposing her breasts at the Court of Charles VII and Tunick providing naked human flesh en masse. The captions are wonderfully succinct
PERSIAN PAINTING by Adel T Adomova and Manijeh Bayani (Thames & Hudson £45). The Arts of the Book and Portraiture. The catalogue of The Al-Sabah Collection in Kuwait offers manuscripts, miniature paintings and book bindings dating from the 11th century to the early 20th century. Superbly presented, this handsome book is absolutely fascinating for anybody interested in Islamic and Persian art. There are scenes at court and in the bathhouse and on the battlefield. The plants and animals are exotic. The calligraphy is elegant. The images are rich. Page after page of exquisite delights – a book for scholars then, but also a book for lovers of beauty.
THE BOOK COVER IN THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC (Taschen £44.9). Dust-jackets from 1919-1933. The graphics and images, drawing their inspiration from Dada, Expressionism, Bauhaus and Constructivism, are undeniably bold, impressive and strikingly forward-looking. The novels of Upton Sinclair get the full treatment. But the overall impact of all this aggressive art work is so brutal and so bleak as to be (what you would expect it to be) a disturbing and depressing commentary on the era before the Nazis came to power and made things worse. There is no joy; all is dour, emphatic, ruthless and grim. Grosz shows what’s to come with a man kissing a jackboot.
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