January 2023 MBR The Art Shelf

The Art Shelf

The Oil Painter's Color Handbook
Todd M. Casey
Monacelli Studio
c/o The Monacelli Press
www.monacellipress.com
9781580935883, $45.00, HC, 320pp

https://www.amazon.com/Oil-Painters-Color-Handbook-Contemporary/dp/1580935885

Synopsis: With the publication of "The Oil Painter's Color Handbook: A Contemporary Guide to Color Mixing, Pigments, Palettes, and Harmony", artist Todd M. Casey provides informative instruction, including step-by-step demonstrations, and challenging exercises, with which even the most novice of aspiring artists will be able to learn how to apply these techniques and concepts to their own painting. Once educated with this fundamental knowledge, as an artist, anyone can begin to find the balance between the science and emotional intuition in creating art.

Critique: A coffee-table style volume (11.25 x 2 x 9.25 inches, 3.62 pounds), this edition of "The Oil Painter's Color Handbook: A Contemporary Guide to Color Mixing, Pigments, Palettes, and Harmony" is an impressively informative, visually dynamic combination of instruction manual and 'how to' guide book that will be of particular interest and value to artists, art students, and art instructors, as well as serious amateurs and dedicated hobbyists. Beautifully and effectively illustrated throughout, "The Oil Painter's Color Handbook: A Contemporary Guide to Color Mixing, Pigments, Palettes, and Harmony" is especially and unreservedly recommended for personal, professional, community, and academic library Oil Painting/Graphic Art Design collections and supplemental art studies curriculum studies lists.

Editorial Note: Todd M. Casey (https://www.toddmcasey.com), drawing inspiration from classical art, historical literature, and personal experience, imbues each piece of his artwork with a love of both pragmatic, corporeal form, and storied, intentional function. That is to say, every painting has a tale to tell; whether emergent from the viewer's own perception, or brewed from the very deep well of introspective thought, the artist inculcates with each brush stroke. Subtlety, refined grace, meditation, and honesty are the hallmarks of Todd Casey's artistic aesthetic. His paintings have been honored with awards, several times in recent years. Most recently, he won first place 3 years in a row in the Portrait Society of America Members Only Competition, and first place in oil painting from the Allied Artists of America, in 2015. His work can be found in collections throughout the United States; and exclusively on the East Coast, at Rehs Contemporary Gallery, in Midtown New York City.

Reimagining History from an Indigenous Perspective
Joyce M. Szabo
University of New Mexico Press
www.unmpress.com
9780826364098, $29.95, PB, 120pp

https://www.amazon.com/Reimagining-History-Indigenous-Perspective-Graphic/dp/0826364098

Synopsis: Few contemporary artists before the 1990s explored the culturally negative impact of the Spanish in the Southwest. Unreflective celebrations of the Columbus Quincentennial brought about portrayals of a more complicated legacy of Columbus's arrival in the Americas -- especially by Indigenous artists.

Through a series of etchings, Floyd Solomon of Laguna and Zuni heritage undertook a visual recounting of Pueblo history using Indigenous knowledge positioned to reimagine a history that is known largely from non-Native records. While Solomon originally envisioned more than forty etchings, he ultimately completed just twenty.

From nightmarish visions of the Spanish that preceded their arrival to the subsequent return of the Spanish and their continuing effects on the Pueblo people, Solomon provides a powerful visual record. These insightful, probing etchings are included in this important full-color volume showcasing Solomon's work and legacy.

With the publication of "Reimagining History from an Indigenous Perspective: The Graphic Work of Floyd Solomon", Professor Joyce M. Szabo positions Solomon among his contemporaries, making this vibrant artist and his remarkable vision broadly available to audiences both familiar with his work and those seeing it for the first time.

Critique: Impressively and informatively illustrated, "Reimagining History from an Indigenous Perspective: The Graphic Work of Floyd Solomon" is a meticulous and exceptionally well written study that will be of special appeal to readers with an interest in the impact that the Spanish had upon Native American Art and Culture. While highly recommended as an invaluable contribution to personal, professional, community, and academic library Native American Studies and Art History collections, it should be noted that "Reimagining History from an Indigenous Perspective: The Graphic Work of Floyd Solomon" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $29.95).

Editorial Note: Joyce M. Szabo (https://art.unm.edu/profile/joyce-m-szabo) is the Regents' Professor of Art History Emerita at the University of New Mexico. She is also a specialist in Native American art and museum studies and the author and editor of several books, including Howling Wolf and the History of Ledger Art (UNM Press).

The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World
Steven Nadler
University of Chicago Press
1427 East 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
www.press.uchicago.edu
9780226698366, $35.00, HC, 360pp

https://www.amazon.com/Portraitist-Frans-Hals-His-World/dp/022669836X

Synopsis: Frans Hals (c. 1582 - 26 August 1666) was one of the greatest portrait painters in history, and his style transformed ideas and expectations about what portraiture can do and what a painting should look like.

Hals was a member of the great trifecta of Dutch Baroque painters alongside Rembrandt and Vermeer, and he was the portraitist of choice for entrepreneurs, merchants, professionals, theologians, intellectuals, militiamen, and even his fellow artists in the Dutch Golden Age. His works, with their visible brush strokes and bold execution, lacked the fine detail and smooth finish common among his peers, and some dismissed his works as sloppy and unfinished. But for others, they were fresh and exciting, filled with a sense of the sitter's animated presence captured with energy and immediacy.

With the publication of "The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World", Professor Steven Nadler gives us the first full-length biography of Hals in many years and offers a view into seventeenth-century Haarlem and this culturally rich era of the Dutch Republic. He tells the story not only of Hals's life, but also of the artistic, social, political, and religious worlds in which he lived and worked.

Critique: Informatively enhanced for the reader with the inclusion of a two page listing of Acknowledgments, thirty-two pages of Notes, twenty-two pages of References, and an eighteen page Index, "The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World" is an impressively work of meticulous research and scholarship, making it a very special and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and academic library Artist Biography and History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "The Portraitist: Frans Hals and His World" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $26.49).

Editorial Note: Steven Nadler (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Nadler) is a professor of philosophy and director of the George L. Mosse/Laurence A. Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author, most recently, of Spinoza: A Life, which won the 2000 Koret Jewish Book Award for biography, and Spinoza's Heresy: Immortality and the Jewish Mind.

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