It never fails. Publishers of art books announce more good titles than ever get to newspapers before holiday gift recommendations.
Then they compound the problem by issuing more titles during the dead of winter.
And, finally, at the beginning of spring, comes yet another release, which one is sometimes tempted to put aside until the fall harvest-and the first of the books for the next Christmas.
Well, no more of that. Fine art books have been so plentiful in recent years that they demand, at the very least, a quarterly roundup. Herewith, the first installment:
Alexej Jawlensky: Catalogue Raisonne of the Oil Paintings, Volume I 1890-1914, by Maria Jawlensky, Lucia Pieroni-Jawlensky and Angelica Jawlensky (Sotheby`s, $395).
Jawlensky was a Russian-born army officer who, as a cadet, saw the paintings in the 1880 World Exposition in Moscow and found they redirected his life.
After study with Ilya Repin, the most celebrated realist painter in Russia, Jawlensky settled in Munich where he founded, with Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Munter, Alfred Kubin and others, the New Artists` Union, an association that preceded the more famous Blue Rider.
Jawlensky`s style was expressionistic, with simple forms, heavy outlines and broad areas of color. But, as he often said, art was for him ”a nostalgia for God,” and he attempted to make his paintings vehicles for the expression of religious mysticism.
The landscapes and Breton heads that Jawlensky painted in 1905 were the first in which he departed from what he saw to what he felt. The landscapes and large figures painted in 1911 went further, using colors not at all naturalistic or objective.
Both sequences appear in this first volume of a scholarly catalogue compiled by the artist`s daughter-in-law and granddaughters. Preceding a listing of 631 paintings are a biographical outline and a memoir by the artist, as well as the text of one of his letters, to painter Willibrord Verkade.
There are no individual commentaries, and not every painting is reproduced. But of the 750 illustrations, the 80 in color are unusually powerful, contributing to a sterling project on behalf of one of the greatest but least-known early moderns.
Felix Vallotton, by Sasha M. Newman (Abbeville, $65).
The Swiss painter and printmaker Vallotton was one of a group of turn-of- the-century artists who somewhat jokingly called themselves the Nabis
(”the Prophets”) and followed Paul Gauguin`s ideas about the emotional and decorative use of color.
However, apart from his remarkable woodcuts, Vallotton is less well known than colleagues Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, so much less, in fact, that his first international retrospective exhibition is only now on tour of North America. The monograph accompanying the exhibition presents essays by seven scholars on all aspects of Vallotton`s career plus selected unpublished correspondence and much documentation, making the volume the best single source on this strange and elusive artist.
Music: A History, by Jean-Yves Bosseur (Skira/Rizzoli, $85).
Audiences for serious music are not usually the same as for visual art, though throughout the centuries they have included countless painters and sculptors.
Bosseur, a composer and director at the National Center of Scientific Research in Paris, examines the attraction from ancient times to the present in an illuminating text that surveys how artists have used music as a subject for their works and often have attempted to translate it into a pictorial or sculptural medium.
If the title of the book is deceptive, Bosseur`s artistic analyses are not. Excellent reproductions.
Caro, by Karen Wilkin (Prestel, $55).
Britain`s most honored living sculptor receives the treatment his work deserves, thanks to superb color photographs by John Riddy and a sensitive text that treats eight themes central to the artist while giving an overview of his contributions to 20th Century sculpture. All artists should be treated this well.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler Pastels, by Robert H. Getscher (Braziller, $65).
Any number of books will give an introduction to Whistler`s paintings and prints, but this is the first to present a wide selection of pastels, gloriously reproducing them in large format, with commentary, one per page. The text is intelligent and to the point, providing a foil for excerpts from the often windy criticism of Whistler`s time.
Hokusai, by Matthi Forrer (Prestel, $65).
Last month, the Royal Academy of Arts, London, closed a retrospective exhibition of prints, book illustrations and drawings by the great Japanese master Katsushika Hokusai. The catalogue is one of the loveliest of the year, vividly reproducing 132 works that have separate entries from the specialist who also provides a succinct overview.
The Loves of the Gods: Mythological Painting from Watteau to David, by Colin B. Bailey (Rizzoli, $75).
The first comprehensive exhibition of 18th Century French mythological painting, which opened at the Grand Palais in Paris late last year, had an indispensable 588-page catalogue. Now it appears in translation, presenting five scholarly essays, short biographies on all the artists and commentaries for every one of the show`s 67 paintings.
View: Parade of the Avant-Garde 1940-47, compiled by Catrina Neiman and Paul Nathan (Thunder`s Mouth, $35).
View was one of America`s liveliest publications devoted to avant-garde literature and visual arts. It had a surrealist bias that has not aged well, but much of what Neiman and Nathan have assembled is still high in
distinction. Production values are vanilla plain.
Victor Horta, by Franco Borsi and Paolo Portoghesi (Rizzoli, $85).
Horta was the Belgian architect whose work proved central to defining the exotic turn-of-the-century style known as Art Nouveau. He created a number of the most extraordinary buildings of the period that this volume, the first on him in English, examines through 500 illustrations, half of them in breathtakingly evocative color.
Pop Art, An International Perspective, edited by Marco Livingstone
(Rizzoli, $60, $35 paperbound).
Pop Art began in England, continued in the United States and spread to France, Italy, Spain and Germany. This bouncily designed volume, the catalogue for the large 1991 exhibition at London`s Royal Academy, brings all manifestations together, tracing its legacy to art of the 1990s in a reevaluation both timely and sound.
Monticelli, by Charles and Mario Garibaldi (Skira/Rizzoli, $95).
Adolphe Monticelli was a 19th Century French painter who gained little attention during his life but exerted influence over such later artists as Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne. No reproductions do justice to his impasto and color, but many in this sumptuous Skira production come close. The text is scruplously written, covering the artist`s landscapes, portraits and still lifes as well as their impact on subsequent generations; a pity it is limited to readers of French.
