Bento's Sketchbook

"A deceptively brief volume offers profound meditations on art, the creative process and so much more.
Berger has long been difficult to categorize—philosopher? art critic? essayist? novelist?—and his latest defies pigeon-holing even by the standards of this British-born writer who has long lived in France. Let's start with the title, which alludes to a long-rumored but never-found sketchbook by the philosopher Spinoza, to whom Berger refers affectionately as "Bento" (the nickname for Benedict) and whom he excerpts liberally. In fact, dozens of passages from Spinoza's Ethics, accompanied by drawings from Berger (perhaps channeling Spinoza) and others might give this the appearance of an illustrated abridgement of that work. Yet Spinoza is more of a springboard, as Berger delves deeply into the processes of making and responding to art, of thinking and being, of narrative and history, of the essence of humanity. Taking inspiration from the possibility of a Spinoza sketchbook, the author "began to make drawings prompted by something asking to be drawn." In the process, he began to focus on what he drew and why he drew, connecting the creation of art to everything from philosophy to politics to religion. Each of the prose pieces—some as short as a paragraph, few longer than a couple of pages—is self-contained, yet this volume isn't exactly a collection of essays, for none are titled and all are thematically interconnected as well. Whether he's extending an analogy that compares making a drawing to riding a motorbike or discusses storytelling in a manner that could apply just as well to drawing ("In following a story, we follow a storyteller, or, more precisely, we follow the trajectory of a storyteller's attention, what it notices and what it ignores..."), he makes such interaction and interconnection seem central to the human condition.
Berger's readers will see with fresh eyes." Kirkus.
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The Storyboard Artist: A Guide to Freelancing in Film, TV, and Advertising

Any student studying film production has heard, "You must storyboard!" but most curricula gloss over instruction. Film production freelancer Cristiano reveals the sense behind storyboards—cinematographic visualizations and breakdowns of shot composition that directors can use to conceptualize the story before the shoot. Savvy producers and crews can similarly use them to plan setup tools, stage a scene, and even approximate a budget. There is not a formally accepted structured curriculum or directed career path—often storyboarding is a professional sidestep taken by those trained to be artists or directors—so books on the topic tend to be a mashup of studies including drawing, cinematography, script analysis, visual writing, and directing. Cristiano effectively communicates a route in an organized and career-sensible manner: storyboarding definitions, equipment guide, how to draw (techniques), storyboarding in advertising, working with directors and producers, and the business side (contracts, bookkeeping, promotion, and freelance). Library Journal.
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Abstracts: 50 Inspirational Projects

Abstract artists aim to make unseen ideas visible, and this inspiring guidebook collects 50 abstract exercises for painters looking to expand their abilities and build their expressive repertoires. From purely conceptual compositions to emblematic interpretations of real objects, instructor Rolina van Vliet offers concrete insights into how each project moves from an assemblage of brushstrokes into an expressive idea. Accompanying each exercise are numerous detailed photographs that demonstrate the application of various media and methods, showing paintings that range from atmospheric, textured, and nuanced to raw, powerful, and vibrant. The accompanying buying guide provides artists with additional advice on choosing supplies and other materials.
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R. Crumb: The Complete Record Cover Collection

Crumb is probably the preeminent living cartoonist, but he has a secondary legacy that stems from his passion for American roots music, particularly early blues, jazz, and country. He captures his relationship with his record collection in a typically incisive opening comic strip, laying out how his collecting mania has become as much a sickness and a burden as a love of the music itself. The rest of the book, revised from a limited edition published in 1994, is given over to a gallery-style presentation of the hundreds of record covers he has drawn, from Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills in 1968 to the present, and other assorted bits of music-related art created during the past four decades. What sometimes gets lost under the weight of the neuroses and fixations that Crumb has never been hesitant to overshare in his comics is the fact that he's a tremendous natural artist, and that fact is nowhere more evident than in the portraits of musical greats scattered throughout these pages, from Lightnin' Hopkins and Jack Teagarden to Frank Zappa and even a banjo-pluckin' Crumb himself.(Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)
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The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer

This is an extraordinary biography, not merely of Adele Bloch-Bauer, the subject of one of Gustav Klimt's most famous paintings, but also of the work itself and the world of early 20th-century Vienna. The painting "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" (1907) was famous before its record-breaking purchase in 2006 at $135 million by Ronald S. Lauder for his New York-based Neue Galerie. Through her painstaking research, O'Connor ("Washington Post") manages to capture the cultural, historical, and political climate that gave birth to this painting. She describes the anti-Semitism that permeated early 20th-century Vienna and the role that Jews played (often as outsiders) in that society. Stolen by the Nazis during World War II and renamed "The Lady in Gold" (to avoid any hint that its subject was Jewish), the painting was at the center of an eight-year battle by Bloch-Bauer's niece Maria Altmann to regain her family's legacy. (Library Journal)
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Andy Warhol: 365 Takes: The Andy Warhol Museum Collection

The Andy Warhol Museum has been open for 10 years, and its staff continues to marvel at the complexity of Warhol's oeuvre and its resistance to easy interpretation. To reflect this chimerical quality, and the quantity, breadth, and variety of Warhol's provocative multimedia exploration, they have created a chunky volume of 365 images that samples Warhol's drawings, paintings, silk screens, films, photographs, self-portraits, celebrity portraits, and collectibles. The result is a potent survey of Warhol's preoccupations, collaborations, artistic styles, and keen response to a materially abundant yet often emotionally and morally vacuous world. (Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)
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The Serpent and the Lamb: Cranach, Luther, and the Making of the Reformation

This compelling book retells and revises the story of the German Renaissance and Reformation through the lives of two controversial men of the sixteenth century: the Saxon court painter Lucas Cranach (the Serpent) and the Wittenberg monk-turned-reformer Martin Luther (the Lamb). Contemporaries and friends (each was godfather to the other's children), Cranach and Luther were very different Germans, yet their collaborative successes merged art and religion into a revolutionary force that became the Protestant Reformation. Steven Ozment, an internationally recognized historian of the Reformation era, reprises the lives and works of Cranach (1472-1553) and Luther (1483-1546) in this generously illustrated book. He contends that Cranach's new art and Luther's oratory released a barrage of criticism upon the Vatican, the force of which secured a new freedom of faith and pluralism of religion in the Western world. Between Luther's pulpit praise of the sex drive within the divine estate of marriage and Cranach's parade of strong, lithe women, a new romantic, familial consciousness was born. The "Cranach woman" and the "Lutheran household"--both products of the merged Renaissance and Reformation worlds--evoked a new organization of society and foretold a new direction for Germany.
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