A.Y. Jackson: The Life of a Landscape Painter
By Wayne Larsen, 265 pages, Dundurn, $60
The first full-length history of a Canadian icon? So it would seem, and an elegant one that treats the painter's life and works with reverence. Unlike most biographies, this one is presented in digestible segments that allow the reader's eye to flit from canvas to canvas without sacrificing the artist's life tale.
Painting Today
By Tony Godfrey, Phaidon Press, 448 pages, $90
Godfrey, director of research at Sotheby's Institute of Art, explores contemporary painting with prints displayed on quality stock. Against the rise of film, video, computer-generated graphics and multimedia art, Godfrey explains how painting has flourished from the inspiration of other art forms, abetting his opinion by quoting numerous artists. Chapters include Neo-expressionism, Ambiguous Abstraction, Death and Life, Post-feminism, Installation Painting and the Leipzig School.
Surrealist Painters: A Tribute to the Artists and Influence of Surrealism
By Sarane Alexandrian, Hanna Graham, 301 pages, $44
Neither this book's claim “that surrealism was the most important movement in art and poetry of the preceding century” nor its handy thumbnail mini-pedia of artist bios adds much to the raft of other available volumes. But the generous heaping of handsome reproductions of seldom-seen works offers fertile mulch for dreaming and a reminder that surrealism's oneiric juxtapositions – while often puerile, porny and thin on painterly effect – were also pretty cool a lot of the time.
Marlene Dumas
By Dominic Van Den Boogerd, et al., 238 pages, Phaidon, $79.95
A career retrospective of the acclaimed South African-born, Amsterdam-resident feminist painter whose figurations call up questions of race, gender, violence, sex and mortality, generally with unusual, haunting restraint – and then occasionally with blunt explicitness. As usual for Phaidon, it's a volume rich in commentary, interviews and other documentation, but the pages on which Dumas's pictures stand alone have the most impact, though you could be left wondering whether the style, both pictorial and intellectual, will soon seem dated.
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Art Deco Complete: The Definitive Guide to the Decorative Arts of the 1920s and 1930s,
By Alastair Duncan, Abrams, 544 pages, $162.50
Duncan is one of the leading experts in the world on art deco, and this, his 33rd book on the decorative arts, is his monument to the movement, the most glamorous decorative arts style and one that shaped popular ideas of modern luxury. With more than 1,000 colour images, the book deals with furniture and interior decoration, sculpture, paintings, graphics, posters, bookbinding, glass, ceramics, lighting, textiles, metal work and jewellery, and includes the work of all of the important art deco designers.
Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective
Edited by Michael R. Taylor, Yale University Press, 399 pages, $74.95
Lushly illustrated with colour reproductions, this catalogue accompanies the recent exhibition of the works of Arshile Gorky (c. 1904-1948), the first comprehensive look at the artist since the Guggenheim retrospective in 1981. It includes new biographical insights and several works reproduced for the first time. This book is fascinating and beautiful – a must-read for fans of this tragic and influential artist.
The Automatiste Revolution: Montreal, 1941-1960
By Roald Nasgaard and Ray Ellenwood, Douglas & McIntyre, 154 pages, $60
For the artist or art lover, or Canadian history buffs, this book showcases a particular turning point in Canadian art. In the 1940s, an group of Montreal artists helped to shape Canada's avant-garde movement by practising automatism, an instinctive, immediate approach to creating art. The Montreal Automatiste movement also included literature, theatre and dance, documented here with vibrant colour plates and archival images, and commentary by art historians.
Art of the Celts: 700 BC to 700 AD
By Felix Muller, 303 pages, Cornell University Press, $85
A major exhibition in Venice in 1991 celebrated the Celts as the first Europeans. The premise has some legs when discussing Celtic art, in that it was found throughout Europe, with unified themes. This informative book begins in 700 BC with colourful display pottery and proceeds through the centuries to book illuminations created in Christian monasteries in the eighth century. Concentrating on ornamentation as the Celts' main form of expression, weapons, helmets, chariots, pottery, jewellery and coinage are shown in colour and black-and-white photographs.
