Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Here's Looking at Me : How Artists See Themselves by Bob Raczka
This is an unusual way of looking at paintings. The self-portraits of 14 artists are pictured with accompanying commentary on the artist and the painting. Not all of the artists are widely known, although famous ones are represented. Fascinating facts will appeal to readers who may be inspired to look further at the artists' other works. Deceptively simple, this book asks interesting questions and helps us look at pictures in new ways. Among the artists represented are Van Gogh, Chagall, Velazquez, and Norman Rockwell. This can be used in art classes in grades 5-8.
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I would like to second this one. I am getting ready to share this with our art teacher. I know she has at least one grade level that works on self-portraits ... I think that students will find it interesting to observe how different each self-portatrait is and that in some cases the person is very prominant in the paiting while in other cases their presence is quite subtle. Didn't we have a Chuck Close biography on a Best Books list? His self-portarait is one of those included and might pair nicely with the biography. Photo credits are listed in the back. One thing that I wondered about and would love to know if others did as well... sometimes interpretations of the portraits were discussed and I wondered if these were personal interpretations of the author based on general knowledge or if they reflected more specific research about the particular artist... I guess I wanted a bibliography as well. Still, this seems like a very useful, quality tool in an area where we might not have titles already.
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