Today I received my copy of Zorn in America: A Swedish Impressionist of the Gilded Age by William and Willow Hagans. It seems like a thoroughly researched book, with a wealth of biographical information on the artist, and I look forward to reading it. I cannot at this time comment on the written content of the book. However, I do feel able to report on the images in the Hagans' work on Zorn.I am first and foremost an artist, so the plates in a book on any painter are what I am often most interested in, and unfortunately, this book is not the best source for pieces by Zorn. Although there are several photographs, etchings, and black and white representations of portraits by Zorn which I had not seen before, the color plates are few, and better represented elsewhere. Of the over 130 images contained within the 390 pages, there
are only 19 color plates spread over 16 pages.
If you are an artist interested in studying more images by Zorn, then I suggest you spend a little more and get the Zorn (Chinese) book I mentioned in an earlier post. However, it is quite possible that Zorn in America will provide a perfect companion book to Zorn (Chinese), offering an English text to the images of the latter book. I'll report back as soon as I get the chance to read what was obviously a major undertaking by the Hagans.
4 comments:
I cannot wait to purchase this book. It looks amazing. Thanks.
thanks for this review - can't wait to get this book!
From what little I've read it's well written and interesting. Matt, did you notice some of the color plates are smeared by printing lines? Really disappointing from the lack of plates, though the etchings are nice to see more of.
Thanks, Colin. I haven't even had the chance to read the dust jacket (though I liked the picture of Willow wearing Zorn's wolf-fur coat on the inside flap). I'm glad it's turning out to be good.
The plates in my book only seem to suffer from too high contrast, though there are 2 pages which show some damage during printing (creases in the paper) which affected the images.
The Zorn Chinese book was sold out the last time I checked the link to the gallery I provided. They were selling it for $59.95. I haven't done an extensive search for the book elsewhere, but the only other site which I know sells the book, is offering it for $104.00! It has a nice selection of etchings, too.
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