According to Schmid, the book will "revolutionize the art world," and he may very well be right. I often wonder who makes art books, and for whom the makers intend the publications, when I pick up the books and find horrible reproductions in collections which are already anemic in the quantity of images. In the case of this book, Schmid has had a hand in the entire process of compiling the book, including self-publication, so it promises to be very good.
Alla Prima: Everything I Know About Painting was Schmid's first self-published book by his own publishing house, Stove Prairie Press, LLC. When Kristen Thies of West Wind Fine Art originally tried to find a publisher for Richard's Alla Prima, she approached four of the major art-book publishers, three of whom rejected the book's proposal because its market was "too selective." The final publisher returned the proposal unopened. Schmid was forced to issue the book himself, if he wanted to see his 15 year project come to fruition. Now in its eighth hardcover printing from Stove Prairie, and also available in paperback, it is clear that an art book of high caliber like Alla Prima has a significant audience.
With more and more artists like Schmid controlling the presentation of their own art, we are likely to see the major publishers finally follow suit in order to compete. Vive la révolution!
8 comments:
That is so exciting. I loved Alla Prima and was thinking of buying his old landscape book from the 70's - I think I will just wait for this one. Thanks for the heads up.
Great! This guy is out there to help us all!
Jeremy- I believe that the new book will be more of a collection of Schmid's landscapes, with some paintings shown in progressive steps. His landscape book was more of a how-to (I don't have the '70's landscape book, but I do have the figure book from then, and it is a how-to).
Incidentally, this is the first of his new books. The next one is on the figure, then I think their will be a still-life book to follow.
great!
is there a press release somewhere you sourced this info from? Or is it just your recount from hearing the announcement in person?
Adam-
Some is from memory, and some is from Katie Swatland, who is working with Richard on this book project. She is Schmid's current protégé, and I emailed her directly for the added information.
ah great. yes I have signed up to Katie's online classes so will expect to hear more on it through her :)
Thanks again, and thanks for the informative blog - I havn't commented here before but it has been a valuable resource for me. Thanks :)
I checked out the original landscape book from a library and scanned it to create a personal pdf years ago. I have read both of the old landscape and figure books. They were almost identical regarding instruction with only the subject being different. Each dedicated chapters to basics even using the same images of palette and tools as I recall. These were from a different era when 3/4 of the images were in B&W. I have gathered color versions of a few here and there as replacements.
Considering the present and anticipated future economy I don't think major publishers will do more than hope they can sign Schmid to a deal. Other author's resembling Schmid by circumstance will still have to do what he did. Perhaps these people can organize a pre-publication sale to generate funds utilizing a growing online network of interested people connecting through forums and blogs. Fortunately Schmid is a true Renaissance Man. It would be great if someone with the wherewithal organized pre-sales for such people as Jack Faragasso who has no publisher for his updated book on painting.
BTW, I learned of the June 6th Salmagundi Club presentation through this blog even though I regularly check Schmid's website for new activity. It was not on the front page where new paintings and DVD's had been in the past. Other than the annual auction, public appearances are rare so I did not routinely check through the entire site. However, it was too late for me to make all of the arrangements to attend. I am hoping this will at least turn up on a future DVD.
There are a few books published each year which are wonderful, but there are still too many which are poor. I am speaking mostly of the images contained within the books.
The books will be published; that's how they make their money. When the economy gets worse, you're more likely to see mergers, and fewer titles newly in print.
Thankfully, printing has gotten easier and cheaper; the expectation should be that the quality and number of images in an art book will increase. Unfortunately, a lot of people in the production of these books just don't care. I have recent books on major artists where the images are no better than third generation photocopies!
It could be a matter of expense in obtaining the images for use from museums and art repositories which stands in the way of better books. It could also be that the institutions which provide pictures of their public domain paintings need to update the quality of the images they sell. Of these, I'm not sure.
The Chinese Zorn book, though, is an example of how, even cheaply done, an art book can be made up entirely of decent color images.
Michael- There are still tickets available at theatremania for the video feed of Schmid's presentation. That is what I ended up purchasing. You won't be in the same room as Schmid when he speaks, but you would be in Salmagundi at least. When he is done, it would be easy enough to mingle with Richard and the other artists from the show who are in attendance. Maybe I'll see you there.
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