Tome or tomb?

No other recent publication better epitomizes everything Hol is not trying to do with art books than Phaidon's latest tome, The Art Museum. Two-and-a-half inches thick and weighing in at a reported seventeen-and-a-half pounds, this encyclopedic survey of art is 992 pages long, has more than 3000 images, took ten years for its editors to put together, and retails for $200. I've had a draft of a blog post about the book sitting in the queue for more than two months now, but have found the whole thing too maddening and sad to finish up. 

My issue with the book is spelled out in their own description of the thing as "unrestricted by the constraints of physical space". Think about that for a moment. Think about describing a printed book as unconstrained by physical space.... Of course, they meant unrestricted by the physical space and geographic location of museum buildings and collections (in the Museum Without Walls sense), but it's baffling that they didn't take this idea a step further, to its next logical progression, and bring their "boundless" book online, where it actually could be boundless. To put the extreme amounts of time, effort and money into a project like this that they did, and to come out the other end with a "suitcase full of rocks" is just sad.

That "suitcase full of rocks" quote? Oh, that's from Holland Cotter's review of the book in the New York Times. Of course when the phrase appears in the opening paragraph of Cotter's review, it directly references only the "size and weight" of the book, but by the end of the article it's clear that the statement sums up Cotter's overall opinion of the thing's content and presentation. And for that, I must say, I was grateful. Grateful that I wasn't the only one struggling with the problematic conception and execution of this book. Grateful that even the old guard of the art world wasn't willing to sidle up to the old guard of the art book publishing world and take it lying down. Grateful that he reviewed the book so I didn't have to. I highly recommend you go read it. Not as a put-down of the book itself, but as a call to action for how future projects like this might, and should, go. Here's the insightful and meaty conclusion:

"In a sense, The Art Museum may be most valuable precisely for helping to push the analog-versus-digital-book debate along, and even more for prompting ideas about the need to think about old museums in new ways—ways that it doesn’t itself explore."

Amen.

Art fiction in the New York Times Notable Books selection

No art history or artist biographies made the New York Times annual Notable Books selection this year, but there were four novels that made the cut in which art is a central theme, or an artist a central character. Below are the listings from the Times' selection, along with links to the original reviews.

The Art Student’s War, by Brad Leithauser (Knopf, $28.95)
In midcentury Detroit, a young woman searches for authenticity and passion in art and in love. Review 11/29/09

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, by Geoff Dyer (Pantheon, $24)
This haunting novel is like a rough guide to transformation: moving from scenes of erotic decadence to scenes of squalor, the death it describes is that of craving, of intention, even of self. [The protagonist is an art critic, and the first half of the book takes place at the Venice Biennale.] Review 04/19/09

The Lacuna, by Barbara Kinsolver (HarperCollins, $26.99)
This novel, about a boy’s memorable bonds with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Leon Trotsky, is a call to conscience and connection. Review 11/08/09

The Sky Below, by Stacey D'Erasmo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24)
It’s hard not to be seduced by D’Erasmo’s selfish hero, an artist whose hunger for expression, for a father and for a home embodies a sense of entrapment that could make anyone behave badly. Review 01/11/09