Matisse

by Gilles Néret

Book Overview

The extraordinary significance of the painter and sculptor Henri Matisse in the history of modern art, but also his influence, was no less decisive than that of his main rival, Pablo Picasso. In fact,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3822820636
• ISBN13: 9783822820636
• Release Date: December 2002
• Publisher: Taschen
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 2.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.8" x 10.1"

Customer Reviews

Matisse

Pretty good book. I used it for an essay at school and it provided some valuable information and was my primary source. I thought it was a little quote heavy, as half the book is quotes from Matisse or art critics. Some are valuable, but others are just useless fluff. For example, in the begining there is a page long paragraph devoted to why everyone called Matisse a "doctor" and a hedonist or something. It bears no significance to what Matisse did. I also wish that the book would have talked more extensively about his impact and effects on art. The book says some but the information isn't really centralized and its sort of here and there throughout the book. I wish there would have been a couple pages at the end or something about it. Otherwise there is a lot of pictures and they're all real good quality. Also had pretty good analysis of some of his paintings, like their meanings and compositional elements that make it great etc... It also covers his entire life, before Fauvism to paper collages. I recommend it.

Reproductions are great, text is boring

First and foremost, the reproduction quality is really good. That's the most important thing to look for in a book. I've purchased some books where some of the paintings are horribly reproduced. This isn't the case with this book. I am fortunate enough to live in Paris and I have went to the modern art museum to see the Matisse paintings in person and I am pretty satisified with the quality of the book. However, the text of the book is disappointing. I really got the impression that the author was just writing to fill in space. I didn't really learn much about his technique or much about him in fact. I quit reading the text half way through and just enjoyed the paintings. If you are just looking for good reproductions, this is a good book. If you want to learn more about Matisse and the artists of his time, I'd look at a few other books first, maybe you could do better.

A good book with accurate color

This is a wonderful book. The color seems very accurate. There are many artbooks with inaccurate color reproduced. I compared several photos in this book with the real Matisse's paintings, the color is all accurate.

A nice journey into Matisse life

If you love Matisse, you will surely like this book. This volume provides a nice balance of biographical and analytical information on Matisse, along with excellent reproductions.