The Queens of Animation

The Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History by Nathalia Holt 379 pages

This is a great companion book to the book about the Women  of Ink & Paint at Disney, which was published a few years ago. The author goes into great detail of the story of the women of Disney Studios who had a hand in shaping the iconic films the studio created. These influential women had to fight stereotypes, and try to persevere in an industry ruthlessly dominated by men, and whose names were almost never in any of the films' credits.  Showing how these women infiltrated the boys' club of Disney, into the story and animation departments, is very eye-opening and an integral part of film history.

The author takes the reader through the early days of Disney, before Snow White was created, up to modern times, all the while keeping the thread of the influence these women have had throughout the history of the company.  Definitely a fascinating read if you are interested in Disney history, but also if you like to discover more about women's history that has been untold (until now).

Nicole Eisenman

Nicole Eisenman by Nicole Eisenman, Beatrix Ruf, Lynne Tillman, Laurie Weeks, and Nicola Tyson

Harcover: 96 pages

Nicole Eisenman is a contemporary artist, best known for her paintings (though she also works in installation, printmaking, and sculpture), and a 2015 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow. This book came out in 2011 and features many handsome reproductions of Eisenman’s paintings and drawings from the mid-90s to about 2010. Check out this book to look at the paintings, of course, but you’d be remiss to skip the writing, which includes an introduction by the editor/curator Beatrix Ruf, an interview with the artist, and a short story.  In the interview, conducted by the author Lynne Tillman, Eisenman talks about her approach and evolution as a painter, and the early influence of art history on her work  – particularly Italian Renaissance and Gothic art. She points out how she built from the ruins of these traditions, imbuing them with her specific world of characters, abjection, subconscious desires, and importantly, humor. She also addresses feeling constantly disappointed by feeling forced to define herself and her paintings in terms of gender, when to her, “all in life and painting is fluid.”  Speaking about her newest paintings at the time, she explains how she reassessed her formal approach, deciding to become more painterly and less controlling – that is, to let the paint itself claim as much or more meaning than the image. This changing approach can be seen in the range of paintings featured in the book. The author Laurie Weeks provides a surreal and hilarious meta-story about writing a story for a Nicole Eisenman book, in which the author and her cohorts pontificate on the artistic and political implications of Eisenman’s work, and totally eviscerate capitalism and patriarchy in the process. I enjoyed it immensely and can’t think of a better introduction to the paintings in this book. Recommended!

 - Aleta L.

Romanesque Art in Europe

Romanesque Art in Europe, edited by Gustav Kuenstler, 322 pages

The Romanesque style of art and architecture flourished during the eleventh and twelfth centuries.  As illustrated in Romanesque Art in Europe, its reach extended from Sicily to Scandinavia, with corresponding local variations, from Byzantine influences in Italy to the "insular style" of Britain.  The versatility of the Romanesque embraces both the ornate exuberance of the Cluniac monasteries and the severe plainness of the Cistercians.  

Often dismissed as artless and clumsy, particularly when contrasted with the Gothic style which it birthed, this book demonstrates the power of Romanesque, from impressively detailed stone portals to soaring interior spaces to wonderfully expressive sculptures.  The book is filled with fantastic full-page photographs, but, sadly, none are in color, which rather reinforces the popular image of medieval art as grey and monotonous.  The captions manage to compensate for this shortcoming, providing each image with a paragraph of commentary and context.

Reformation of Images

The Reformation of Images: Destruction of Art in England 1535-1660 by John Phillips, 210 pages

Over the course of little more than a century, beginning in the reign of Henry VIII and cresting under the Protectorate, religious art in England, ubiquitous in the Middle Ages, was sought out and destroyed in churches, marketplaces, and even in private homes.  As John Phillips relates, this destruction was driven by a complex set of religious and secular motives, chiefly the fear of idolatry, the rejection of matter in favor of spirit, growing suspicion of the human imagination, concern for public order, and simple greed.  He demonstrates how doctrines concerning the use and abuse of images were inextricably tied to other doctrines involving the sacraments, the ministerial priesthood, the cult of saints, the veneration of relics, monasticism, pilgrimages, and the entire social dimension of the Church.  The rejection of sacred images, or their acceptance, was thus emblematic of an entire worldview.

The first half of the book, covering the period up to the Elizabethan settlement, is solid, but has largely been superseded by Eamon Duffy's masterpiece The Stripping of the Altars.  The second half, discussing iconoclasm and the definition of Anglicanism as against Puritanism under the Stuarts and Cromwell, is equally good, and has not, to my knowledge, yet been surpassed.

From Dawn to Decadence

From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life: 1500 to the Present by Jacques Barzun, 802 pages

For this impressive work, noted public intellectual Barzun drew upon a lifetime of reading and teaching to chart the great intellectual rivers flowing out of the springs of the Renaissance and Reformation, their tributaries and distributaries - Analysis, Reductionism, Abstraction, Self-Consciousness, Individualism, Emancipation, Primitivism, Scientism, and Secularism.

The book gives the effect of listening to a brilliant, garrulous lecturer as he takes the reader on a tour of the past five centuries.  Although he sometimes gets his facts wrong, some of his interpretations are questionable, and some of his conclusions are debatable, the breadth of his learning and charm of his delivery bears the weight.  He gives his own philosophy about two-thirds of the way to the end: "attend most carefully to the big points and judge the importance of details by their consequence."  The unorthodox construction, with relatively few endnotes, quick parenthetical page references back or forward, pull quotes, and reading suggestions embedded in the text propel the narrative briskly forward.  The narrative itself may be Barzun's greatest achievement, imagining the present as a part, and not necessarily the most important part, of an ongoing story, and thus attempting to reawaken a sense of historical consciousness at the end of an age.

A Paris Apartment

A Paris Apartment by Michelle Gable
378 Pages


This book was previously reviewed by another person on this blog in August so I won't go into a lot of detail, you can read that entry below.  I also enjoyed the novel which was based upon a true event.



http://slplbookchallenge.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-paris-apartment.html