nonfiction nuggets…the colorful art of Horace Pippin

A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin, by Jen Bryant, illustrated by Melissa Sweet

Horace Pippin, of Pennsylvania, completed his first oil painting in 1930 when he was more than 40 years old. By that time, he’d lived a whole lot of life. The grandchild of slaves, Pippin had worked, and studied, and worked, and drawn, and worked some more, until World War I broke out and Horace left for France.

Not only was the trench warfare he experienced there horrific, Horace was shot in his right shoulder. This injury severely limited his use of that arm for the rest of his life.

Yet Horace hungered to paint so much that he taught himself to grasp his right wrist with his good left hand and guide it along, first burning designs into wood, then picking up a paint brush and painstakingly creating over 140 paintings. Horace painted scenes of the war, and scenes of common life, scenes of nature, and Bible stories.

A self-taught artist, Pippin’s work has a primitive feel — plain in perspective, yet rich in appreciation for the beauty of ordinary aspects of life — women at work in the home, children playing, men singing on a street corner. He often painted in bright splashes of color — rag rugs and quilts, head scarves and the glowing fire of a woodstove, sing out to

Giving Thanks by Horace Pippin

us of the joy Pippin found in the commonplace.

Jen Bryant has written a wonderful biography of Pippin, crammed with juicy, vivid descriptions of Horace’s life and art. The darkness of war is there, the grit and toughness of life is there, but washing through the entire account is a wave of joy. Beautifully cohesive, concrete, and absorbing, this is a winner for ages 5 and up.

Melissa Sweet’s exuberant illustrations in watercolor, gouache, and mixed media are as enticing as a new box of crayons! So much lavish color! If you look at a selection of Pippin’s work on-line, you will have great fun spotting bits and pieces of his artwork incorporated into her illustrations. Really fun! Wonderful, hand-lettered quotes from Pippin are set into a number of pages.

A lengthy historical note,  notes from author and illustrator about their process of creating this book, and many leads for further investigation of Pippin’s art,  are included. They say we have some of his work in Minneapolis, but I could not figure out where it is held. New in 2013, this book fairly bursts with life and beauty.

Here’s the Amazon link:  A Splash of Red: The Life and Art of Horace Pippin

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nonfiction nuggets…water, sunlight, and Monsieur Monet

Monet Paints a Day, by Julie Danneberg, illustrated by Caitlin Heimerl

It’s a sunlit morning in Étretat, France, and Claude Monet is on his way to the beach.  He has packed paints and palette, brushes and canvases, easel and stool, and he is off to try his hand at the massive stone arch — the Manneporte.

Monet pauses a moment to absorb the scene around him — the water, the rocks, the sand — and most of all, the light.  Monet is captivated by the way light reflects on water or rock or cloud,  producing  dancing, swizzling, fragmenting, ever-changing colors.  As a painter, he is determined to capture his impressions of this interplay of light on the scenes before him.  Since the light constantly changes, through movement of the sun, cloud cover, atmospheric changes, Monet never has long to paint each precise moment.   He works furiously.  He concentrates enormously.

And that’s the reason for a mighty big surprise for Monsieur Monet on this particular outing!  But I won’t spoil it for you!

Julie Danneberg has written an entirely engaging account of a true incident in Monet’s life.  Her story is not long on words, but packs in a terrific mix of sensory detail and  vivid particulars of Monet’s personality.  Additionally, in small asides, she fills us in on numerous interesting facts about Monet’s methods.  I never knew, for example, how few minutes at a shot he would work on a particular canvas before moving on to another when the light changed.  Quite fascinating.

A concluding Author’s Note gives a few more biographical details on Monet, and two pages of further information on his painting techniques will intrigue upper-elementary through adult readers.

Caitlin Heimerl has beautifully illustrated the book with her watercolors.  She captures the quaint French seaside town and the blue-smocked Monet, the sun-dappled rocky cliffs and ocean, using a style that perfectly suits the

Waves at the Manneporte, by Claude Monet

subject.  It’s a very appealing book, full of airy, light spaces, swimming in blues and glowing with golden sunlight. 

There are lots of books on Monet for young children; this one is a stand-out.  The main story is wonderfully suited to early-elementary age children, with the additional information on Monet creating a highly interesting read for all ages.

Here’s an Amazon link:   Monet Paints a Day

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a list of…five inventive artists who inspire and delight us

Chuck Close: Face Book, based on an interview by Chuck Close, created by Joan Sommers and Amanda Freymann, with Ascha Drake

Chuck Close is an incredibly influential contemporary artist who works on just one subject:  the human face.  Whether he’s painting a massive, abstract, oil portrait, or squeezing pulp-paper into a collage, etching, silkscreening, or using his own fingerprints — Chuck Close focuses on faces, on which he loves to read “a road map of a life.” 

Glue + Paper Workshop has created this incredibly unusual biography of Close.  It’s a fascinating read; it’s chock-full of reproductions of his work;  AND… it includes a way-cool, mix-and-match-the-faces section — awesomely inventive!

The book is based on an interview between Close and a group of 5th graders from Brooklyn.  Their questions steer the book in directions we are all curious about:  What made you start to draw?  Why do you only paint faces? Why doesn’t anyone in your art smile?  And, referring to the accident at age 48 which caused paralysis from his chest down:  When you were paralyzed, were you afraid you wouldn’t be able to paint again?  Close answers beautifully.  Without talking down, he articulates his thoughts in language elementary students can grasp, honestly revealing many technical, philosophical, and emotional elements which undergird his art.  

Meanwhile, about one-third of the book is printed on sturdy cardboard pages, sliced in thirds, each of which has a full-page self-portrait done in a number of styles and mediums.  Foreheads generally take up the upper third, mouths and chins rest on the bottom, eyes and nose take up the middle.  Flip the pieces back and forth to compile brand new Chuck Close self-portraits!  Brilliant!

The book is rounded out with a graphic timeline of Close’s life (he’s still living, mind you), a list of some of the museums where you can view his work, (For those of you in Minneapolis, the book does not mention that we have the mindboggling “Frank” hanging in the MIA, and a number of gorgeous portraits at the Walker Art Center, so do go see them after you read this book!), along with other resources, a nice glossary of art terms, and more.  It’s like a triple-scoop ice cream cone:  the yumminess just keeps going and going and going… Highly recommended for ages 8 and up.  

Sandy’s Circus: A Story about Alexander Calder, by Tanya Lee Stone, illustrated by Boris Kulikov

Have you ever seen a mobile?  Thank Alexander Calder, the playful, inventive artist from Connecticut who experimented with dancing, whimsical, wire.

The child of artists, Calder began dabbling with wood, leather, and wire as a child, creating clever toys that entertained and delighted.  Moving from engineering to art as an adult, Calder took a job sketching scenes from the circus, which prompted him to return to the wire he loved and create an elaborate, ingenuous miniature circus.  Flying trapezes and high wire walkers, curly-maned lions and prancing ponies — Calder’s circus could pack up in a crate, then be set up to entertain audiences for hours.

Calder is most known for his mobiles, of course –his colorful, geometric pieces, suspended on thin, sweeping arms, elegantly hanging, gently bobbing, in air.  They are a joy to see.  Mobiles belong to the list of ideas that, when once brought to life, seem so essential to the world, so obvious almost, we cannot imagine that for millennia they did not exist.  Yet that bright, cheerful mobile suspended over your baby’s crib is a descendant of Calder’s genius.

This is a short, accessible story, focusing on Calder’s wire circus, that will introduce children as young as 4 to this brilliant artist.  Kulikov’s bright, sunny illustrations fill the pages with enthusiasm and optimism and liveliness.  I love the Muse who gads along, inspiring Calder here and there on his life-journey!    Read, then look for Calder’s mobiles in a museum near you, including, Minneapolis-dwellers, the MIA and the Walker.

The Wonderful Towers of Watts, by Patricia Zelver, with pictures by Frané Lessac

Simon Rodia was an Italian-born immigrant who settled in Los Angeles in 1921, purchasing a small lot in the Watts neighborhood.  Known as Old Sam, Rodia was a bit of a quirky fellow, who worked in a tile factory by day. 

And by night?  Outside of his work hours, Old Sam was a collector…and an artist.  His collection included shards of colorful tiles, fragments of cobalt blue and emerald green glass bottles, bits of bright pottery and shimmering mirrors, quaint knobs and funky faucets.  Sam purchased cement and steel.  Then, without any fancy machinery, without any help, Old Sam began to build. 

Crazy towers, towering spires, eccentric spiraling sculptures began to rise from behind Old Sam’s walled yard.  On the surfaces of these steel structures, Sam affixed the gewgaws and doodads he’d been collecting, until a fanciful, fantastical, mosaic-adorned monument glinted against the blue-blue California sky.

The Watts Towers still stand, now on the National Register of Historic Places.  They are a grand spectacle of folk art, built by a man with a singular vision who just kept carrying on until he succeeded.  I’m looking forward to seeing them for myself when I visit L.A.  later this year.  This simply-told story grabs our attention, giving just enough details for kids ages 4 and up.  Just be prepared for some backyard construction projects in consequence!  Brilliant, sun-baked, jewel-colored gouache paintings by Lessac mimic the rustic and whimsical nature of Rodia’s artistry.

Vincent’s Colors, words and pictures by Vincent van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh wrote often to his brother, describing his paintings, telling a few of his thoughts about them.  In this beautiful book, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has paired sixteen of his paintings,with a short, evocative phrase of van Gogh’s to describe each one.  Using translations of the Dutch or French van Gogh wrote in, and setting them in pleasant rhyming patterns, the book calls our attention particularly to the colors he chose and his descriptions of them.

Chairs the color of “fresh butter,” and cypress trees “of a bottle-green hue.”  So satisfying to hear what he had to say about his own color choices, and then to have our eyes drawn to the other colors and brushstrokes he used in his dancing skies, undulating hills, and radiant stars.  

The book is beautifully arranged with a full-page, gorgeous reproduction set opposite a white page with just a short phrase walking across the middle of it; simple, undistracting, thought-provoking.  Children as young as toddlers can feast their eyes on these paintings, surely some of the loveliest in the world; can revel in van Gogh’s colors and textures; can be prompted to see and name the glorious colors in their own worlds.  Really lovely.

Romare Bearden: Collage of Memories, by Jan Greenberg

Romare Bearden was born in 1911 in Charlotte, North Carolina, and spent his artistic life in New York City before he died in 1988.  He was an African-American man who experimented with collage, focusing his art on the nitty-gritty of ordinary life and particularly on the history and culture of his people.

Bearden’s life was anchored in a childhood spent in places like  Harlem, whose streets were bursting with new immigrants trying to become those who truly belonged in America, and Pittsburgh, where the steel factories dominated the cityscape.  He stocked his memories with jazz singers and folk musicians, neighbors and friends rejoicing, mourning, dancing, working.  These bits and pieces of his life emerged in his complex, vibrant collages later in life.

Bearden experimented a great deal, cutting, painting, mounting, contrasting images and colors and placements until he achieved the style and rhythm and force he is famous for.  His massive collage “The Block” at the Met in New York, stretches 18 feet long by 4 feet high — an incredible representation of interiors and exteriors of an urban, black neighborhood.

This extensive biography by Jan Greenberg explores the influence of Bearden’s life and his artistic choices which culminated in his unique voice.  Lavishly illustrated with reproductions of Bearden’s works, Greenberg also often quotes from Bearden, seeking to help us understand the artist from his own point of view, rather than describing him from afar.  It’s a solid introduction to this thoroughly American artist which will help children ages 9 and up appreciate his work all the more when they see it.  

Here are Amazon links for these artistic biographies:
Chuck Close: Face Book

Sandy’s Circus: A Story About Alexander Calder

The Wonderful Towers of Watts (Reading Rainbow Books)

Vincent’s Colors

Romare Bearden: Collage of Memories

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nonfiction nuggets…art on a grand scale

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Through the Gates and Beyond, by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan

If you lived in New York City in 2005, you could have gone to see the largest work of art ever created.  Wending their way through Central Park, were 7503 brilliant tangerine fabric panels, created and installed under the direction of Christo and Jeanne-Claude.  They called their installation, The Gates.

The Gates stretched for 23 miles, all around the big backyard of bustling NYC,  orange frames fitted with saffron nylon curtains, all ready to be released in one glorious burst of color on February 12, 2005, for a world-wide audience charged up with curiosity over something so…huge, so…unusual, so…inexplicable.  What would it be like?

Beyond the artists’ dreams, that’s what it was like.  Beyond the wildest expectations of untold numbers of people who flew in from around the globe to experience the strangely exhilarating, happy display.

This fascinating book tells the story of The Gates, from conception to realization to its ending, just 16 days after the unfurling of the draperies.  It also introduces us to this unique, husband-and-wife artistic team and a number of their other wildly inventive artworks around the globe.  The book ends with the glimmerings of their newest project along the Arkansas River in Colorado.  Although Jeanne-Claude has since died, Christo is still working towards this  – a silver, 40-mile-long tunnel.  You can find out more about it here.

Photographs of the entire, detailed, enormous process of producing this massive installation, as well as a number of their other curious, outsized, outdoor artworks, enliven the large pages of this book.   See magenta-encircled islands off Florida’s coast, a brilliant orange curtain stretching across a gap in the Colorado mountains, and a billowing white fence running for miles through the hills of Sonoma County, California.  I’m guessing, even though you may have difficulty wrapping your mind around this art, your kids will think it is quite exciting!  

Here’s an Amazon link:  Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Through the Gates and Beyond

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nonfiction nuggets…looking at paintings through story

The Story of the World’s Greatest Paintings, by Charlie Ayres

This is a big, gorgeous, well-conceived book which wonderfully introduces us to twenty masterpieces, dating from the 15th to 19th century, by telling us the stories behind their creation.  Artists included are van Eyck, Uccello, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Bruegel the Elder, Velazquez, Vermeer, Chardin, Kauffman, Friedrich, Gericault, Constable, Courbet, Millais, Renoir, Homer, Morisot, Seurat, Cezanne, and Gauguin.

For each painting, Ayres tells an engaging story, in a narrative style, of the occasion of the painting, how it was painted, what it is about.  We get a glimpse of the artist’s personality and thoughts and process.  There is a beautiful color reproduction of the painting, as well as close-up details of it, a self-portrait or portrait of the artist, and one or two other works by that artist for comparison with the main painting.

Ayres also uses inset boxes to talk to us about certain details in the painting, to give us ideas and ask us questions as we compare the several pieces printed here, to give us a few trivia-type tidbits about the artist, list web-sites where we can view more of that artist’s work, and give some suggestions for an activity related to the masterpiece we’re contemplating.  Despite all this information, the page lay-outs are not busy, but graphically very pleasing.

Ayres writes in an incredibly pleasant style, communicating a great deal of information in a very approachable voice.  Without talking down for a minute, she reaches out to anyone from mid-elementary on up, pulling us into a world of wonder and observation and beauty, giving us excellent tools for looking at and thinking about art.

Included in the book are life chronologies for every featured artist, information on the museum where each painting resides, and a nice glossary of art terms.  This is a fabulous resource for anyone wanting to impart a love for great art to children.

Amazon link:  The Story of the World’s Greatest Paintings

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non-fiction nuggets…art + books = awesomeness

Artful Reading, by Bob Raczka

Here is a very simple recipe for a great little book:

Take about two dozen great paintings.
Choose paintings which all have one thing in common — someone reading.
Add a very few words that describe the reading that is happening in the painting.
Leave well enough alone!

That’s the recipe for success that Bob Raczka follows in his book Artful Reading.

Raczka gives us gorgeous, nice-sized reproductions of great paintings from folks such as Vermeer, Cassatt, Van Gogh, Durer, Fragonard, Matisse, Renoir, Hopper, and Picasso.  He has chosen a great variety of styles, and has included some very famous paintings as well as some lesser known works.  Yet, each painting features someone engaged in reading.  

 Each page contains a painting and a simple, corresponding phrase.  The phrases follow one another in rhyming patterns:  Read the news.  Or read a globe.  Read in a dress.  Or read in your robe.  Each print is labeled with artist’s name, name of the painting, year of the work, and where it hangs.

At the end of the book, thumbnail pictures of each painting are paired with a few words about the artist, and when possible, the place of reading in his/her life.

This is just a lovely way to look at art, to see something as familiar as reading and books in these artworks which seems to bring the paintings right into our everyday sphere a bit, and to elevate the common joy of reading across the centuries.

Raczka has a number of other nice volumes introducing art via various themes —
–unusual, and very clever, pairings of paintings;
– art works that appeal to all five senses;
– very ordinary things that artists have chosen to paint; and so on. 
I really like the way he chooses art, displays it in clever, delightful themes which make it accessible to children, and then steps out of the way to let the art speak for itself.

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nonfiction nuggets…about the world’s greatest artists

Getting to Know the World’s Greatest Artists,  is a series, written and illustrated by Mike Venezia. 

 Beginning when my children were very, very young – just 2 and 3 years old – we looked at these brilliant books together.   We learned a little bit about the lives of folks like Vincent Van Gogh, Mary Cassatt, and Michelangelo; we poured over Degas’ ballerinas and Rembrandt’s incredible painting of The Feast of Belshazzar; and we definitely looked at every one of the cartoons and read every silly line of conversation in them – every time we read the book!  Without any great attempts on my part at being educational, my kids learned to appreciate these artists and their work, to recognize differences in style, to wonder over certain pieces, and to express what they did or didn’t like.  Later, as we took in museums in various cities, I was surprised at how they would exclaim over a painting they knew from those books, as though they were meeting an old friend.

 There are 48 artists to choose from in this series, ranging from Titian to Andy Warhol.  Each one is a nice, small, picture book size.  The type is large and friendly.  The books briefly tell each artist’s life story and explain a bit about the distinctives of his or her art.  There are quite a number of beautiful full-color reproductions of the artist’s works throughout the text, as well as several bright, silly, child-engaging cartoons by Mike Venezia, showing the artist growing up or at work, complete with ridiculous dialogue.  To conclude the book, there are summary statements highlighting the unique contributions made by this artist and a list of the museums where you can see the pieces from the book.  Even if you don’t know a thing about art, you can enjoy these books with your child and learn along with them.  Highly recommended!

                                         

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