Word: artfully
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Poet, demon, prophet, artist-all the labels apply, but none will adhere to William Blake (1757-1827). The wild-eyed precursor of romanticism disdained organized religion and mocked rigid science. He was his own martyr, church and congregation, his own teacher, pupil and school. Blake's art and poetry only seem naive; in fact they are so dense with nuance and implication that each generation must interpret them anew. The modern reader can have no better introduction to the oeuvre than Milton Klonsky's William Blake: The Seer and His Visions (Harmony Books; 142 pages; $12 hardcover...
From the 7th through 12th centuries, medieval Spain, isolated on the Iberian peninsula, developed an artistic tradition distinct from the rest of Europe's. Visigoth and Muslim influences brought a pagan exoticism to Spain's Christian art, particularly in illuminated manuscripts. Early Spanish Manuscript Illumination by John Williams (Braziller; 119 pages; $19.95 hardcover, $9.95 paper) provides illuminations of its own, offering plates from such works as the Beatus Commentary on the Book of Revelation that dazzle the reader with apocalyptic visions of weeping angels and rapacious beasts, saints and sinners, heaven and hell...
...guide, the Prophet meets with Adam, Noah, Abraham and Moses. He visits paradise, with its eternally blooming gardens, and hell, where sinners suffer endless agony at the hands of demons. The 15th century illuminations that accompany the text of this holy adventure are masterworks of Middle Eastern art. Produced in Herât, capital of ancient Khurasan, the paintings flood the eye with blues, golds, reds and greens. The effect is similar to that made by classic carpets and tapestries. One of the most attractively produced art books of the season...
...Art appreciation was once a gut course-a simple matter of getting to know the styles and spellings of old masters. Modernism changed all that. Surrealism, Dada, cubism and, later, abstract expressionism, Pop, Op, minimalism and Happenings were too complex for simple appreciation. Edward Lucie-Smith, an English critic, attempts to pave a smooth, orderly path through this jungle of schools, styles, waves and blips. In Art Now (Morrow; 504 pages; $29.95) he efficiently gets the reader from abstract expressionism to superrealism. Like a package-tour guide, he hits the peaks and some of the troughs. The visual impact...
...Swaan is an impeccable photographer, a lucid writer and a dedicated medievalist. In The Late Middle Ages (Cornell University Press; 232 pages; $27.50) he proposes that the period from 1350 to the Renaissance in Northern Europe and the Iberian peninsula produced a "pyrotechnic blaze of glory" in art and architecture. The illustrations of Gothic spires and gargoyles, flying buttresses and Books of Hours, tombs and tapestries and town halls make the point spectacularly; the text puts it all into historical perspective. There are only 16 color plates, including a breathtaking interior of King's College Chapel in Cambridge...