Word: essay
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Rare is the illustrated book in which pictures and words equally reward attention. The Altarpiece in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge; 240 pages; $75) admirably succeeds on both counts. For openers, it offers for the first time in English an extended essay by Jacob Burckhardt, the 19th century cultural historian best known for his The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). Burckhardt's study of Italian altarpieces, originally published in German a year after his death in 1897, remains magisterially informative. And the accompanying reproductions, including work by Botticelli, Fra Angelico, Titian and Michelangelo, do more than supplement Burckhardt's text...
...Miyake's particular genius is with fabric and shape. Here are lilting cascades of pleats, riffs on the jumpsuit that really leap, whirling fantasies on samurai gear. Seen through photographer Irving Penn's daring aesthetic eye, the clothes have a drama that nearly engulfs the imagination. The affable accompanying essay is a reminder that these duds are wearable...
...Essay...
...forms, sets up the changes of pace between areas abutting across a surface, provides the evidence of change and reconsideration that the calm look of his finished paintings only partly hides. "If ((drawing)) does not insist on its importance," writes the show's curator, John Elderfield, in his catalog essay -- as acute and satisfying a text as any critic in recent memory has written on drawing -- "it is because its importance is that of mortar between bricks, barely noticeable at times but what holds the structure together and keeps it firm...
...enough of the Masterplots summary. Go on and see Medea for yourself. It's well worth your effort and both cheaper and quicker than buying and reading the book. Just remember not to mention the "Dancing Box Top Spirits" in your final essay...