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Title: Rackstraw Downes
ISBN: 0691120471
Author:
Sanford Schwartz
Robert Storr
Rackstraw Downes
Publicate Date: 2005-04-18
Publish: 2005-04-18
List Price: $55.00
Average Customer Rating: 5.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $30.00
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $30.00
Amazon Merchant Price: $34.65
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Rackstraw Downs
This is a beautifully produced art book with a wealth of color reproductions, very well done, of work by a major modern realist painter. The text is excellent and interesting. I keep this on my coffee table and look at it a lot.
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2: Downes - True Painter of the Modern age
This book contains art by Rackstraw Downes which is more likely to be taken for photographs than the paintings that they are. Now, these are not still life or portraits of people but very common urban landscapes and waste lands. The book also has a section by the painter himself on some of the difficulties faced by artists when the vertical angle seems to change over a wider or deeper view.
Is Modern art representative of our age? What tools of our age can be used to truly stand for its time? Jackson Pollock,master of 'drip' technique feels,"The modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any past culture". Downes with his technique of painting what he sees, has expressed modern age with the tall buildings,metal bridges,expressways and cars in a very realistic way like a camera would.It would be unfair to compare a painter with a camera.The book has well organized material on the differences in art by a realist and what a photo can hold.
The book also has references to the work of many other artists like Jonathan Borofsky(Molecule Man), Eva Hesse, Brice Marden and so on..
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3: All things seen and considered
Rackstraw Downes is a unique artist. He must have been born with the patience of Job or simply endless concentration patterns, as every thing the man draws, etches, or paints represents the most painstakingly observed detail and transfer to paper or canvas.
Though his name is well known to museums and art collectors, the general public is less aware of his prodigious gifts. This superb book should change that. Sanford Schwartz is a gifted writer and his essay on the work and the man is not only eminently readable, it also informs about the clarity of Downes' execution of his landscapes and vistas of cities. Robert Storr contributes another essay that places Rackstraw Downes in the pantheon with other representational artists and surrounds his evaluation with fine art history writing.
But of course the glory of this large-scale volume is in the reproduction plates of the paintings and drawings. Generous space is given to define details so important to understanding Downes' gift. And the extended panorama paintings are given fluid space to unfold so that the reader can slowly absorb the incredible amount of visual information Downes gives us.
This is one of the collectable artist monographs - in content, in visuals, and in design. Highly recommended. Grady Harp, December 05
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4: Painter's painter
these paintings are so well crafted. i am an abstract painter, and these paintings amaze me in their quality of brushwork, composition, etc. no matter what sort of painter one is (realist/abstract, etc), they can stand to learn something from this talented landscape/urbanscape painter.
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5: Rackstraw Downes by Sanford Schwartz
I've purchased a lot of monographs over the past couple of decades. I've come across Rackstraw Downes' work in the art magazines for at least that long. When I discovered the a book on his work had been published I ordered it immediately.
This artist works out in the environment, painting city, town and sometimes rural scenes. He does not use photography. Most of his paintings are amazing wide panoramas. Mr. Downes achieves wonderful painterly realism which is quite different than photo real painting.
The book is laid out horizontally to give maximum exposure to the wide paintings. It is very nicely produced with readable type, numerous color and B & W pictures and articles, a bio and other data that fans of his work will enjoy.
Overall, there is nothing that distracts from the purpose of showing off these wonderful artworks.
Steve Frenkel
Marietta, GA
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