another book

Love and the Erotic in Art by Stefano Zuffi

I reviewed this book for Forword reviews
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Who can deny interest in a title like Love and the Erotic in Art? And for those who obey the urge to look inside, this book rewards with plenty of nourishment for the senses and the mind. One of sixteen in the Guide to Imagery series, this book’s pages are filled with 400 full color reproductions of original artwork that illuminate—you guessed it—the varied representations of love and the erotic in fine art.

The book’s structure facilitates research: topical divisions include “Gestures, Symbols and Objects”; “Love’s Setting”; “Emotions and Passions”; and “Famous Couples.” Significant historical works of art in each media by significant artists such as Frida Kahlo, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Thomas Gainsborough, Titian, Albrecht Dürer, Giovanni Bellini, and Henri Matisse are among the book’s selections.

In each topical division, the subject matter is explained clearly and explored thoroughly. In “Gestures, Symbols and Objects,” for example, nineteen subtexts are identified, including Gods of Love, Promise, Kiss, Mirror, Dance, and Good-byes. Each subtext topic features several artworks that illustrate the topic. If, for example, the reader considers the subject of the kiss in art, an overview discusses the cultural and historical significance of the kiss over the millennia: a consistent gesture that is social, emotional, and personal. Then, six artworks are presented. Each is paired with information about the media, the artist, and the artist’s inspirations and influences.

One featured painting is The Kiss, by Francesco Hayez, created in 1859 and considered a primary example of Italian Romanticism. In it, a man and woman, dressed in costumes from the middle ages, passionately embrace at the foot of a stairway. As Love and the Erotic in Art points out, a declaration of love and the exchange of affection are important themes of Romantic expression. Zuffi goes on to explore the reasons behind the figures’ attire, and further explains that the artist painted the composition for the Paris World’s Fair and that the image was to allude to the “amorous” alliance between France and Italy.

Stefano Zuffi is an art historian and the author of more than forty books, including a previous title in Getty’s Guide to Imagery series, Gospel Figures in Art.

In Love and the Erotic in Art, Zuffi has created a quick reference guide to significant works of art and the symbols used in the emotional narratives these works depict. Artists at all stages of development, art historians, art patrons, and curators will find this one of the first books they look for when developing their own ideas and research.



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A Book

Pop Touched Me: The Art of Rob Pruitt by Rob Pruitt

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is the review for this book that I wrote for Forward Reviews.



In the first book to present a detailed visual narrative of contemporary artist Rob Pruitt’s works and installations, friends and critics are invited in for a chat. Pop Touched Me is composed mostly of 200 color reproductions and numerous quotes from artists critics, friends, and celebrities, which set a conversational tone rather than a critical discourse. The selected images of Pruitt’s work, which often is a mischievous critique of art world structures, are rooted in a pop sensibility. The book’s clear and progressive graphic design works with the images and quotations to stimulate questions and ideas as readers turn the pages. This is a book for artists.



Pop Touched Me touches on Pruitt’s early collaboration with Jack Early, working under the moniker Pruitt-Early. These shows, “Artworks for Teenage Boys” and “Artworks for Teenage Girls” in 1991, investigated broad conceptions of American adolescence. The controversial 1992 exhibition, “Red, Black, Green, Red, White and Blue,” at the Leo Castelli Gallery addressed popular conceptions of race and its relation to corporate America. Numerous independent conceptual projects are also represented, including sensationally staged events like the notorious “Cocaine Buffet” in 1998, as well as simpler projects that promote possibilities for creativity in everyday life, like the series “101 Art Ideas You Can Do Yourself” in 1999 and in 2001. Finally, the book journeys through hundreds of images from the 2008 “iPruitt” installation. In this installation, Pruitt plastered walls with enlarged photographs taken with his mobile phone, immersing the viewer in a gridded visual journal collage of the artist’s experience from the previous year.



Pruitt’s glittering paintings of sensitively crafted panda bears and brushwork bamboo in addition to his sculptural assemblies of blue jeans in his functioning flea markets, saturate the reader with a variety of images. The presentation of both the details and the considerable scale of these ambitious projects help to demonstrate Pruitt’s penetrating humor, exuberance, and visual flamboyance.



This is not a reference book—Jeffery Deitch’s brief but illuminating essay provides some of the only context for Pruitt’s work. Pop Touched Me is perhaps best used as a visual supplement to a study of the 1990s’ art culture of shock and pop resurgence. Deitch writes, “Many artists today have very boring biographies: an MFA from a prestigious art school and then a series of solo and group exhibitions at well-regarded galleries with no story other than a list of exhibitions. Rob Pruitt in contrast has a remarkable story that encompasses a great network of ongoing friendships and twenty years of contemporary art history. Rob is not just making art; he is living it.”



Reviewed: March/April 2010



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