Books that provide a pathway to a magical world inhabited by art and artists

New books about art can add understanding to one’s enjoyment, and make a great gift, writes Des O’Sullivan.

Books about art can open up a pathway to a magical world. There is always plenty to choose from whether as a gift or as a little treat for oneself. Those who love art know that enjoyment is enriched by understanding. The more you put in the more you will get out.

Cezanne is a seminal figure for a great many artists and much has been written about him. Paul Cezanne, Drawings and Watercolours, by Christopher Lloyd, is a newly published work on the never-ending quest of depicting reality by an artist who made no real distinction between painting and drawing. Furthermore, Cezanne was described by Matisse and Picasso as “the father of us all.”

Published by Thames and Hudson the book is written in an accessible style by an author who was formerly the Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures.

Another Thames and Hudson offering for 2015 is Picturing People, The New State of the Art, by Charlotte Mullins. Figurative art is currently riding high and Mullins profiles 70 living artists working in media including photography, painting and drawing. Artists featured range from Beijing- based Yue Minjun to Kara Walker, Grayson Perry, Gillian Wearing and Cindy Sherman. Mullins is a former editor of Art Review, V & A Magazine and Art Quarterly.

Closer to home the Dublin-based Lilliput Press has just published John Behan, The Bull of Sheriff Street on the life and work of Irish sculptor John Behan. It is by Adrien Frazier, professor emeritus, NUI Galway, who quotes Seamus Heaney on Behan as follows: “The metaphor of the journey/ the image of the boat and tree/ the image of the warrior and the Trojan horse/ these do not belong simply and singularly/ to the individual mind/ but are the possessions/ of the species.”

More than 5,000 sculptural works by John Behan have been sold. His art employs numerous representations but the iconic figure for him was the bull.

Art gallery shops are a great source for books and ideas. Among the selection at the Crawford Gallery in Cork are a just launched book on Adam Buck, the Cork-born portrait painter celebrated in Regency England who is to be the subject of an exhibition at the gallery in 2016, and Nicola Gordon Bowe’s scholarly work on Wilhelmina Geddes whose work includes a stained glass windows at St Anne’s, Dawson St, Dublin.