Painting Masterclass by Susie Hodge

Rating: WORTHY!

This is from an advance review copy for which I thank the publisher.

Subtitled "Creative Techniques of 100 Great Artists" this book of almost 300 pages does precisely what it promises, and explores well-known (and lesser-known) works by artists both classically famous and bubbling under. In each case a painting is depicted and discussed, including the paints used, the techniques employed, and imparting some information about the artist as well. Susie Hodge has an MA in Art History from Birkbeck, University of London, and has has written over 100 books not only on the topic of art.

If I have a complaint - and notwithstanding that it may seem churlish to complain about a book that has commendably assembled five-score masterpieces for our perusal and education - it would be that once again we're faced with something designed for a print version and therefore being inadequately represented in ebook format. Too many of these paintings are unfortunately - some might say scandalously - split across two pages which is never - ever - a good thing. In the ebook version it's worse, because there is a thick gray line down anything that dares to be in landscape orientation. Additionally, the book has a glossary and an index, but again the index is for the print version, and is not 'clickable' to navigate in the ebook.

If I have praises, I have too many to list here in a review that's already yeay long, but the inclusion of so many female painters is definitely praiseworthy. The history of arts isn't that of white men, but for all that's written about it, you can be excused for being bamboozled into thinking it is. You can go back as far as you like - even to cave paintings (which get some coverage in the introduction), and it seems that the thrust (the male thrust, of course) is to exclude women as creators - like the caves were solely painted by men when we have no idea who the artists actually were. This book commendably does a lot to redress that sorry imbalance (and no, Joan Miró isn't female) and is the better for it.

After some fifty pages of material that is both introductory and educational, including a history of art (not quite the same as art history!), the book is divided into seven main sections, each with a dozen or so artists representative of that category:

• Nudes
  I'm not sure why nudes get to be first. Sounds like naked aggression to me, but here we go (and I promise not to make fun of artist names or painting titles):
  
  • Titian - Venus of Urbino
  • Jacopo Tintoretto - The Origin of the Milky Way
  • François Boucher - The Triumph of Venus
  • Francisco Goya - Nude Maja
  • Gustave Gourbet - Sleeping Nude
  • Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres - The Turkish Bath
  • Gustave Caillebotte - Man at his Bath
  • Georges Seurat - Models
  • Edvard Munch - Madonna
  • Paul Gaugin - Nevermore
  • Paula Modersohn-Becker - Self Portrait on Her Sixth Wedding Anniversary
  • Gustave Klimt - Danaë
  • Amedeo Modigliani - Red Nude
  • Suzanne Valadon - Reclining Nude
  • Jenny Saville - Branded
  • Cecily Brown - Two Figures on a Landscape
• Figures
  Figures excludes portraits, which appear in 'heads'!
  
  • Michelangelo Buonarotti - The Delphic Sybil
  • Sofonisba Anguissola - The Chess Game
  • Paolo Veronese - The Wedding Feast at Cana
  • Pieter Breugel the Elder - Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery
  • El Greco - Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple
  • Caravaggio - Deposition from the Cross
  • Artemisia Gentileschi - Judith Beheading Holfernes
  • Frans Hals - The Laughing Cavlier
  • Diego Velázquez - Las Meninas
  • Rembrandt Van Rijn - The Jewish Bride
  • Jacques-Louis David - The Oath of the Horatii
  • Édouard Manet - Luncheon on the Grass
  • Honoré Daumier - Third Class Carriage
  • Edgar Degas - The Ballet Class
  • Berthe Morisot - The Cradle
  • Eva Gonzalès - Nanny and Child
  • Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - At the Moulin Rouge, the Dance
  • Egon Schiele - Seated Woman with Bent Knee
  • Balthus - The Card Game
  • Richard Diebenkorn - Coffee
  • Peter Doig - Two Trees
  That cavalier really isn't laughing, so I feel that portrait name has been treated rather...cavlierly. Also the Jewish bride wasn't so named by Rembrandt. Luncheon on the Grass was rather controversially imitated for an album cover by the new wave band Bow Wow Wow in the early eighties.
  
• Landscape
  These are the gray divider line pictures
  
  • Claude Lorrain - An Artist Studying from Nature
  • John Constable - The Hay Wain
  • Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot - The Bridge at Narni, Near Rome
  • Caspar David Friedrich - Mountain Peak with Drifting Clouds
  • JMW Turner - The Red Rigi
  • Jean-François Millet - Haystacks: Autumn
  • Oskar Kokoschka - Tre Croci Dolomite Landscape
  • Paul Klee - Hammamet with its Mosque
  • Claude Monet - Water Lilies
  • Edward Hopper - Haskell's House
  • Emil Nolde - Distant Marshland with Farmhouses
  • Frank Auerbach - Primrose Hill Study Autumn Evening
  • Julie Mehretu - Retopistics a Renegade Excavation
  • Hurvin Anderson - Untitled (Red Flags)
  Constable's painting is known as The Hay Wain but it wasn't originally named that by him. His less memorable name for it was 'Landscape: Noon'! It was subject to minor vandalism in 2013 in the museum where it's kept, but no lasting damage was done. there is a beautifully-rendered rose on the Klee page which to me far outshines the main painting. Nolde's watercolor is equuisite and Anderson's untitled beach scene is equally entrancing.
  
• Still Life
  Isn't all painting still life, ultimately? LOL! Just kidding.
  
  • Floris van Dyck - Still Life with Fruit, Nuts, and Cheese
  • Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin - Still Life with Peaches, a Silver Goblet, Grapes, and Walnuts
  • Henri Fantin-Latour - Flowers and Fruit
  • Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Onions
  • Paul Cézanne - Still life with Cherries and Peaches
  • Georges Braque - Violin and Palette
  • Juan Gris - Grapes
  • Fernand Léger - Still Life with a Beer Mug
  • Georgio Morandi - Still Life
  • Georgia O'Keeffe - Jimson Weed White Flower No 1
  Gris's painting was curiously not done as a Grisaille. Go figure! Not sure how still a life with an empty beer mug would be, especially if it was the artist who drained it, but moving along.... Georgia O'Keeffe's painting is wonderful.
  
• Heads
  Portraits.
  
  • Leonardo da Vinci - Mona Lisa
  • Raphael - Madonna in the Meadow
  • Hans Holbein the Younger - Jane Seymour
  • Johannes Vermeer - Girl with a Pearl Earring
  • Adélaïde Labille-Guiard - Self-Portrait with Two Pupils
  • Mary Cassatt - Portrait of the Artist
  • Piere Bonnard - Self-Portrait
  • Vincent van Gogh - Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear
  • Eugène Carrière - Self-Portrait
  • André Derain - Portrait of Henri Matisse
  • Henri Matisse - Portrait of Derain
  • Amrita Sher-Gill - Hungarian Gypsy Girl
  • Pablo Picasso - Weeping Woman
  • Alberto Giacometti - Anette
  • Marlene Dumas - Amy Winehouse (Amy Blue)
  Mona Lisa is never described as The Laughing Lisa. I rest my case.... I have to say I am not convinced there was any pearl earring here. It seems to me, given the circumstances, that it was more likely that it was some sort of shiny metal - perhaps silver if it was the daughter of Vermeer's sponsor. No one knows what Vermeer titled it, but it became known as the girl with a turban until relatively recently when it became rather poetically known as "Girl with a Pearl." If you look at Vermeers featuring girls actually wearing pearls they look quite different from this one, but you pays your money and you takes your art. These were all created before the term 'selfie' came into use, so the much more formal 'self-portrait was a common title. I love the reciprocity of the Derain and Matisse works! Weeping woman was probably captured after Picasso jilted her for another woman, and 'Anette' looks like something out of a horror movie, so disturbing is it.
  
• Fantasy
  This was an unexpected, but welcome inclusion.
  
  • Sandro Botticelli - The Birth of Venus
  • Peter Paul Rubens - Minerva Protects Pax from Mars
  • Giovanni Battista Tiepolo - The Finding of Moses
  • Eugène Delacroix - The Death of Sardanapalus
  • Rosa Bonheur - Highland Raid
  • Ilya Repin - Sadko and the Underwater Kingdom
  • Edward Burne-Jones - The Doom Fulfilled
  • Marc Chagall - I and the Village
  • Francis Picabia - Dances at the Spring
  • Leonora Carrington - Self-Portrait
  • Frida Kahlo - The Two Fridas
  • Howard Hodgkin - Robyn Denny and Katherine Reid
  • Philip Guston - The Street
  • Paula Rego - The Dance
  Repin's painting is remarkable, but I think that the Best Title Award has to go to Burne-Jones's painting. It's really hard to tell if Picabia's spring is a season, a water source, or even...a bedspring.
  
• Abstraction
  I wish I could be more specific about this section but....
  
  • Wassily Kandinsky - Composition 7
  • Hannah Höch - Mechanical Garden
  • Joan Miró - The Poetess
  • Jackson Pollack - Autumn Rhythm (No 30)
  • Nicolas de Staël - Agrigente
  • Hans Hofmann - The Golden Wall
  • Helen Frankenthaler - The Bay
  • Gerhard Richter - Abstraktes Bild
  • Cy Twombly - Untitled (Bacchus)
  • Gillian Ayres - Suns of Seven Circles Shine

Long list! But worth it. The paintings - some you may love, others you may hate - say a lot and are well-worth seeing, as is reading the breakdown of how they were composed, and what sort of paints and materials were used in their creation. This book is as remarkable as the paintings and I commend it as a worthy read for any artist or anyone interested in art.