The Master Cubist at Work
By Karen K. Butler, Renée Maurer, Patricia Favero and Uwe Fleckner
Prestel Publishing, 240 pages, $60.00
Georges Braque was one of the most important painters of the early 20th Century, along with his friend Picasso. While Braque is not as well known to American audiences as Picasso, he was one of the important innovators of the Cubism. While Picasso left Cubism to delve into other art realms, Braque stuck with Cubism and expanded into a collection still life’s that are Cubic in nature. This book is attached to a showing of Braque’s Cubist still life’s as part of the Phillips Collection and the Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis.
This is a fairly standard monograph that accompanies any art showing in most museums these days. The first half is a collection of essays that look at the artist, his work and life. Some of the latter essays are interesting as they examine more of the people around the artist, and how they viewed his work instead of the artist himself. The second half of the book is made of plates, individual pages of each work in the collection that is being shown.
Like many monographs of its type it is made for a very specific audience, those that want to remember the show after it is over. Also, the essays are interesting, but only art historians would get much out of them.
Reviewed by Kevin Winter
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