Robin Langley Sommer

Art Nouveau is probably my favourite art movement, so when I spotted this book in a charity thrift shop I figured I would pick it up to try and get a better understanding of Art Nouveau’s preceding and overlapping movement: Arts and Crafts. Unfortunately, my reaction to this book was much the same as it often is with art books: bored and confused by the text, dissatisfied with the imagery, and overall underwhelmed. The text borders on academic, jumping from topic to topic throughout and name dropping artists with little reference to their actual work, so I inevitably quit reading to focus on the imagery - which is the most important part of an art book anyways. Unfortunately, the authors didn’t include nearly enough examples of artworks to satisfy me, and those that they did show were rather underwhelming. From the introduction, I figured that I would be able to enjoy the pieces because they were influenced by much of the same as those from Art Nouveau (albeit with less extravagance), but with few visual samples I was left wanting by the final pages. I’m not going to keep this book for my collection, but I think I’ll try to find some more books on the subject, since it’s an artistic movement I definitely feel like I should explore more.… (mer)