Please recommend

I love Matisse but in Slovenia we are too poor to afford any of his paintings for our museums. So in order to experience his art in a better form than internet (which sucks) I would need to buy me a book with lots of large, awesome reproductions of Matisse.

If anyone has any idea of what to recommend to order via Amazon or whatever please deliver!

Gaarg (noob)

taschen most probably has a publication (or several) covering his oeuvre and possibly his entire oeuvre as well.

their art books about the work of major painters like daVinci, Picasso, Rembrandt or Michelangelo often feature high quality prints of almost all the main paintings and even several respective close-ups filling entire pages. this is complemented with the best writings and descriptions and very rigorous information.

of course these are their best publications, they are very expensive for being created with extreme care and dedication. those small books they also publish featuring a resume of artists work are also good, but don't seem to fill your request.

try a search on taschen's webpage

there are other fine art publishers as well, but i don't know of any particular matisse book, so if you find one by this publisher, you can be sure you won't be disappointed. i am just mentioning it because from my experience they are highly professional.

sometime ago i found two of their best books on daVinci on an used books fair, one about his paintings and the other about his drawings and sketches, and they are absolutely incredible. they are art books at the finest and higher level. there are 5 or 6 close-ups of each painting which occupy an entire page, so you can observe all the details. and i got him for like 40% of their original price.

matisse's paintings don't have this level of detail, so close-ups won't make any sense, but i am sure taschen found a decent way of representing his work.

Actually I already have two Matisse books, at least one of them is Taschen (I'm not at home so can't check).

Thing with big reproductions and details feels the same for me if it's Leonardo or Matisse. I would love to see those brush strokes up close. Also seeing a close up its easier to notice how the paint is layered.

  On 8/29/2010 at 7:06 PM, gaarg said:

Actually I already have two Matisse books, at least one of them is Taschen (I'm not at home so can't check).

 

Thing with big reproductions and details feels the same for me if it's Leonardo or Matisse. I would love to see those brush strokes up close. Also seeing a close up its easier to notice how the paint is layered.

acutally i take back what i said. of course close-ups are as important on leonardo as on matisse.

they are just so different.

i am not the biggest matisse appreciator, but i must not deny to myself that i love his brush strokes. i find them to be very exciting as they are so raw and natural, almost child-like.

on davinci the technique is much more refined, you can't really try to imagine the process as i believe there are a lot of layers of brush work that took to bring the final image. i have spent hours looking at his paintings and it's mindblowing to observe the amount of detail and precision he would always create.