“Leonardo: Beautiful Dreamer” by Robert Byrd

To come back.

“The Dot” By Peter H. Reynolds

 

This book nicely illustrates rather problematic concept. The author offers some sweet story about the importance of an encouragement, but he ignores the fact that obsessive work cannot turn one into an artist, and that being productive does not mean mastering a craft (nor art).

Reading many bad books for children makes me realize how well this dot story captures the problems with children’s literature. The bad book authors follow the recipe: just be productive and reproduce the same motive in slightly different forms and others will regard you as an artist, and will admire you.

No, they won’t.

“The Magic Horse of Han Gan” by Chen Jiang Hong

 

Visually beautiful. Art as make-believe. 

“Family Portrait” (1630)

by Flemish Unknown Masters  (1630), Pinakothek at Munich. A proud father, a tired and absent-minded mother and children attempting to run away from this family picture… In other words: traditional family values from the historical perspective.

Joseph Wright “Experiment with the Air-Pump” (about 1768)

Tate Gallery at London. Scientific progress and sympathy.

Emma van Name (1795)

Whitney Museum of American Art

children in art

Franciszek Streitt, The Dolls’s Doctor, 1876, Poland

Franciszek Streitt, The Apprentice’s Efforts (known also as Working Hard), 1881, Poland

“Petit Connoisseur: Art” by Karen Salmansohn and Brian Stauffer

I found this book in a bookstore at the Guggenheim Museum. It was one of the first books which my son “read”. He still likes it. It shows differences in artistic styles, in a funny way.