Jirō Taniguchi's Venice is a visual travel guide to Venice disguised as a story of searching for an estranged relative, which in turn is a disguise foJirō Taniguchi's Venice is a visual travel guide to Venice disguised as a story of searching for an estranged relative, which in turn is a disguise for a watercolor masterpiece. Indeed, it is the latter that sticks to mind, and the Venice background to make it impossible to forget. Get this as an artbook or as a guide to Venice, it will warm your heart!
+++ This is art. Anything Jirō Taniguchi makes is art. +++ Venice in watercolor is a delight. +++ A workshop in watercolor technique. Angles. Shapes. Lights. Composition. Execution. So much to learn from it. Or simply enjoy. + Part of a series. (Apparently, by Louis Vouitton. There's also one from Brecht Evens in this series.) - More story could fit in-between the panels. But then, why focus on the story when there's Venice to discover? -/+ The quality is so high, one is left wanting more....more
Comprehensive but unfortunately very low-quality collection of Joseph Mallord William Turner's artwork. Overall, his work in watercolor and especiallyComprehensive but unfortunately very low-quality collection of Joseph Mallord William Turner's artwork. Overall, his work in watercolor and especially oil is amazing.
The collection includes a short section highlighting the work of Turner, then proceeds through the chronologically ordered collection of all (?) oils, followed by all (?) watercolors. Especially for the larger paintings there are zoom-ins on the most expressive areas. Unfortunately, possibly to keep the file size manageable, the quality of each reproduction is very poor.
The material further includes two very early biographies of Turner, archive.org grade.
What I'd love to see is this material with high quality reproductions, better editorial hand, and some introduction to each (major) work....more
TODO Full review: +++ Daniel Clowes classic: slice of life, plus vague thoughts, plus cameos of famous real-world people or movies or TV shows (or all TODO Full review: +++ Daniel Clowes classic: slice of life, plus vague thoughts, plus cameos of famous real-world people or movies or TV shows (or all together), plus some supernatural or horror or just plain old dark human actions, plus a redeeming ending that isn't. +++ Daniel Clowes' graphical language, particularly people's faces in the shadow and twisted by expressive feelings. +++/-- The story is split into episodes, of which at least one will be to your liking - they're very different and cover a whole variety of narrative tropes. I liked very much one of the episodes, the last (Doomsday). Equally, you will likely experience dislike about at least one other episode. +++/--- The main narrative is left ambiguous, very likely on purpose because the book includes numerous clues, sometimes visual, other times by character (or cameo) background, other times by narrative or thematic coherence. Finding them (all?) requires re-reading the book and thinking deeply about the meaning of each part and about the whole. (I'm not sure I'll do this, even if I find the effort to build this part fascinating, but it is there for someone to like.)...more