Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #197595 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 780 pages

Review
"Bound to become the standard reference work..." Le Figaro, Paris"

About the Author
Robert Descharnes, a photographer and writer, has published studies of major artists, among them Antoni Gaudi and Auguste Rodin. Since 1950, he has been documenting and cataloguing Dali's paintings and writings, and is now considered the leading expert on the artist. Shortly before Dali's death, Descharnes was appointed by him to take charge of the rights to his works, within the Societe Demart Pro Arte B.V., of which Descharnes is president. Gilles Neret was an art historian, journalist, writer, and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He directed art reviews such as L'Oeil and Connaissance des Arts and received the Elie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications. Neret is the editor of TASCHEN's catalogues raisonnes of the works of Monet and Velazquez, as well as the author of Dali - The Paintings and Erotica Universalis. He died on August 3, 2005.

Customer Reviews

Stunning
Well, at nearly 6kg, a whap in the head with this thing would certainly loosen some screws. That's not what I meant, though.

It's huge, beautiful, and encyclopedic. It covers Dalí's entire career, with all of the different stages he went through in creating his art and himself. There's just too much to try to summarize here - the book takes over 1600 photos to illustrate his life. Most of them depict Dalí's art or Dalí himself (I still suspect that he lived his entire life as a work of performance art). Others depict influences on his art. Some show work by other artists, for contrast or as part of Dalí's heritage. A few show features of the natural world, a rock formation, for example, that the alchemy of Dalí's magic transmuted into new visual elements.

And, throughout, there is Gala - Dalí's wife, agent, manager, muse, model, and tour guide for his visit to planet Earth. I hate the phrase that would call Gala his "better half," but I'm sure that Dalí would have been incomplete in many ways without her. Certainly, his finished works owe much to the way she inspired him.

I fault this wonderful work for only one thing, but one that I find maddening: there is no index. In partial compensation, end matter lists each photo or work of art, in numerical order as they appeared in the book, with provenance and other information about any art shown. A bibliogrpahy would have been nice, too - but no index! With a book like this, it almost feels as if the last twenty pages had been ripped out.

Don't let that bit of pedantry get in the way of enjoying this marvelous collection, though. You might want to supplement this book with some of Dalí's own writing, such as The unspeakable confessions of Salvador Dali or Diary of a Genius, to name only a few. I can't imagine that you'll want another display of his artwork, except maybe the lithos.

-- wiredweird

Best Dali Book.
I have many books on Dali and his artwork. Some I have bought, some others have bought for me, but I was given this book as a gift, and I love it. I have decided that I do not need any of the other books on him, this one has all the famous pieces and more, some of the pictures I never even knew that he had created. Plus it is very informative. This is an amazing book, I would recommend anyone interested in surrealism to buy this book, for its price, it is a steal!

small illustrations
This book is a complete overview of Dali's works, it's more like an encyclopedia. But I would prefer it to have huge full-page illustrations of the paintings, even double-page ones! Because you can's appreciate the picture if it's only like 4x4". And Dali's paintings have so many small details, so that you want to be able to see them!