Art Nouveau

Rating:
Summary: A beautiful book that falls apart upon first reading
Review: If you believe that one picture is worth 1,000 words, then this book is worth 223,000 words. There are 223 beautiful pictures of art nouveau buildings from throughout the world.

The book is subdivided into sections by geography each with a brief text introduction covering key artists and trends. This book has the broadest geographic overview of art nouveau buildings I have ever seen including Russia, Italy, Turkey, Hungary as well as the more well known Western European locales.

The bulk of the book is photos, beautiful color photos. Mostly detail photos. Some of the photos are too close, focusing too much on the detail, and ignoring the context and larger scale themes of many of the buildings. For instance, there were closeups of many details from Gaudi buildings, but few of the complete exteriors that other books include. I think that focusing on the subtle details is the author's intent, but I still want to see what the outside of the building looks like before I see the detail of the stair-rail and chimney. This was one of my key disappointments.

The other disappointment was the quality of the perfect-bound binding. I first saw this book on the shelf of a local bookstore. That copy's cover was almost completely off the book. I bought my copy from Amazon for the generous discount and in the hope of getting a copy whose cover was not abused. Well, I got mine yesterday. I opened it, thumbed through it, and the cover started to separate from the binding. My binding separated from the spine completely before I had thumbed through the first 100 pages in the first hour I had the book. The paper is very high quality, so I don't think the separation is a production problem. I think the separation is a design problem. In order to keep the cost down, the publisher chose a binding technology more appropriate to a smaller book with lighter paper.

The photographer's focus on beautiful details at the expense of context and the binding quality kept me from giving the book the five full stars this unique, insightful photo album otherwise deserve.

Rating:
Summary: Yes, so what
Review: This is the most beautiful and comprehensive book of images of Art Nouveau architecture I have ever seen. Yes the quality of the binding is substandard...and the book is not large...but, hey...it's $......not $......so what...if you love this style of architecture..get it!

Rating:
Summary: Yes, so what
Review: This is the most beautiful and comprehensive book of images of Art Nouveau architecture I have ever seen. Yes the quality of the binding is substandard...and the book is not large...but, hey...it's $......not $......so what...if you love this style of architecture..get it!