The Collection of John A. and Audrey Jones Beck

Rating:
Summary: Limitations of the printer's art?
Review: This catalogue is an art book with 69 paintings by 61 artists of the nineteenth and early 20th century, "that focuses on the avant-garde movements of Paris..." It showcases The Beck Collection, part of the permanent collection of The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, which - following its recent expansion - is now the eighth largest in the United States. (NOTE: Most - if not all! - of these works are on display in the new $83 million, 192,447-square-foot Audrey Jones Beck Building.) --- I took this book to the museum, and compared its reproductions to several pieces of the artwork while seated before them. I took notes. My thoughts follow: (1) This book displays the paintings sans their frames... anyone who has gone through the arduous process of selecting a frame is aware that the frame color (and background wall!) as well as the lighting trick the eye into seeing some colors more intensely than others. Several works 'looked different' and the discrepancy seemed due to the absence of the frame. For example, Jean-Baptiste-Armand Guillaumin's "Le Seine a Paris" (1871), framed in a ornate, sand-colored frame decorated with acanthus leaves, appears much gloomier in reality than it does in this book. In this volume it appears quite 'naked'! (2) Unfortunately the colors and darkness/lightness of the reproductions frequently vary enough from the originals to be noticeable. Camille Pissarro's "La Gardeuse d'oies a Montfoucalt, gelee blanche" (1875), for instance, is much lighter in the original than in the book. The reproduction's blues tended to the purple and even the sunlit areas seem in shadow, whereas in the original they are possessed of that piercing winter light that filters down during a cold mid-afternoon. The dying leaves in the tree are muddled and dull compared to the painting itself. In Mary Cassatt's "Susan Consolant l'enfant (c1881) the oranges and blues are very true to the original, but the entire reproduction has a yellow cast, unlike the painting. (Curiously enough, the absence of a frame does NOT make any difference in one's enjoyment of this work!) (3) I was quite upset to discover, looking at Gustave Caillebotte's "Les Orangers" (1878), that a full 1/8th of an inch (of the reproduction in the tome) had been CROPPED off, both left and right! The left side was not distracting, but on the right the damage is serious, since a chair, with hooped top and round seat, are tangent to the edge of the original, but are cropped off in the book. For those (like myself) who enjoy finding the geometries in a painting (Golden Rectangles, squares, etc), this makes such a study impossible... Incidentally, this painting is also marred by the shift problem noted previously; the entire reproduction is lighter than the original. (The poppies look red in the painting, and orange in this work). --- All said and done, the work is unique, and printing technology is not perfect. This is NOT a bad book; it just needs to be used with some understanding of its limitations. The format incidentally is that each reproduction (right page) is faced by text (left page) describing the work, the artist, etc. --- Hopefully visitors to Houston will take the time to see the originals: they are gorgeous!