Tidying Up Art

Rating:
Summary: Very amusing!
Review: For any one who has ever taken an art history class or spent hours at a museum studying fine art, this book is for you. The author takes familiar, iconagraphic works and rearranges the elements in surprising and unexpected ways. Wonderful!

Rating:
Summary: Beyond genius
Review: Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest. What thrills me about this book is that I or anyone could have done it if only I'd thought of it.

His tidying up of abstract art is particularly hilarious.

Rating:
Summary: Engineer art...
Review: This is about the funniest book I've seen any time lately. I haven't yet bought it but got the gist of it in a recent visit to a local bookstore; I have to get it, on further reflection. The back cover of the Magritte...well, let's just say I am an engineer, and this one has got to go on my wall at work. I think at least maybe one of the guys I work with will get it...

Rating:
Summary: Engineer art...
Review: This is about the funniest book I've seen any time lately. I haven't yet bought it but got the gist of it in a recent visit to a local bookstore; I have to get it, on further reflection. The back cover of the Magritte...well, let's just say I am an engineer, and this one has got to go on my wall at work. I think at least maybe one of the guys I work with will get it...

Rating:
Summary: The art of a neat book
Review: Ursus Wehrli got there first with this wonderful idea but I was rather disappointed that there are only nineteen examples of his artistic tidiness and really less than ten are worth a second look. Seurat's 'Models' is the best example I think, the painting is on the left-hand page and opposite is a photo of a big plastic bag of colored chocolate buttons, just brilliant!

Mondrain, Klee, Picasso, Heering and Lichenstein all get fascinating tidy versions and the Van Gogh (see the book cover above) is another winner. I was though, expecting to see many more like the Van Gogh, that is keeping the basic painting and moving objects within it. Too many of the examples are just moving one or two items, like the three apples in Magritte's 'Young love', placed in a triangular shape in the original with Wehrli's version just having the apples in a straight line. Why are there no examples of tidy sculpture?

'Tidying up art' is a great idea and the book is well printed and designed but I wish there were lots more examples of Wehrli's creative fun. Maybe a second edition is on the way.