The Figure: Painting, Drawing, and Sculpture Hardcover – September 23, 2014

This should have been one of the best art books I own and probably the best on the subject of contemporary figurative art. But it falls down in accessibility, as well as couple of other areas. It has all the bad points of a bad art book with the exception of printing pictures in black and white. For all the academia, not one of the paintings used as examples in the essays is shown. A writer may go on for paragraphs about Manet's painting of the execution of Maximillian, but there is no photo illustrating it. And this continues throughout the book. Far from a picture book or a coffee-table book, it is dense with essays by the artists themselves about their process, motivation, and history, but there are many paintings with nothing more than a title, artist's name, materials, size and date. and many of the artists' sections don't address the images accompanying their essays. If you don't speak "Fine Art Academia," you can easily get bogged down. It could be written quite a bit more accessibly. with the amount of jargon used, it often reads like a series of academic papers as opposed to vernacular. Some of the essays are so jargon-laden as to be virtually unreadable. One, in particular, seems to go to great lengths to use obscure words and convoluted phrasing to explain what should be a simple concept. This could have been a great book. As it stands, it's an OK book with some great art and more than a little academic posturing.

A great resource for anyone interested in figurative art, especially for those creating it. Much of it reads like art history, yet for once it is art history written by people who actually paint and sculpt -- this gives it real authority in my view. Dense reading -- you often have to unpack phrase-by-phrase but you are always rewarded for it, unlike much of the dense but largely meaningless stuff inflicted on us in some of the art magazines or academic journals. Everyone here is connected to the New York Academy of Art, so the book occasionally acts a little bit like a 'day on campus' with detailed how-to technique bits sprinkled in among the essays. Mostly I appreciated reading thoughtful professors discussing the subtle alchemy through which figurative art transforms from stale, old academic into vibrant contemporary art form. This is one I expect to read and re-read for years.

'The Figure:…' contains a large number of good reproductions of contemporary painting, drawing and sculpture which was pretty much what I had hoped for. There is also a number of what I expect will be interesting essays, some by artists with whom I am familiar and consider to be of high quality. (I haven't had time to read much of the book yet.) Of course the book is narrow in its focus, as expected, and might possibly have included figurative artists that I would have found to be more interesting, but on the whole the book is well worth the modest price. I would recommend the book to anyone looking for interesting reproductions and writing by artists and critics.

This book is a must have! The New York Academy of Art is THE place where students are taught by the best faculty in the representational figurative art practitioners. Wonderful reproduction and a great read as well. Very satisfied and, at extraordinary price. Get it!

fast delivery, even in mid december, holiday season. not bad..........

everiting ok

a wonderful teaching tool for my classes and a wonderful visual experience for me too!

Garbage.

Excelente libro, reproducciones fabulosas. Dudaba que me gustara tanto dado que me gusta más lo abstracto pero...quede impresionado; y el precio....de lujo.

Love the first hand writings...some of them were a little anxious to show off their pedigree, but otherwise great insight.