An Artist in Venice

by Adam Van Doren, Simon Winchester (Foreword by)

Overview

An artist’s illustrated love letter to the Italian city of Venice. If you can’t wait to see the Italian city of Venice for the first time or to return, you'll be captivated by this journey. Adam Van Doren has created a verbal and visual account of his love affair with the city. His story is personal; like other artists, he sees the city with and through his own eyes and laces his tour with information, opinion, and notes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781567924978
Publisher:	David R. Godine, Publisher
Publication date:	01/15/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
File size:	11 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Adam Van Doren received a Master’s in architecture from Columbia University and has been a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. He teaches at Yale University and has exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., among other institutions. His work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Wadsworth Atheneum, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Simon Winchester is the New York Times best-selling author of The Professor and the Madman. His recent titles include Atlantic and The Men Who United the States. Winchester was awarded an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his services to journalism and literature.

Editorial Reviews

Architect and artist Van Doren offers a love letter to Venice in this elegant and slender volume, and he sings his praise to the city through majestic prose and 23 beautiful watercolor paintings of Venice. He quickly discovers, after wandering into San Giacomo di Rialto, perhaps Venice's oldest church, that the city has one "great transformative advantage: Mediterranean light," which offers a new way of seeing the city's architecture, the history of art, and his own painting. Van Doren praises numerous artists from whom he draws lessons as he explores the city. James Whistler captures the "sweet serenity of Venice with perfect pitch." He admires deeply John Singer Sargent's watercolors of Venice that exhibit his "supreme confidence with color." Van Doren takes John Ruskin as his model, confessing that Ruskin was an "artist of architecture" whose writings convinced him that he could become a painter. In all of his paintings, he has attempts to keep in mind the lesson of one of his teachers: "Keep it simple. Don't try to make it more complicated than it already is." Clearly, he's learned his lesson well. Illus.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly

Architect and artist Van Doren offers a love letter to Venice in this elegant and slender volume, and he sings his praise to the city through majestic prose and 23 beautiful watercolor paintings of Venice.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Van Doren pulls off the not-inconsequential feat of conjuring some of the best-known views of the world with fresh eyes.”—The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher