[.uk] Dark Metropolis: Irving Norman's Social Surrealism (ISBN 1597140414)

WOW! Shockingly beautiful art book:
If you've never heard of Irving Norman you may be in for a surprise. People didn't really paint like this at all in the middle of the 20th Century or much before that. Some Renaissance Masters had similar elaborations of the depth of perspective or of horrors of this world and the next. Some comic book illustrators in the 1960s had a similar deeply morbid whimsy. Who but Irving Norman could get up day after day, year after year for decades to detail such trenchant observations of city life under the thumb of the military industrial complex? I was lucky to see some of these paintings at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco in 1996. They drew me back to spend hours looking at all their details-not a world you'd ever want WALDO to get lost in!- and I made all my friends come,too. One, a prominent psychologist widened his eyes, shook his head and said,"They have PILLS for this now!" I didn't ask for his diagnosis of the artist's perceived disorders. I don't care why these paintings exist- whether psychological imbalance , OCD, paranoia or divine inspiration. IRVING NORMAN reaches well past what anything even most figurative artists would dream to attempt, flies worlds past the most wicked political satirist (eat your heart out, Steadman!)to make technically proficient canvases on a GRAND scale that glow like medieval stained glass and sparkle with wit and fury. (...) The reproductions are from new photographs. The book is big enough to see some detail. The production is excellent, a real tribute to an unknown American Master! ps This book is published as a centenary show of Irving Norman goes up in Sacramento at Crocker Art Center. The show runs through Jan 7, 2007 then moves to Pasadena Art Museum through April 15, 2007. See it if you can.

An amazing artist:
Dark Metropolis is an interesting collection of works of art by Irving Norman. The book contains several articles by different authors describing Normans and their impressions of his work as well as the symbolism behind the work. There s also a short biography of his life More then one hundred of Normans paintings and drawings are displayed in the book along with an explanation of the work and what it represents as well as points of interest within the painting. Most of the work is politically, socially, human condition or economically motivated in terms of the haves versus the have-nots scenario and the selections of artwork in the book really depict that. What you can't tell in the book is the amazing detail of his work. Having seen it in person the scale of some of his work is several feet tall and wide and so filled with detail that you could spend hours looking at his paintings and still not see it all. The paintings and drawings are in chronological order by year. There is a catalog that lists all of his public work. Norman's work is social surrealism in it truest form. If you can see his work in person then the book is the next best thing and does a good job in representing his work and his ideas. The book is very well designed in visual and literary concept and the layout of the book is nice.

Fascinating. We're not in Kansas anymore.:
I bought this after spending some hours (but not enough to get my fill) at the Crocker, one of the venues that is hosting the Norman exhibition this summer (2007). The book is a very distant second to seeing this work in person, since even a magnifying glass on the book cannot give you an appreciation for the astounding detail in the works themselves, some of which are of stupendous proportions. One piece actually had to be exhibited on a slant, being too tall for the room! Anyway, aside from seeing the exhibition or personal visits to many galleries and private collectors, the book is probably as close as we are going to get (for now) to Norman's work. Mrs. Norman graciously responded to my inquiry to say that prints are only a hope at this time. The book itself, produced by Crocker and the Irving Norman Trust and printed by Heyday Books, is divided into 3 mains sections. A foreword by Michael Duncan (art writer), some acknowledgments and an intro by Scott Shields (Crocker Chief Curator), two nicely illustrated essays by Patricia Junker (Curator at De Young in '96) and Charles Eldredge (director at Smithsonian American Art Museum) make up the first part. There follow about 140 pages of reproductions of this amazing fellow's stuff, divided into 5 sections whose names give you an idea of what you are in for: Capitalist Enigma Social Illusion Cycle of War Urban Transformation Human Predicament The third section is about 15 pages of appendices with a catalogue of works, a list of exhibitions and Collections, a list of the reporductions, and some comments about the contributors. You will come to your own conclusions about who he is, but there were 2 blurbs at the Crocker that stuck in my mind. One, to the effect that Norman had sold all his posessions before joining the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, in the belief that he would not return alive from the Spanish Civil War; the other that he returned to school when he realized that he did not yet have the skill to lay down his visions. There are a few photos of the artist, and some quotes as well. The alarming and pathetic story of the FBI tracking him for almost 50 years is well told by Junker, so if you are concerned that your web searches and Amazon purchases are now the guvvmint's business, you might want to find a suitable surrogate to make the buy. I'd give it full stars but for a an irritating flaw (perhaps only in my copy) that has a few pages with grey printing on a grey background. Still, it's an beautiful book, put together by some brave and talented people, about a much larger than life fellow from quiet Half Moon Bay who pulled no punches.

Good book:
I haven't seen any other books on this artist so i have nothing to compare it to. However I can say that there are great reproductions of art in here and some wel written, interesting essays. I def recomend this book