Charles Harper's Birds & Words - Couverture rigide

Harper, Charley

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 1934429058 ISBN 13 : 9781934429051

Editeur : AMMO Books LLC, 2008

Synopsis

Book by Harper Charley

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur :

Die Neuausgabe des 1974 erschienen Originals und Sammlerstücks. Ammo hat die Bilder sorgfältig überarbeitet und die Ausgabe in vollem Umfang und im ursprünglichen Format wieder aufgelegt. Ein liebevoll gestaltetes Buch mit den Abbildungen von Vögeln und kurzen Texten dazu. Der Verlag hat das Buch von 1974 wieder zugänglich gemacht. Charles Harper s Birds & Words is a collection of about five dozen bird prints originally published by the Ford Motor Company in the 1950s and reprinted in a very limited edition twenty years later. Now, a year after Harper s death, his paintings are gathered together again. Working in a self-described minimal realism style, Charley Harper simplified each bird s shape but remained faithful to its personality and colors. He skimmed over distracting details to capture the broad spirit of his subjects. I just count the wings, not the feathers, he said. Sometimes the effect was remarkable. One painting, for instance, centered upon a simple red teardrop with a touch of black. The combination of colors and shape became the unmistakable image of a cardinal. In another composition, hair-thin lines drawn against a pale lavender sky were enough to imply the motion of scissor-tailed flycatcher wings as the bird chased a butterfly. I particularly liked the grace and color of Harper s blackburnian warbler. A couple times, Harper took the minimalism too far for my tastes. He reduced a family of chickadees to black triangles circumscribed within ten white circles. The effect was far too abstract for those cute little avian missles flying around my back yard. The words in the title refer to the simple text, usually a witty paragraph, that Harper included with each print from his intentionally preposterous 22-word mnemonic for remembering the name of the puffin, to his ironic take on the natural world: The barn owl is a murderer, say we who constantly strive to build a better mousetrap. Explaining the dab of black on the red teardrop cardinal that I mentioned earlier, Harper asked us to excuse the napkin under the chin no lap. Fifty years after its contents were created, this small book of illustrations is to be enjoyed. This is not a field guide to birds. It s more of a modest armchair tribute to them.

Biographie de l'auteur :

This lovely reissue of the highly collectible 1974 classic is a Charley Harper gem. AMMO has carefully restored all the images and reproduced BIRDS & WORDS in its entirety and in its original format. This charming little book pairs Charley s illustrations with his witty observations of each beloved species of bird. The limited editions make beautiful gift items and are available in a choice of four different fabric-wrapped clamshell boxes. Each handmade silkscreen print is stamped and numbered on the back, making them a perfect treasure suitable for framing in a kid s room or nursery

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: AMMO Books LLC
• Date d'édition: 2008
• ISBN 10: 1934429058
• ISBN 13: 9781934429051
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 151