CRITIC'S CHOICE: ART BOOKS

FROM SAINTS TO DANTE, AFRICA TO CHINA, JEWISH CEMETERIES TO HOME ALTARS

Author: By Christine Temin, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, December 7, 1997

Page: G1

Section: Books

Another art-and-religion book I'd highly recommend is Alexander Liberman's ``Prayers in Stone'' (Random House, $65), an ode to inspirational sculpture and architecture. A celebrated art director and photographer, Liberman visits the Greek ruins at Paestum, the Parthenon, the Pantheon, Chartres, Assisi, and other religious sites, producing opinionated commentary and ravishing photographs. Never has anyone so perfectly captured the radiance of the Matisse Chapel in Venice.

Another dazzler on a religious theme is ``Treasures of Jewish Art from the Jacobo and Asea Furman Collection of Judaica'' (Hugh Lauter Levin Associates, Inc., $100). The Furmans, based in Santiago, Chile, amassed an eclectic and high-quality collection of Judaica -- Kiddush cups, Torah pointers, Hanukkah lamps, Bible covers, and other treasures intricately worked in precious metals -- over the course of a quarter-century, starting in 1971. This opulent, slipcased volume, with contributions from several scholars, does justice to their achievement.

Charles H. Taylor and Patricia Finley, Jungians both, interpret Dante's masterwork as a psychological journey from dark depression to objective love. Their magnificent ``Images of the Journey in Dante's `Divine Comedy' '' (Yale University Press, $50) includes more than 250 illustrations of the poem by artists from six centuries, from medieval illuminators to Botticelli, Blake, and Baskin.

This year is blessedly short on books on Impressionists, the most over-exposed artists in history. One Impressionist book that's actually welcome is Christopher Benfey's account of a pivotal American journey of one of the group, ``Degas in New Orleans'' (Knopf, $27.50). The year is also short on pretentious $200 tomes on Old Masters. One good book on the topic is Charles Avery's ``Bernini: Genius of the Baroque'' (Bulfinch Press/Little, Brown, $75), with David Finn's voluptuous photographs, including a cover shot of ``The Ecstasy of Sta. Teresa,'' who's indulging in her famously orgasmic writhing.

This year has brought a rash of delightfully oddball books. Consider ``Painting by Numbers: Komar and Melamid's Scientific Guide to Art'' (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $50). Edited by JoAnn Wypijewski, it features madcap Russian emigre artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid co-opting that favorite capitalist tool, the market-research poll. They discovered not-so-scintillating statistics -- Rembrandt's favorability rating is very high among people of all political persuasions -- but their true contribution is tweaking the art world with the revelation that what Americans really want in a painting is a tranquil, realistic, blue landscape. So there.

Did you miss this year's Documenta and Venice Biennale? ``New Art'' (Abrams, $24.95) is a fine substitute, a showcase of the work of more than 100 international artists, most younger than 50, listed alphabetically. Edited by Roxana Marcoci, Diana Murphy, and Eve Sinaiko, the book is blissfully free of theorizing -- and it's fun to look at.

This year's most admirable book on non-Western art is ``Three Thousand Years of Chinese Painting'' (Yale University Press, $75). A team of scholars has produced the essential guide to one of the world's greatest painting traditions, from ancient petroglyphs to handscrolls made in modern times.

Susan Vogel's ``African Art Western Eyes'' (Yale University Press, $60) is a stunning look at the sculpture of the Baule people of the Ivory Coast, by an author who has devoted more than a quarter-century to study of the subject. In ``Rhapsodies in Black: Art of the Harlem Renaissance'' (University of California Press, $60 hardcover, $29.95 paper), several authors examine the connections of that artistically fertile moment with movements in Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa itself.

For more than a decade, the Boston artist Dana Salvo has traveled through Mexico to photograph the home altars of its rural citizenry. The result is ``Home Altars of Mexico'' (University of New Mexico Press, $39.95), which records religious installations that may seem gaudy to North American eyes, but nonetheless shine with sincerity.

David King's ``The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin's Russia'' (Metropolitan Books, $35) is an astonishing collection of Soviet photographs changed to suit the tyrant. His enemies are airbrushed out; his adoring legions are made even more numerous. King gives new meaning to the common art-world term ``altered photo.''

To prepare for the much-anticipated Arthur Dove show coming to the Addison Gallery of American Art in 1998, read curator Debra Bricker Balken's excellent, exquisitely illustrated ``Arthur Dove: A Retrospective'' (Addison Gallery and MIT Press, $50 hardcover, $35 paper).

Another show that has spawned a superb book is the exhibition of the Lifar collection of Ballets Russes designs on view until Jan. 4 at Hartford's Wadsworth Atheneum. Its catalog, Alexander Schouvaloff's ``The Art of Ballets Russes'' (Yale University Press, $45 for pre-Christmas delivery in softcover; $65 hardcover not yet available), documents the Wadsworth's extensive holdings of art and costumes related to that unforgettable era of classical dance.

And still another show-related book is ``Sigmar Polke: The Three Lies of Painting'' (Cantz, $75). The finest and most complete examination to date of one of postwar Germany's greatest artists, the book, with contributions by several authors, is the catalog for an important exhibition now in Bonn. That show will not, alas, come to America, but the book is the next best thing.

The levitating glass ``balloons'' on the cover of ``Chihuly'' (Abrams, $60) are as light as author Donald Kuspit's text is weighty. A distinguished critic, Kuspit writes with authority on Dale Chihuly, leader of the American studio glass movement, an artist who has progressed from pretty bowls to massive installations (his works are currently on view at the Museum of Fine Arts). Another significant new decorative-arts book is ``Horta: Art Nouveau to Modernism'' (Abrams, $60). It's the only comprehensive monograph on architect Victor Horta, the Belgian Art Nouveau pioneer and creator of all-encompassing environments alive with whiplash curves.

In the books celebrating museums category there's ``The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum'' (Abrams, $35), about that new institution in Santa Fe. Leading art historians including Barbara Rose and Mark Stevens discuss the American modernist who is one of the few artists of her gender to achieve cult status. The book's lavish illustrations show why.

The inauguration of the new Getty Center, a 110-acre culture campus in Los Angeles, has occasioned a raft of books, including ``Building the Getty'' (Knopf, $35) by Richard Meier, the architect who won what's touted as ``the commission of the century.'' He got it in 1984, a mere five years after his first large museum competition, in Frankfurt, and has labored on the Getty ever since in preparation for its Dec. 16 opening.

``Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden: 150 Works of Art'' (Abrams, $60), written by its director, James Demetrion, is a tour not only of a great museum, but of 20th-century art. The artists under discussion constitute a pantheon, from Picasso to Pollock, Warhol, and Rothko. The book celebrates the 150th anniversary of the Smithsonian Institution, the Hirshhorn's parent.

One of the great architects of the century, Joze Plecnik developed a neoclassical style that is eclectic, inventive, and austere. Because he worked in Eastern Europe, he is too little known in America. Damjan Prelovsek's ``Joze Plecnik 1872-1957'' (Yale University Press, $65) should help correct that. Written in German, the book is newly translated into English. A dazzling documentation of Plecnik masterworks including his solemn and controversial additions to the centuries-old Prague Castle, it proves beyond doubt that he was one of the most important and exciting talents of his time.