It's a blog! Mainly of book reviews.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo: Technically superb and apparently very popular during his lifetime but very little of his work survived to the present. An obvious influence on Dali, along with Heironymous Bosch. Made paintings where assemblages of objects or animals form human portraits. He's not my cup of tea, nor why I bought the book, but he does set some sort of historical context for the 20th Century and contemporary art that follows. That said, according to the introduction it's a very limited context in that the type of art the book is principally about has antecedents in Western art back as far as the Romans...
Dali: Probably the first artist that hangs in major galleries that I took an interest in, years before I discovered Impressionism as an undergrad. Focuses on his figure-ground illusion type of painting and the anamorphic illusions. The figure-ground pictures, whilst endlessly fascinating for their detail and trickery, mostly don't form over-all images that are very appealing, aesthetically. The best one I've ever seen, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus (in the Tate Modern, London), which does appeal to me aesthetically, as well as combining subject matter and the type of illusion involved spectacularly, isn't reproduced. In fact none of the most famous paintings are here. In a way that's good; it brings new material to my attention. As for the anamorphic paintings, which appear to be one thing when viewed flat and another when viewed in a cylindrical mirror, I had not even heard of them before. Dali's diversity never ceases to amaze me; nor does his technical skill - never more impressive than in these anamorphic images.