Art Books: A Basic Bibliography of Monographs on Artists

Library Journal

The long-awaited revision of E. Louise Lucas's authoritative Art Books: a basic bibliography on the fine arts is here. While Lucas balanced general versus scholarly requirements, Freitag, chief art librarian at Harvard, has changed this edition's approach to accommodate what he perceives to be a dominant trend in art research. Over half of the original edition detailed works on iconography, history and theory, and artistic medium by geographical location. Freitag substitutes an abbreviated section on international and national reference works and offers a greatly enlarged bibliography on over 1800 major artists. There are some discrepancies in the general reference listing, but the coverage of works on artists from every period of art history is impressive, making this a strong, useful source for academic and professional usage. As a reference tool, this selective bibliography should be used in conjunction with other important art research works, e.g., Etta Arntzen and Robert Rainwater's Guide to the Literature of Art History (ALA, 1980). Libraries should retain Lucas's book for its retrospective value and acquire Freitag's for its soon-to-be-a-classic relevance. Paula A. Baxter, Museum of Modern Art Lib., New York

Booknews

Expanded to twice as many entries as the 1985 edition, and updated with new publications, new editions of previous entries, titles missed the first time around, more of the artists' own writings, and monographs that deal with significant aspects or portions of an artist's work though not all of it. The listing is alphabetical by artist, and the index by author. The works cited include analytical and critical, biographical, and enumerative; their formats range from books and catalogues raisonn<'e>s to exhibition and auction sale catalogues. A selection of biographical dictionaries containing information on artists is arranged by country. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.