Flower

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Description
"When I agreed to write an essay for Beane's book, at the request of a mutual friend," recounts Anthony F. Janson, noted curator and art historian, "I had no idea I would be writing about one of the greatest photographers I have ever run across. It was easy enough for me to locate his position in the history of photography and art as a whole. I saw its importance immediately. Such an approach hardly begins to meet the challenge of explaining his work."
With intensity and vision, Christopher Beane captures the beauty, and the bizarre, of the botanical. He concentrates on the overlooked detail: the veins of dehydrated petals, the textures of poppy stamens, the infinite compositions vines create, and the multiple layers that constitute a ranunculus. Flowers are one of the most traditional subjects for artwork, yet Beane brings something radically new to his flower photographs, using his unique sensibility to create uncommon art.
In 150 color and black-and-white photographs, "Flower" explores the precious and perishable--seed pods burst open, withered leaves curl, and frilly petals unfurl. In the accompanying text, Anthny F. Janson chronicles the development of Beane's art, as well as offering descriptions of Bean's core ideas and an essential perspective on this unique work. Janson's overview of the flower in photography and art makes for rich and engaging reading. And Beane's "flower-stories," short bloom-ographies of individual works, provide an opportunity to witness the evolution of Beane's work as understood by the artist himself.
"Flower" is a thing of beauty--a testament to the remarkable talent of Christopher Beane and his passionate vision

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Library Journal (05/15/2008)
In 1993, because the early hours would give him long afternoons to work in his photography studio, design school graduate Beane sought employment in New York City's wholesale flower market. Soon enough, he was taking his work home with him, training his lens on elaborately beautiful and variable blossoms. This monograph documents 15 years of this talented photographer's ceaseless experimentation with, and extraordinary expansion of, one of art's most traditional topics. Rarely in an art book are readers treated to such a revealing window into the development of a gifted virtuoso like Beane. Renowned art historian Janson's accompanying text cultivates attention as it observes Beane's gradual and deliberate advancement from sterile black-and-white botanical silhouettes to vividly colored floral portraits. Once Beane had succeeded with color, his work took an ominous turn as he experimented with exquisite washed-out depictions of dying plants. These dried petals, leaves, and stems gain in significance once we learn they were created right before Beane was diagnosed with Stage IV lymphoma (from which he recovered). The volume closes with a haunting tableau titled Lilies Under Apocalyptic Sky, a powerful conclusion to a book that is itself an allegory for transience and mortality.-Douglas F. Smith, Berkeley P.L., CA

ISBN: 9781579653521 | EAN: 9781579653521
Publisher: Artisan Publishers  | Publication Date: May, 2008

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