Rating: 4/5
Review:
very entertaining
I received a free copy of this book for review, and I like
it a lot. It is amusing and
knowledgeable – and also just a little thought-provoking in places.
Peter Duggan has produced a series of cartoon strips which
have been published in The Guardian Online since 2011. They are slightly bonkers takes on well known
art and artists from the ancient Egyptians to Damian Hirst. You never know what's coming next – which I
like a lot – and this is a great book for dipping into. It would spoil the jokes to reveal too much,
but just as a few examples there are great riffs on The Last Supper, Hockney's
A Bigger Splash and a modern couple adopting Botticelli's newly born Venus. Not everything is quite as funny as it might
be, but the standard is good and I smiled a lot and occasionally laughed out
loud. (Look out for the art teacher
suggesting an improvement to Holbein as he works on The Ambassadors, for
example.) Especially read in smallish chunks, this is a
very entertaining book.
Perhaps it's stating the bleeding obvious to say that it
does help to have some knowledge of art, but even with a very basic general
interest in art like mine (I'm a physicist by training, so I have no formal
education in art whatsoever) this is an enjoyable book which I can recommend
warmly.
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