The Perception of Appearance: A Decade of Contemporary American Figure Drawing

Lundin (art, U. of Washington) provides a thoughtful, illuminating introductory chapter to this catalogue, prepared to accompany a 2002 exhibit at the Frye Art Museum, for which he was guest curator. One hundred and forty-two drawings are presented. An interesting controversy is briefly described: Lundin favored presenting the images unencumbered by text so that visual engagement would be paramount, while Debra Byrne (a director at the Frye Museum) was reluctant to omit contextual information such as author biographies and info about the media and format. The compromise (which is effective): text is unobtrusively presented at the end of the book, after the images have had their say. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)