Magic Worlds of Fantasy

Fülszöveg

This book reveals the work of four remarkable amateur artists whose common trait is fantasy. One is an English housewife, born in wartime Berlin, who engraves images of another world which she visits in outer space; one is a Swiss psychiatrist who photographs abstract art found in tree bark; one is a Chinese chef who fled Peking ahead of the Communists and now creates his own Garden of Eden from bits of postage stamps; and one is a Belgian baroness who focuses her color camera on the secret face of life itself—the ultimate fantasy—discovered in her forest-garden.
Fantasy is prefaced by an eight-page selection of exuberant (and exclusive) "Souvenirs of a Magic World" given to the author by Pablo Picasso as tokens of his friendship. They richly illustrate the veteran artist's joie de vivre when confronting the challenge of his own imagination: he voiced a concern, shared by Renoir, over the risk of crushing, through conformity, those elusive and often fragile fantasies seen by... Tovább

Fülszöveg

This book reveals the work of four remarkable amateur artists whose common trait is fantasy. One is an English housewife, born in wartime Berlin, who engraves images of another world which she visits in outer space; one is a Swiss psychiatrist who photographs abstract art found in tree bark; one is a Chinese chef who fled Peking ahead of the Communists and now creates his own Garden of Eden from bits of postage stamps; and one is a Belgian baroness who focuses her color camera on the secret face of life itself—the ultimate fantasy—discovered in her forest-garden.
Fantasy is prefaced by an eight-page selection of exuberant (and exclusive) "Souvenirs of a Magic World" given to the author by Pablo Picasso as tokens of his friendship. They richly illustrate the veteran artist's joie de vivre when confronting the challenge of his own imagination: he voiced a concern, shared by Renoir, over the risk of crushing, through conformity, those elusive and often fragile fantasies seen by children—probably the greatest dreamers of all.
Photographer-editor David Douglas Duncan has brought master craftsmanship to the expanding realm of fantasy hobbies, now discovered everywhere behind today's life of increasing leisure and holiday weekends. He produced this book on presses of Imprimeries Réunies, Lausanne, among the most renowned of all Swiss printers.
David Douglas Duncan is the author of The Private World of Pablo Picasso, Picasso's Picassos, Goodbye Picasso and The Silent Studio, all books on the Spanish artist. For years, he had numerous camera essays published in Life magazine, then later contributed one-man photographic specials to NBC-TV and ABC-TV. He also photographed and wrote Great Treasures of the Kremlin, Yankee Nomad, This Is War!, I Protest!, War Without Heroes, a book on prismatic photography, and Self-Portrait: U.S.A., a penetrating view of the historic 1968 American presidential conventions in Miami Beach and Chicago. In 1972 the Whitney Museum of American Art showed his "One Generation of Peace and War," which was its first one-man photographic exhibit. He now has edited, and presents in Magic Worlds of Fantasy, works of four amateur artists "whose secret visions separate them from all others met while I was a photographer probing some of the near and remote corners of our planet."
Front of jacket: Dragon made of postage stamps by Hsueh Shao-Tang (detail)
Back of jacket: Synchromie photograph of Mindanoan gum tree by Dr. Oscar Forel Vissza