Reviews
Albert and the Whale: Albrecht Dürer and an Artistic Quest the Understand Our World by Philip Hoare
enbyemu's review
I'm calling it quits partway through chapter 3. The book has potential, but I can't tell if it's bad writing or bad editing that's putting me off. It has all these snippets of interesting things (I think), but somehow manages to skip all the between information that would tie them together cohesively, leaving an inpossible-to-follow mess.
lifesaverscandyofficial's review
a bit heady as in "over my" but I guess I’m the rare sort with little prior familiarity to durer's work prior to reading... a pleasant experience, though, impressionistic and intriguing. curious about his other whale texts!
bookwormellie's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
georgemillership's review
3.0
Sprawling and romantic, sometimes to its benefit, sometimes to its detriment. At its strongest when discussing the relation between knowledge, depiction, and capitalism - and how art can expand but limit the imagination.
I love his explorations of art as an interface with nature. I use interface literally; the woodblock prints. Good too are his discussions of fascism. But to be honest I didn't get much from this - entertaining but vague references and repetitive through lines. Still, worth a read if Dürer and modernism are your thing.
I love his explorations of art as an interface with nature. I use interface literally; the woodblock prints. Good too are his discussions of fascism. But to be honest I didn't get much from this - entertaining but vague references and repetitive through lines. Still, worth a read if Dürer and modernism are your thing.
storyofjosh's review
informative
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
in 1520 albert dürer, a painter and engraver, as well as amateur jeweller, mathematical theorist and typographer, left his home in nuremberg on a tour of the low countries. he was one of the earliest international celebrity artists - the invention of the printing press spreading reproductions of his incredibly detailed and symbolically rich woodcuts across europe. as it is today, the art world was inextricably bound to wealth and commerce, and the rationale for durer’s trip was to try and cultivate the new holy roman emperor as a future patron.
while he was there he also painted locals, traded paintings for curiosities, witnessed a dazzling show of treasure recently plundered from the aztecs by spanish conquistadors and learned reports of a whale beached on the nearby zeeland coast. unfortunately by the time dürer arrived there, said whale had vanished. this is the only known connection between the famous renaissance artist and the leviathan, which naturally poses a challenge to anyone trying to spin a book out of the links between them.
philip hoare’s approach in this essayistic book is to sort of give up. there’s some interesting stuff about dürer: the technical genius which modern expert craftspeople struggle to replicate, how he ended up drawing the most famous image of a rhinoceros without ever seeing one, his dreams of an upcoming deluge rendered in sublime watercolour. likewise about whales in 16th century netherlands, with their bones either mistaken for those of giants no longer of our earth, or hung dangling from the facades of merchants guild buildings for good luck. then there’s a lot of material that just interests the author generally, about thomas mann, wh auden, marianne moore and wg sebald. sometimes they thought about dürer, but mostly they did not.
luckily these people interest me, so even though this doesn’t quite work even as thematic rumination let alone as insight into the artist, it remains enjoyable. sometimes hoare fumbles when straining too much for the poetic. it’s best when you learn something new. apparently 175,000 whales were killed during WW1 to produce nitroglycerin and oil? wild
while he was there he also painted locals, traded paintings for curiosities, witnessed a dazzling show of treasure recently plundered from the aztecs by spanish conquistadors and learned reports of a whale beached on the nearby zeeland coast. unfortunately by the time dürer arrived there, said whale had vanished. this is the only known connection between the famous renaissance artist and the leviathan, which naturally poses a challenge to anyone trying to spin a book out of the links between them.
philip hoare’s approach in this essayistic book is to sort of give up. there’s some interesting stuff about dürer: the technical genius which modern expert craftspeople struggle to replicate, how he ended up drawing the most famous image of a rhinoceros without ever seeing one, his dreams of an upcoming deluge rendered in sublime watercolour. likewise about whales in 16th century netherlands, with their bones either mistaken for those of giants no longer of our earth, or hung dangling from the facades of merchants guild buildings for good luck. then there’s a lot of material that just interests the author generally, about thomas mann, wh auden, marianne moore and wg sebald. sometimes they thought about dürer, but mostly they did not.
luckily these people interest me, so even though this doesn’t quite work even as thematic rumination let alone as insight into the artist, it remains enjoyable. sometimes hoare fumbles when straining too much for the poetic. it’s best when you learn something new. apparently 175,000 whales were killed during WW1 to produce nitroglycerin and oil? wild
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