Mikhail Guerman (1933–2018)

This is a very large format book of two hundred pages, and, with the exception of a few historic black and white photographs, it is fully illustrated in full colour. The text runs throughout the book and discusses the origins and influences of Russian Impressionism, and frequently draws comparisons with the French masters. However apart from the Contents page there is no index, no chronology, and no bibliography; although notes do appear on the same page as the relevant text.

While some of the images are impressive, the total package leaves much to be desired. The text is set in a fairly narrow sans face, not a good choice for comfortable reading, it is also comparatively large, again too large for comfortable close reading, and frequently it appears against a grey background; little good to be found there.

While the quality of photography and reproduction is sometimes very good, revealing at times the textures of the paint and the brush work, it is not consistent; sometimes the image is out of focus, this usually occurs where the close up has been enlarged too much and so render useless.

But perhaps the most irritating aspect of the book is the overall layout; it is quite simply far too busy. There are too many page permutations: double page bleed illustrations, text with running illustrations, text wrapped around illustrations, text wrapped around cut-out illustrations; I could go on but must mention one more and perhaps the most infuriating: the double page bleed image with a single column of text splitting the image so that part of it is moved across the page. As there is little relationship between the text and illustrations, I cannot see any reason for this strange integration. The overall impression is confusing and looks cheap, but more significantly it detracts from the paintings. Altogether a great shame for there is some beautiful work reproduced here. How much easier on the eye it would have been if the paintings had been assembled in a consistent layout separate from the text.… (altro)