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$24.95. Though it has always seemed formal, stylized and decorative to the Western eye. Japanese art is also insistently narrative, copiously illustrative in content. With its scenes of battles and civil war, of palaces looted and burning, of the sea and bustling daily life, art in Japan has served many of the functions of chronicle, comic book, religious tract and daily newspaper. By a skillful selection of paintings and prints. Editor Bradley Smith has managed to tell the tumultuous history of the nation almost entirely through its art, with only the essential minimum of supporting text. The result is also a sweeping survey of the art itself, and a sumptuous, stimulating book.
TREASURES OF ANCIENT AMERICA by S. K. Lothrop. 229 pages. Skira. $27.50.
For those who still think of pre-Columbian America in terms of only three major cultures—the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Incas—this book may prove a revelation. Fact is that from Tzinzunt-zan in Mexico to Tiahuanaco in what is now Bolivia, over a span of 4,000 miles and 2,500 years, more than two dozen pre-Columbian cultures flourished along the spine of America, and their rich complexity is still being unearthed.
Even the names are unfamiliar, full of t's and x's in unlikely places, and the art objects themselves present strange shapes of unknown utility, jarringly vivid colors and hauntingly cruel motifs.
A comprehensive selection is lavishly presented here, together with a text that most readers will find welcome in sorting out who did what and how. Surprisingly often, Dr. Lothrop is even able to say why.
LAUTREC BY LAUTREC by P. Huisman and M. G. Dortu. 274 pages. Viking. $30.
HENRI ROUSSEAU by Dora Vallier. 327 pages. Abrams. $25. In contrast to the splendid presence of the Goya volume (see above), these two large and well-made books might seem modestly conceived. But they have the artistic balance the Goya lacks. The Lautrec is the more profusely illustrated of the two, and can in fact claim to be the largest collection of the artist's work ever reproduced between two covers.
To that it adds photos of Lautrec himself, of his studios, and of many of his models and subjects. Philippe Huis-man's text is thorough but simperingly eager to simonize Lautrec's reputation as the depraved genius of fin-de-siecle Montmartre.
The strength of the Rousseau volume is the other way around: the pictures are good but are dominated by Dora Vallier's text, which is a critical biography of satisfying dexterity and power. In the 50 years since his death, the life story of this Paris toll collector who quit his work to become a painter at the age of 40 has become fogged with hearsay and growing legend. Author Vallier penetrates to the basic facts of his life and establishes a firm chronology of his work. She is thus able to be explicit and detailed about the development, both in content and technique, of his entirely self-taught and strangely powerful art.
AMERICAN WILDFLOWERS. Photographs by Farrell Grehan, text by H. W.
Rickett. 252 pages. Odyssey. $12.95.