Rating: 
Summary: NO COMMENT
Review: This is the greatest book ever for me like Dali was for surrealists.He's my favourite painter so anybody who like, love or just want to know about Dali you can buy this book and you don't need any type of autobiography to find something more. The paintings explain everything!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Comprehensive, but of inferior quality.
Review: When I saw this well-priced Book which was originally published in two volumes, at higher cost with a slip cover, I had to have it. I am a collector of Dali Books and was hoping that this Book would be the Catalogue Raisonne of Dali's paintings I had been looking for for so long. In this respect the Book was no disappointment with a total of 1,648 illustrations, but a closer look at the book revealed some serious faults.The worst fault by far is that the printing of the paintings is consistently too dark. Three examples: The blue colors of: "Myself at the age of Ten when I was a Grasshopper Child" (p.202) are much too dark. It is even worse with: "Ghost of Vermeer of Delft which can also be used as a Table" (p.222) Here the figure of Vermeer is in points indistinguishable from the backround and the sky is much too orange, instead of yellowish. The worst example is that of "The Last Supper" (p.488) where the apostles on the extreme left and right of the painting can barely be distinguished. There are many other examples of this. I made this comparison using several other books and exhibition catalogues, and have also seen the three paintings I mentioned as examples in person more than once. A close examination also reveals that both paper and binding are not of high quality. I have a feeling this book will not stand the test of time. One way to tell a good Art Books when the paper is a higher weight. Judging from the paper, I have a feeling it will yellow in a few years. This is, incidentally, true for other Books that I own published by Taschen. Also, a book this heavy should really have a stronger binding. Annoying also is that there is no alphabetic index of the paintings. Unless you know the year a painting was created, as they are in chronological order, there is no way to find it except by paging around. Despite these complaints, I still like the Book because it includes paintings I have never seen before. If however, you want to see the paintings of Dali as they really look, get "Dali: The Work, the Man" instead. It suffers from none of the faults I have descibed, but is not as comprehensive. It's worth the extra money. In collecting Art Books I have found that higher quality Books stand the test of time.
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