Rating: 
Summary: For McCartney completists only
Review: Best known and most successful as a composer of popular music, McCartney has branched out to explore his creative nature in classical music and painting. McCartney surely can be considered a Renaissance man of our generation.It's nice for us fans to see the results of his endeavors, but for the most part, McCartney's legacy will only include a brief footnote in reference to his painting. This book will be of interest to die-hard McCartney fans, but I doubt that either the book or McCartney's paintings will gain much attention in the world of contemporary art. I rather doubt that these paintings would have garnered the attention of a gallery curator and been exhibited were it not for the celebrity behind the work. The book includes an interview with Sir Paul, as well as essays by Brian Clarke, Julian Treuherz, Barry Miles, Wolfgang Suttner and Christoph Tannert. Photographs of the painter at work, taken by his late wife, Linda, are also included. The paintings which are reproduced in this book were first displayed publicly in the Lyz Art Forum, Siegen, Germany in 1999. McCartney's style is certainly his own, as one can see that McCartney the artist is exploring the canvas with his choice of colors, brush strokes and imagination. Clearly, he is "entirely fearless about getting lost" as Brian Clarke says in his essay in the book. Paintings that might have some interest for fans of Paul the Beatle are Patti Boyd, a cartoonish caricature of the ex-wife of George Harrison; Yellow Linda with piano, a study of his late wife and one of the more interesting portraits in the collection; Elvish me, a "Paul as Elvis" study which is rather whimsical; and Green head, which looks a lot like one of the characters in the Coming Up video. No doubt that McCartney fans will spend hours trying to analyze the hidden meaning in his abstracts. Is it for everyone? Certainly not. Do I regret paying the $50.00? Not really. I would expect those with a casual interest will be more likely to check the book out of a local library than adding it to their own collection.
Rating: 
Summary: Art???
Review: Ever wonder what Paul McCartney's liver looks like after he drank a lot of Booze? Well here you have it, painted by the man himself. Once you get past that, this book has no artistic value.
Rating:
Summary: Art???
Review: Ever wonder what Paul McCartney's liver looks like after he drank a lot of Booze? Well here you have it, painted by the man himself. Once you get past that, this book has no artistic value.
Rating: 
Summary: the awful purity of color, and a whole lot more
Review: I finally got over my block about not understanding modern painting by deciding that if it said something to me, attracted me in some way, then it didn't matter if I had read the explanatory treatise or not. At least two thirds of these paintings speak to me. The paintings will take you immediately out of the territory of the realistic, and sometimes beyond the land of representation. There are a number of pictures of faces, although they should probably not be called portraits (except the one of Linda McCartney)--they are pictures of types of people, or studies of emotion in color and line. Boxer lips, Scratch man, and several other face pictures are powerful, even disturbing to some people. There are three near-abstractions of beach landscapes that communicate the heat, the lassitude, and the mesmerizing colors of being at the beach wonderfully. There are two pure abstract paintings here, Red abstract, white moon, and Mr. Magritte's ruler, that are as good as any abstract I have seen or hope to see--the artist has temporarily *become* a color, found its root, and celebrated its awful purity. There is, as you would expect, a lot of humor in some of the paintings, and a lot of pure play: with the paint, with chance strokes that become people (David Bowie, Andy Warhol, John Lennon), and with stylistic tricks recovered from the ancient Celts. It is a large visual world, and an intense one, that McCartney gives us. If all you know about the artist is "Yesterday", you will probably be surprised; if you know Standing Stone, you won't be surprised at all. If you like serious painting by serious painters, you will thank Willem deKooning for befriending this artist when he was a nervous beginner. He's a confident painter now, and a very interesting one.
Rating:
Summary: hey he did it again
Review: i think that anyone that is talented enough to piant should do it, and a man as talented as Paul is , should really knock the artists for a loop, i mean the man is gear, there arent too many people that i can say has talents in music ,and painting but Paul really is gear, i meant that, and it doesnt mean anything that he is famous, a man is just a man , but he is a better man if he has as much talent as Paul does , if you dont believe me just see what his book has too offer.
Rating:
Summary: Weak
Review: I'm a Beatles freak, and fan of McCartney through them, and I tried to see some merit in these paintings. But they bite. McCartney does not have artistic talent. A celebrity painting makes one groan anyway. But I had to admit after viewing Anthony Quinn's paintings and Tony Bennett's paintings, that they were actually quite good. (Even Tony Curtis's paintings aren't bad, in a hotel-room-art kind of way.) McCartney doesn't have it. And the interview with McCartney in front of the book is pretty bland. So the book isn't even worth getting for that. Of all the talented artists alive now who will die unknown, and here's an untalented artist getting national exposure. Oh, well, that's art and commerce in the age of celebrity. McCartney is a talented MUSICAL artist, of course, and should not have strayed from that.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully inspiring!
Review: In this book, Paul McCartney proves that he is not only an immensley talented musician, but a painter as well. His paintings are unique; he has a style all of his own. I am so glad he had his paintings published for all of his fans to enjoy, they are truly remarkable, as he is.
Rating:
Summary: Sooo Impressed
Review: It's a joy to flip through this book of wildly inventive faces and colorful dreamscapes. There is a freedom and a vibrance to McCartney's paintings, that, like his music, can't help but draw you in and infect you with a buoyant kind of wonder. These paintings tear at the boundaries of what you think can and can't be done. They're appealing and yet completely unpredictable. In short, they are paintings from the same imagination that came up with both "I Will" and "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" and then had the not-so-common-sense to put them back-to-back on the same record. McCartney is obviously setting the artist inside free with these bold, bright canvases. Whether this is great art, that is really a question that each pair of eyes must answer in its own way, in its own unique language. I for one am glad that McCartney has chosen to make his paintings public. I find these colorful canvases, and the artisitic courage that propelled them into being, quite inspiring.
Rating:
Summary: Dripping with color
Review: It's a joy to flip through this book of wildly inventive faces and colorful dreamscapes. There is a freedom and a vibrance to McCartney's paintings, that, like his music, can't help but draw you in and infect you with a buoyant kind of wonder. These paintings tear at the boundaries of what you think can and can't be done. They're appealing and yet completely unpredictable. In short, they are paintings from the same imagination that came up with both "I Will" and "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" and then had the not-so-common-sense to put them back-to-back on the same record. McCartney is obviously setting the artist inside free with these bold, bright canvases. Whether this is great art, that is really a question that each pair of eyes must answer in its own way, in its own unique language. I for one am glad that McCartney has chosen to make his paintings public. I find these colorful canvases, and the artisitic courage that propelled them into being, quite inspiring.
Rating: 
Summary: Luigi Will Be Most Satisfied
Review: Paul McCartney only cautiously agreed to publish this book of paintings, fearing, quite rightly, he would be categorized as just a 'celebrity painter' - the Stallone and Curtis kind. "I know I'll be getting a few snide comments for doing this book - it seems that if you approach the art world by one route, that's OK, but if you've come via another route, then it invites prejudice. In fact [...], one 'critic' wrote that I 'shouldn't be allowed to do this.'" The simple, almost child-like honesty with which McCartney comments on this crossing into a different field, manifests itself in his paintings: they carry schoolboy-naughty titles like 'The Queen After Her First Cigarette' and 'Bowie Spitting', often display bright, simple colors, and have the kind of surprised pleasantness - for example "Ancient Connections" - which is often associated with children. That said, his work is actually pretty good. Its diversity (there are abstract paintings, figurative paintings, portraits, surrealist ones) is a plus, as is the execution, which reveals McCartney has a keen eye for colors and shapes (composition and detail, i.e. the more technical side of painting, are of lesser interest to McCartney, who said: 'I like the primitive approach, so if I learn to sail I don't take sailing lessons: I get into a boat and capsize a lot. It's actually very much my philosophy and it works equally well in painting and in music.') For people who are unaware, it should be pointed out that McCartney was a key figure in sixties' London, not only in the music field but also in the underground movement, doing collages, experimental music (long before Lennon), and drawings for the International Times paper and Indica Gallery, as well as collecting Magrittes and befriending Willem De Kooning. Also, he was the brain behind such legendary covers as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" (1967) and "Abbey Road" (1969). Some of the paintings in this book remind of the ones featured in the "Standing Stone" CD booklet, which he'd done to illustrate the story of that 1997 classical piece. Big, three-dimensional (it's as if they're made out of shiny plastic) figures with soft, often sandy yellow, pastel colors. In paintings like "Unspoken Words", "Ancient Connections" and "Yellow Celt" (all featured in this book) McCartney effectively uses this style. They are the best ones in his catalogue. In a way, his paintings - bright, simple, enjoyable, shapely - are the equivalent of his musical work. His approach is best summed up by himself: "In my mind I have a friend who is Luigi. Luigi owns a restaurant and he's got an alcove, and he always needs a painting for it. So whatever I'm doing, if I ever get that terrifying moment I say: 'It's for Luigi's alcove, Luigi will like this.' And he just lets me off - it frees my head for two seconds and then I'm over the hurdle and I can carry on. Luigi's alcove is one of my huge saviours."
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