Michele Oka Doner: Natural Seduction

Rating:
Summary: A full-color photographic showcase
Review: Enhanced with informed and informative essays by Morris Lapidus, Suzanne Ramljak, and Arthur C. Danto highlighting the central themes of the art, Michele Oka Doner: Natural Seduction is a full-color photographic showcase of the work of internationally acclaimed artist and designer Michele Oka Doner. Grand architectural projects, clay sculpture, drawings, cast silver, and many other types of media offer a broad spectrum of her artistic inspiration; including works celebrate the human figure, natural elements, and sweeping lines which are a recurring theme. Michele Oka Doner: Natural Seduction is an important and very welcome contribution to personal, professional, and academic 20th Century Art History/Art Appreciation collections.

Rating:
Summary: Claiming the Source
Review: This book gives a thrilling sense of Michele Oka Doner's life and work, starting with her exposure to marine and plant life as a child in Miami, and details how this seminal experience continues to guide her artistic production. Gorgeous color illustrations complement scholarly essays lending insight into her encyclopedic imagination, her vast repertoire of sources, and her personal lexicon of images and text. Of particular interest is Suzanne Ramjlak's use of the marriage between Vulcan and Venus image to describe the union of opposites so prevalent in Oka Doner's oeuvre. Tracing her career of four decades, Natural Seduction explores the artist's exquisite craftsmanship, her ideas of beauty, pleasure, and grace, and her ties to nature and mythology as they apply to her functional art, her sculptures and installations, and her public commissions.