Electrical Installation in Pictures by M. Neidle (review)

BookJ 257 comprehensive and instructive and the numerous illustrations make for a clear step-by-step understanding of the various applications found for polystyrene. I feel unable to say more, as this medium tends to be rather limited anyway, but I doubt whether one could find another publication that was more explicit. Color and Composition: A Guide for Artists. Robert Girard. Trans. from French by J. Gabriel. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York and London, 1974. 100 pp., illus. $10.95 and €4.50. Reviewed by Albert Garrett* Robert Girard is a French artist and professor of design. As usual with books purporting to teach, one can find someuseful hints and tips. The text is written in a ‘magpie’ style, with unexplained physics, psycho-physics, chemistry, psychology and tailored aesthetics scattered as grains of pepper on a field of soot and smudge. The quality of the lithographic printing is appalling. Smudge even obscures some of the author’s instruction lines drawn on the illustrations (p. 56). Worse is the fact that only eight pages are in colour. Two out of the three basic psycho-physical harmonic orders are omitted. Newton’s only error is pointlessly repeated and the reader is misinformed that the red sensation is visible at 8,WA. The book is like bread made of stone. Electrical Installation in Pictures. Revised ed. M. Neidle. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1976. 81 pp., illus. fl.lO. The Editor of Leonard0 was misled by the title of this book into guessing that it deals with pictorial electric light kinetic art. It turns out to be a little illustrated book on electrical installations in buildings for apprentice electricians ! Nevertheless, artists intending to use electrical installations in their work will find the book useful. ‘10 Sunningdale Avenue, Eastcpte, Ruislip, Middx., HA4 9SR, England. Somewhere Else: A Living Learning Catalog. The Center for Curriculum Design, eds. Swallow Press, Chicago, Ill., 1972. 211 pp., illus. Paper, $3.00. The editors state: ‘This is a catalog of places to learn for those who can’t bring themselves to go to college, for those who shouldn’t go to college, or those who don’t want to go to college. And it is for anyone of any age interested in learning-places that are an alternative to grades, credits, credentials, and competition’. The book is organized in two parts. Part I gives places to go for instruction. Included are the Mountain Institute for Man, a community of those seekinganswers to social, ethical and biological problems; The Cape Cod Crafts Cooperative; the Tangent Group, a counseling and information center on homosexuality;the Gestalt Institute of Canada; School for Holography; The Writing Farm of Thy, Denmark; The Vancouver Zen Centre; The Liberation School for Women. Part I1 points to sources of information about ‘places to learn’. The sources are of different types: journals, libraries, projects, books, directories, learning exchanges and lists. There are, for example, lists of free universities and Zen meditation groups. Grants and Aid to Individuals in the Arts. 2nd ed. Washington International Arts Letter, Washington, D.C., 1972. 155 pp. $10.95. This is an alphabeticallisting of over 1,OOO institutions that offer grants and financial aid (in amounts exceeding S1,OOO) to students and professionals in the arts. All entries carry a code indicating either educational or professional category and the discipline (architecture, arts management, crafts, dance or ballet, film, history, music, museum administration, theatre, visual or plastic arts, writing). In some instances entries carry additional factual information. Grants and aid available to persons of any nationality are so indicated. At the back of the book there is a helpful index of the contents by disciplines. The book was designed to aid users in making initial contacts. BOOKS RECEIVED The Adventurous Decade: Comic Strips in the Thirites. Ron Goulart. Arlington House, New Rochelle, N.Y., 1975. 224 pp., illus. $8.95. After the Hunt: William Harnett and Other American Still Life Painters 1870-1900. Revised ed. Alfred Frankenstein. Univ. CaliforniaPress, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1975. 200 pp., illus. €21.00. American Sculpture inProcess: 1930/1970. Wayne Andersen. New York Graphic Society, Boston, Mass., 1975. 278 pp., illus. €11.25. Art-Action andParticipation. Frank Popper. New York...