Those four words fairly describe this excellent collection of photographs by Olaf Martens.

As a beginning photographer I was seeking out work by professionals that would inspire me, and I was profoundly inspired by "Frosty Fire". However, even non-photographers will find much to enjoy in this book. It is playful yet serious, in your face yet distanced, sexual yet intellectual.

Mr. Marten is an original and inspired photographer who uses beautiful women, strange props (gas masks, plastic sheeting, dogs), and exotic, bleak, or industrial settings for his explosively colorful work. His black and white photos and nude studies are also astounding. What I especially admire about Marten's work is that it draws on historical and political influences and hits the viewer between the brain and the crotch in an original and refreshing way. His photos are visceral but thoughtful, and I'm impressed by the imagination that went into composing these works. The female models he was fortunate enough to photograph are enticing and strong, goddesses without fear. The interactions between the models - and the models and the viewer - range from sensual and intimate tenderness to orgasmic displays outside the fetish paradigm.

It is obvious that Martens has influenced other European commercial artists with his work and I understand he has done much commercial work himself (it shows in this book). Whether one finds Olaf Marten's photographs erotic, funny, disturbing, confusing or ridiculous, his use of color, history, and the human form will capture the viewer's interest.

The work of Helnwein is simply one of the best i've ever seen!! The subject, the form, the color, the talent, everything makes for Helnwein to be one of the best artists in recent years, the book depicts well his work with superb photos, good reviews, a concise text not at all snobish. A great buy, good value for money!!!

Melanie Manchot uses the camera lens like a hard question and sensuous caress. It shows, despite what some of the over-written essay material by art critics contained in her book may assert, that her own ambivalence toward social norms along with her sense of the erotic are the source of her inspiration to produce stark, confrontational, yet paradoxically intimate photographs. Love is a Stranger, the title of the book, is really a kind of metaphore for what Manchot knows -that intimacy is overflowing everywhere among us, complicated and diverted not by the social rules restricting it but by our own questioning of our basic preference for intimacy when occasions for its display arise. The various series of photos in the book alternate between being inspiringly lush and formally restrained, all with a headlong deliberate sense of viewership that her particular use of the camera brings. In producing these photos and video documentations Manchot utilizes the photographic medium to engage some of the most fundamental human impulses, free them from fixed ideas of their proper or accepted understandings, and provide us with permission to consider human relations on a less unencumbered, interpersonal level. She is working inside certain aspects of just what it means to be human in a sensible way. This puts her work on aesthetic terrain that may seem obscure because the specifics of her objective, while so large in scope for being rather neglected in photography, focus with such precision on psychological truths that are largely a matter of rigorous introspection. This is an admirable collection of photographic work that speaks closely to our fundamental ideas about ourselves. It has both a reposing classic sense of artistic achievement and revelatory, cutting edge charisma.

Finally an artistic book on a subject where sex/gay eroticism is the usual! Vera, a woman photographer, shows us her men with art, from head to toes with a lot sensibility. She plays with the shapes and shadows without been vulgar anytime and proves that you can show something artistic without showing it all. One of the best book on the subject for black & white lovers!

The idea behind this book is simple: 100 women models, one box camera, one white room with no props, one video monitor to see what the camera is seeing and one shutter chord to take a photo of yourself... nude. This is perhaps the first book of photography where the photographer himself is not actually doing the camera work. 100 women, from vastly different walks of life and ages, pose before the camera to capture how they see themselves. Rival had only two requests: don't move the camera, and photograph yourself in the nude. Like "Naked New York" by Greg Friedler, people looking for hot, "model perfect" women will be disappointed (I'd recommend Playboy or some other rag). Those who are looking for a wonderful, successful experiment in the model exerting control over her environment, vs. just passively posing, and the exploration of one's self-image, will find this book refreshing, tasteful and moving.

any book that attempts to cover western 20th century art deserves to be reviewed with a large dose of charity -- the task is huge and perhaps impossible. however, this two volume set (one volume in the paperback edition) seems to go out of its way to make things harder than they have to be.

as with any taschen publication, the printing standards are exceptionally high. there is a wealth of beautiful and often canonical color images of major works by many artists ... the binding is solid and the text crisply printed. as a visual browse the book is a delight. the concluding biographical "who's who" of artists is a useful resource -- the book is probably worth having for these merits alone.

unfortunately the coverage of artists and movements is alarmingly spotty. there is no coherent, clear exposition of the guiding principles or characteristics of surrealism, abstract expressionism or modernism (e.g., greenberg and fried), l'art informel, arte povera, etc.; no mention of the evolving and interdependent influences of art, art criticism, art markets, intellectual trends and social causes. everything is broken up into discussions of individual artists, which is obstructive because there is no subject index. and artists of the calibre of joan mitchell, andy goldsworthy, lucien freud or john marin (!) are omitted entirely.

worst, the text is larded with fuzzy, inane or fatuous commentary that illuminates or documents nothing and very often fails to connect ideas to the illustrated examples. of frida kahlo: "The moving paintings of this long-suffering artist are socially critical without being aggressive." (the illustrated painting is a self portrait.) of joseph beuys: "Beuys devoted his entire life and energy as an artist to propagating his own inner convictions. It would simply not have occurred to him to put his message up on a sign above his front door." well, what's your point? of valerie export: "The Austrian artist Valerie Export devoted herself in her feminist Actions to historical manifestations of female body language (ill. right)." the illustration referred to shows export wearing a box; what is not explained is that this permits men to grope her bared breasts in public. of chris burden: "Chris Burden set out on a voyage of self-discovery via his own body (ill. below left)." what does that mean? the illustration referred to shows two video captures of burden's face and two figures, one pointing a rifle at the other; what is unexplained is that burden is having himself shot in the arm, or why that is interesting. and on and on ...

it is not all that difficult to select representative or important works of art from the 20th century -- auction prices and critical reputation can guide the way. on that criterion these two volumes are well done. it's quite another thing to illuminate, explain, contextualize and connect the enormously rich history of art over the past 100 years, and that is where this overview is a serious disappointment.

This art book is the most complete description, most detailed analysis, most distinguished book of its kind. It has almost every painter of the twentieth century (and some impressionists of the 19th as well) with his/her's most important works and some not so very well known that show the great variety some painters have. This book is full of color photographs of painters (book 1) and of sculptors (book 2). You've never seen Picasso, Pollock, Kline, Lissitsky, Moholy - Nagy, Dali, Vasarely, and hundreds of other so well before ! At the very end of the second book you have a short biography of EACH AND EVERYONE of the painters and sculptors in the book. This is THE MUST BOOK for every art lover in the world.