Michael F. Ananian
Carved Splendor: Late Gothic Altarpieces in Southern Germany, Austria and South Tirol
written by Rainer Kahsnitz, with photographs by Achim Bunz
Carved Splendor : Late Gothic Altarpieces in Southern Germany, Austria and South Tirol is a book of marvelous essays and reproductions of carved and often polychromed sculpture. This book was the first experience I had of these sculptures. They stirred in me wonder and curiosity, which was only satisfied with a trip about ten years ago to Bavaria and Franconia to see some of these gigantic beauties. More than any single painting--one would think that paintings more than sculpture would inspire a painter--the sculpture in this book has had the most abiding and profound aesthetic, structural, and conceptual influence on my painting. As a figurative painter it has helped form my ideas about how the proportions of the human body alone, without any added, external content, can comment on the human condition and human experience.