Twelve Drummers Drumming, Eleven Pipers Piping

The big expensive picture book is probably a fixed Christmas institution for the foreseeable future. As publishers recognize, its very size and expensiveness make it sell. Both price tag and poundage are an unarguably solid demonstration of the giver's regard. The presumed esthetic content is an implied compliment to the recipient's cultivation. Yet it can appear to be absorbed just by leafing through it; and duty done, the thing lends its own cachet as it lies there on the coffee table. Of course, for those with the courage to seek them out and match them with the taste of the recipient, there are even real pictureless books for real reading. This year, however, the surprise is that some of the picture books are actually readable too. Among the dog books and bird books, joke books and gardening books, gun books, horse books, bridge books and seemingly endless art books, the following stand out:

GOYA by Francisco Javier Sanchez Canton. 95 pages followed by 56 plates. Reynal. $100. Some of the double gatefold plates open out to more than 4 ft. in length. The typography is superb, the paper heavy. Each of the 193 reproductions was printed separately and with fanatic attention to accuracy of color, then pasted in. Goya is also a work of immense scholarship: the extensive text is by the director of Madrid's Prado Museum, who is the acknowledged Goya authority. Yet the book may prove curiously disappointing to those who are not specialists. Goya in his long lifetime produced many hundreds of works, from accomplished courtly portraits of Spanish nobility to the increasingly tormented later etchings and paintings of war and cruelty. All of Goya's phases are represented, but the book's emphasis (including all 56 large plates) is devoted to just 14 works, the "black paintings" with which he decorated the walls of his country villa toward the end of his life. The black paintings are massive, powerful, hell-ridden. But they are also sadly deteriorated with time, having been originally executed on plaster in oil paint that was transferred bodily to canvas many years later. Their power finally eludes even the great care and scale of these reproductions.

THE BIRTH OF GREEK ART by Pierre Demargne. 446 pages. Golden Press. $25. The incomparable flowering of Hellenic culture in the 5th century B.C., the era of the building of the Parthenon and the repulse of the Persians, was in fact preceded by at least 2,500 years of art and civilization in the islands and mainland of the Greek world. First came the full cycle of the pre-Hellenic civilizations of the Minoans and the Mycenaeans, with their varied and sophisticated achievements, which finally flamed out in the 12th century B.C.

Out of the ensuing dark age arose a new archaic beginning of art, which developed through several centuries to reach the purity of form and piety of humanistic vision usually conjured up by the phrase "Greek art." This ancient double root of the Greek experience is the subject of Author Demargne's engrossing study and its opulent page after page of illustration.

JAPAN-A HISTORY IN ART by Bradley Smith. 295 pages. Simon & Schuster.

$24.95. Though it has always seemed formal, stylized and decorative to the Western eye. Japanese art is also insistently narrative, copiously illustrative in content. With its scenes of battles and civil war, of palaces looted and burning, of the sea and bustling daily life, art in Japan has served many of the functions of chronicle, comic book, religious tract and daily newspaper. By a skillful selection of paintings and prints. Editor Bradley Smith has managed to tell the tumultuous history of the nation almost entirely through its art, with only the essential minimum of supporting text. The result is also a sweeping survey of the art itself, and a sumptuous, stimulating book.

TREASURES OF ANCIENT AMERICA by S. K. Lothrop. 229 pages. Skira. $27.50.

For those who still think of pre-Columbian America in terms of only three major cultures--the Mayans, the Aztecs and the Incas--this book may prove a revelation. Fact is that from Tzinzunt-zan in Mexico to Tiahuanaco in what is now Bolivia, over a span of 4,000 miles and 2,500 years, more than two dozen pre-Columbian cultures flourished along the spine of America, and their rich complexity is still being unearthed.

Even the names are unfamiliar, full of t's and x's in unlikely places, and the art objects themselves present strange shapes of unknown utility, jarringly vivid colors and hauntingly cruel motifs.

A comprehensive selection is lavishly presented here, together with a text that most readers will find welcome in sorting out who did what and how. Surprisingly often, Dr. Lothrop is even able to say why.

LAUTREC BY LAUTREC by P. Huisman and M. G. Dortu. 274 pages. Viking. $30.

HENRI ROUSSEAU by Dora Vallier. 327 pages. Abrams. $25. In contrast to the splendid presence of the Goya volume (see above), these two large and well-made books might seem modestly conceived. But they have the artistic balance the Goya lacks. The Lautrec is the more profusely illustrated of the two, and can in fact claim to be the largest collection of the artist's work ever reproduced between two covers.

To that it adds photos of Lautrec himself, of his studios, and of many of his models and subjects. Philippe Huis-man's text is thorough but simperingly eager to simonize Lautrec's reputation as the depraved genius of fin-de-siecle Montmartre.

The strength of the Rousseau volume is the other way around: the pictures are good but are dominated by Dora Vallier's text, which is a critical biography of satisfying dexterity and power. In the 50 years since his death, the life story of this Paris toll collector who quit his work to become a painter at the age of 40 has become fogged with hearsay and growing legend. Author Vallier penetrates to the basic facts of his life and establishes a firm chronology of his work. She is thus able to be explicit and detailed about the development, both in content and technique, of his entirely self-taught and strangely powerful art.

AMERICAN WILDFLOWERS. Photographs by Farrell Grehan, text by H. W.

Rickett. 252 pages. Odyssey. $12.95.

Those zealous amateurs who start hunting wildflowers in waterproof boots with snow still on the ground may sniff at this book because it is not a field guide to slip into the coat pocket. All others should rejoice, for Farrell Grehan has taken a remarkable series of color photographs that are almost uniformly successful in capturing the beauty of more than 300 different kinds of wildflowers across the country. The photos are delicate, somewhat sweet, and unabashedly romantic. The text, keyed to the photos, is by a senior botanist at The New York Botanical Garden; it is informative, adequately technical and a model of clarity. One quibble: many of the pictures would be helped by some discreet indication of scale.

A CONCISE HISTORY OF MODERN SCULPTURE by Herbert Read. 310 pages.

Praeger. $7.50. Beginning with Rodin and the influence of Cezanne at the turn of the century, modern sculpture has erupted into a bewildering jungle of movements, styles and highly individual artists. Sir Herbert Read, despite an occasionally oracular tone, is one of the better available guides through this wilderness, with strongly phrased opinions and provocative prejudices. He comes remarkably close to getting it all into this small-format book--and making it all intelligible, even to the sculpturally illiterate.

THE STORY OF ART FOR YOUNG PEOPLE by Ariane Ruskin. 157 pages. Pantheon. $6.95. The reproductions are pretty, the art works selected are all essential classics, the coverage is comprehensive, the text is pleasant--in fact the only thing that seriously mars this children's introduction to art is its total lack of courage. Modern art is given too little space, even in a book that necessarily covers ground quickly. There is no gore: paintings of battles, monsters or martyrs are avoided--and, incredible in a history of art, there is not a single Christ on the Cross, while the only Pietd is Michelangelo's great but bloodless sculpture. But the most egregious lapse is the avoidance of nudity: even the Venus de Milo, certainly an essential classic, is omitted.

THE PRESENCE OF SPAIN by James Morris with photographs by Evelyn Hofer.

1 19 pages. Harcourt, Brace & World. $15.

The author's concept of the country is Ortega y Gasset's classic summation: "A cloud of dust, left in the air when a great people went galloping down the highroad of history." But Writer Morris' verbal veronicas somehow elude most of the cliches; and Photographer Hofer provides unexpected perspectives on the inevitable scenes, plus an unusual paseo of portraits to reveal a people as darkly brooding as the land.

TIME AND THE RIVER FLOWING: GRAND CANYON by Francois Leydet. 1 76 pages. Sierra Club. $20. The Interior Department's Bureau of Reclamation is now pushing plans for construction of a pair of high dams on the Colorado River, at Marble Gorge and Bridge Canyon within the Grand Canyon proper. The idea has stirred the conservationist Sierra Club (TiME, March 27) to rise in protest against the "chain of destructive forces" that would "end the living river's flowing for all this civilization's time." Author Francois Leydet makes the Sierra Club's case in a striking book. Glowing color photographs show once more how awesomely beautiful the

Grand Canyon is, not only in its sweeping vistas but in the close-up details of rock, water, and unique life forms that would be drowned by the dams. The narrative starts with the story of a hazardous 17-day boat trip the author took through the Grand Canyon, and rises to a reasoned, passionate plea for preserving the place unblocked by the curved concrete of progress.

MANNERISM by Jacques Bousquet.

347 pages. Braziller. $20. At that crucial intersection of art history, where the High Renaissance collapsed and reshaped itself into the Baroque, stands that accomplished but today little-valued style called "Mannerism." Painters like Mabuse, Cranach, Caravaggio, da Pontormo, and a hundred others across Europe were luxuriating in the mastery of technique. Their work was energetic, inventive, sensual, and edged with a fascination for the grotesque.

The new painting's exploration of emotionally exotic themes was paralleled in poetry and theater. To demonstrate that the flamboyant creativity of the Mannerist era is more important and more visual fun than it has usually been given credit for, Author Bousquet has brought together a wide range of art and literature. The examples are felicitous, the commentary urbane, and the format itself is wittily evocative of the Mannerist manner.

ARMS AND ARMOUR OF THE WESTERN WORLD by Bruno Thomas and others.

243 pages. McGraw-Hill. $27.50. ARMS AND ARMOR by Vesey Norman. 128 pages. Putnam. $4.95. Who has not, at least in childhood, been fascinated by the medieval knight, his squire and yeoman, and the strange tools they used in war? Cuirass and helmet, shield and sword. Chain mail, longbow, harquebus, pike--and the thin-bladed misericord that could slip between the plates to pluck a man's life from his ribs. The battle-dented, brutally functional field armor of the 14th century; the intricately inlaid and painted parade armor of the 16th. Both of these accounts of arms and armor cover the ground well.

The big one is naturally longer, more complete, with more large and lush color pictures. It also treats of the muskets and hand guns that signaled the beginning of armor's end. But the smaller volume is nonetheless unexpectedly meaty, and certainly represents value for money.

MICHELANGELO'S LOST ST. JOHN by Fernanda de' Maffei. 150 pages. Reynal.

$15. A first-rate intellectual detective story and a fascinating photographic lecture in connoisseurship. In 1942 New York Art Dealer Piero Tozzi acquired a dirt-encrusted Renaissance statue of a boy seated on a rock. A sheepskin over one shoulder and a shell in one hand identify the youth as St. John the Baptist, and while Tozzi patiently cleaned the fragile ancient marble inch by inch, using only castile soap and a toothbrush, he began to think it might be a lost statue that Michelangelo is known to have carved in 1496. The possibility has aroused the cautious enthusiasm of a number of scholars, including Italy's Dr. Fernanda de' Maffei, who now presents the full case for attributing the statue to the sculptor. The argument draws its greatest strength from 169 photos, which compare the statue with dozens of known Michelangelo paintings, drawings and sculptures, and also with classical statues and gem carvings that would have influenced the young artist. The St. John statue itself, viewed in photo after photo from all angles, and in every possible detail, is captivatingly beautiful. The probing, questioning visual presentation is uniquely exciting.

OTHER TASTES, OTHER BOOKS: For modern architecture buffs, The Best in 20th Century Architecture (Reynal; $15) is an effective if somewhat slick presentation of a worldwide range of buildings and their creators. For players, kibitzers, or even for collectors who hardly know QR3 from KB7, Chess by Hans and Siegfried Wichmann. (Crown; $15) is a comprehensive, pleasantly illustrated history of chess pieces. For those who like social history, Mirror of Fashion by Margarete Braun-Ronsdorf (McGraw-Hill; $26.50) is a copious survey of European costume from the French Revolution to 1929, while Leather Armchairs by Charles Graves (Coward-McCann; $7.95) is an anecdote-laden, fascinating-in-spite-of-itself account of all the major London clubs. What may well prove to be both the best-illustrated and best-written of the Kennedy memorial books is The Kennedy Years (Viking; $16.50), a massively complete compilation of photographs with equally compendious text by the New York Times.

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