I thought that this book would be a really fast read. It wasn’t. This was a lot more text heavy than I was expecting but I’m actually glad. There was a lot of interesting information included and thankfully it was presented with some humor. As I’d expected I wasn’t a huge fan of most of the art though I did like some of it. I like being challenged by art but I don’t like most unpleasant images, or at least not more than an occasional one, and a lot of them are included in this book. Sometimes they were so bad they were funny. “Wound Man” is a good example of that. Not surprisingly there were many religious images of devils and other images that were meant as warnings to their viewers. I could have done with many fewer of those. Thankfully most of the art works in the book were not too, too disturbing. I was fascinated by reading about and seeing the Mona Lisa(s). Cannibals, especially “Tapuya Woman,” Hirsute women. Mr. Barker’s Monster Panoramas. Frieda Kahlo’s Wounded Deer and one of her supportive corsets. How J.M.W. Turner in the 1800s used “fugitive colours” and nobody alive today sees his paintings the way they were when painted. Fate of the Animals by Franz Marc and Paul Klee’s participation. Revernge hoax and fake art. Some of the insults artists gave to other artists are amusing. Lots of torture/too much torture and other awful subject matter. Interesting about how much fake art there is and how many forgeries there are. “At least half the artworks in circulation in the global market are fake.” This book is packed with information, most of it fascinating. There are some lovely art pieces too but they’re not in the majority. The art is presented in chronological order, from 38,000 BC to 2018, but there is very little from the present century. I think it’s a shame that the present day art is heavily represented by performance art and AI made art since so much of modern art is created more traditionally. I liked this book more than I thought I would and I’m planning to also read The Madman’s Library: The Strangest Books, Manuscripts, and Other Literary Curiosities from History. This book: 3-1/2 stars, and it was hard for me to choose 3 or 4 stars but I decided to round down. It’s an excellent book and I liked it but I didn’t really like it. It wasn’t that pleasant a reading experience. ( )

If you are a serious student of art, or even have a mild interest, I cannot imagine you would enjoy this book. It might sell well in the gift shop of the future "Museum of Narrative Art" in Los Angeles, which is another, but perhaps not unrelated topic the author will be asked to write about.

The author apparently had success with an earlier volume covering a madman’s survey of bizarre books and manuscripts, and that alone provided him the expertise to write about art! The bibliography might suggest he pursued many compilations of great or unusual art works to come up with this complete random collection, including many oddities of little interest.

If the volume was only oddities, one might understand, but it also includes some of the most important works of Western art, many of which are shown in such small, muddy photos as to be impossible to decipher.

As Flaubert reportedly wrote (in one unattributed quotation not included in this work): "Explaining one artistic form by another is a monstrosity. You won't find a single good painting in all the museums of the world that needs a commentary. The more text there is in the gallery guide, the worse the picture." Sadly, this book reduces even masterworks, by the commentary and the company in which they find themselves, truly to a madman's gallery! ( )

Note: to see this same review with images as described in the paragraphs, see https://medium.com/the-straight-dope/poking-the-eye-of-the-beholder-weird-art-is...

Art books – and coffee table books in general — are not the stuff I like to review. They tend to be forgettably similar. There’s boring text demonstrating the author’s erudition, text fitted around sculpture, and enormously monotonous commentary. Not the best scenario for a review that will rock readers. The exception is the fascinating and wonderful The Madman’s Gallery, by Edward Brooke-Hitching. It is a terrifically organized romp through the bizarre eruptions of (mostly) western art. He writes with light-hearted (but well-researched) commentary. .And the self-evident drama in the well-chosen images. They all come with stories. There’s even sarcasm! It is a pleasure to actually read the words. The images will stay with the reader a long time. This is the best art book I’ve read in years.

The chapters are short, and there are lots of them: sixty-one. They range from featuring an artist, to featuring a single work, to featuring a category. So for example, there are chapters on revenge, self-portraits snuck into commissioned works, nightmares, and doom in the 12th and 13th centuries. There’s even a chapter on hot-selling paintings by chimpanzees, meant to shame the art world, which shrugged it off and kept buying anyway. Among the artists rating chapters are Arcimboldo and his vegetable portraits, and Dali and his Persistence of Memory. It ends with Maria Abramovic’s performance art, in which she goes so far as to put her life on the line for the thrill of her art. This is a different level of madness altogether.

In Ugly Portraits, there is a painting so surpassingly ugly it defies reason, as in, who would commission such a thing? It dates to about 1513, and the painter was Quentin Matsys, a Flemish artist. It is truthfully titled The Ugly Duchess. I can only describe it as John Malkovich playing The Queen of Hearts without sufficient makeup.

Compare to the work of Xavier Messerschmidt (late 18th), who took it upon himself to sculpt heads with the most horrific expressions on their faces. His sculptures are grimacing, leering, and mad. They are fabulously ugly, in a repelling and off-putting sort of way.

For sheer bad taste, the completion is fierce. But the Penis Tree surely has a firm foothold there. It decorated a building in Naples, Italy in 1265, and was rediscovered only 24 years ago.

Along the way in this chronological ramble, there is education. At least half the precious art in museums and private collections is fake, according to the Fine Art Expert Institute of Switzerland in a 2014 report. This is a rather enormous percentage, calling into question centuries of collecting. It has always been a problem, and has only increased in significance with the astronomical sums being flung at galleries and auctions today. The chapter on forgers is therefore instructive.

Few will know of all the versions of The Mona Lisa, nude. For some reason, artists, including if not especially Da Vinci’s own students, found it necessary and irresistible to make nude versions the Master’s finest work. They are displayed in this book. Some of them are good enough to pass for his work. None of them rate anywhere near the real thing.

There is the bizarre story of Cecilia Giménez, an 80 year old artist in Borja, Spain, to whom the Sanctuary of Mercy church entrusted the restoration of Ecce Homo, a portrait of Jesus. She did such a horrific job that Christ comes off looking like a well-trimmed baboon. She absolutely ruined it. The news went viral, and art restoration became a thing on people’s minds as it never had been before. But then, the wild and wacky art world intervened. The story got so much press worldwide that tourism in the town shot from 6000 a year to 200,000 as people from everywhere wanted to see this horror for themselves. Go figure.

It’s not all bad taste, either. My favorite is a horrifying impression of World War I, by Franz Marc, called Fate of the Animals. He painted it in 1913, fully envisioning the coming conflagration throughout Europe. He was then drafted, sent to the front (as a camouflage artist), and was killed at the Battle of Verdun in 1916, at the age of 36. To me, his painting is far more evocative of the chaos and horror of war than Picasso’s Guernica, nearly 30 years later (and which does not make the book). Yet it was done in advance and in a very modern art style.

It turns out this is not the first time Brooke-Hitching has done this. His previous book is a madman’s survey of bizarre books and manuscripts. This was apparently such as success, he has tried to replicate it in art. And clearly succeeded. This might be a new franchise. Lord knows culture has enough that is bizarre to keep him occupied. So keep an eye on him. It’s worth it.

David Wineberg ( )