Essay: “Lessons from a Coffee-Table Art Book”

My $4.95 large coffee-table art book, Matisse by Walter Guadagnini

I’ve been buying from the mail-order remainder bookstore Edward R. Hamilton Bookseller for years because they have great books, especially hardcovers, for mostly dirt cheap. I’ve amassed a good amount of art books in particular from ERHB because those kind of books can be costly at other booksellers. Years ago, back when I was still ordering from ERHB’s newsprint catalog, I got the notion to buy a large coffee-table book of works by the Impressionist artist Henri Matisse just because the works of his I knew were cool and the book was $4.95.

Once I got Matisse, I was so moved by what I read and saw that I wrote an essay about it, printed it, and then folded it and placed it between the pages of the book. I had no intentions of submitting it for publication; it was just a record of how much this impulse cheap buy impressed me. Now that I have my own blog, I can publish it here.