Books for 7 Tear Olds on Open Ended Art

The best art books for kids

Published 2 December 2016

8 souvenir ideas to awaken the imagination and dazzle the senses… Bob and Roberta Smith RA chooses the best children's books nearly fine art and design.

• From the Wintertime 2016 consequence of RA Magazine, issued quarterly to Friends of the RA.

  My Dad was the parent who bought me art books for Christmas. He was a painter and he ran Chelsea Schoolhouse of Art in the 1960s and '70s. His idea of a great Christmas present for a ten-year-sometime interested in art would be E.H. Gombrich's Art and Illusion. I even so have information technology. Inside the front end embrace it reads "Happy Xmas 1973. 1 twenty-four hours, if y'all are a brilliant boy you might empathize this… from Father Xmas."

  Kids art books have become a big theme with publishers. Some of them feel a flake devised for the market, simply all of the books beneath accept something genuine to offering and each caters for slightly different needs, from fine art appreciation to guides to fine art making, colour theory and logic puzzles. My favourites are the ones you could give to a baby, merely which an adult could as get lost in.

• • 

    Squares & Other Shapes: with Josef Albers

    Designed by Meagan Bennett

    Josef Albers was one of the great artist teachers. He was a central figure in the Bauhaus – probably the about important school of art e'er. Albers' ideas about colour were complicated but his paintings were simple. This terrific volume gets direct to the point. The most appealing attribute of what Albers had to say is all here: art is about pleasure and looking and what colour and rhythm does. Buy this for a child but as well give it to your friend who says, "I don't get modern art".

    £6.95, hbk

• • See the Stripes

    by Andy Mansfield

    Hours of fun can be had trying to find the subconscious coloured stripes in this ingenious pop-upwards book, ideal for lovers of the Rubik's Cube. Proof, if it was needed, that fine art is about logic. Requite your kids a unique entry into the understanding of Systems art. I twenty-four hour period they could become code breakers.

    £nine.99, hbk

    

• • 

    Seeing Things: A Kid's Guide to Looking at Photographs

    by Joel Meyerowitz

    Joel Meyerowitz introduces us to some of the groovy street photographers of America – Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt and Garry Winogrand – as well as the Europeans Cartier-Bresson and Eugène Atget. What are the photographers trying to do and how does photography affect us? This clever and beautiful volume has a stiff humanistic undercurrent. Through the lens of the photographic camera we understand that the by can communicate with united states of america, that fleeting moments are poetic and meaningful, and that mayhap sometimes, when we think that life is a bit aimless, it's also beautiful.

    £xv.95, hbk

• • Magritte's Apple tree

    by Klaas Verplancke

    The Surrealist René Magritte is a lot of fun. The homo who painted a pipe then said it was non a pipe but a "painting of a pipe" is sympathetically brought to life through this investigation into his obsession with apples. The publisher recommends this book for children of five years plus. The all-time children'due south books besides go adults thinking and, as an introduction to philosophy and the nature of language, this one certainly does.

    £14.95, hbk

    

• • 

    Draw Like an Creative person

    by Patricia Geis

    This practical volume aims to get kids making cocky- portraits in the manner of mod masters. The dorsum pages are there for you to cutting out and use in collages. Information technology is a modern version of a Victorian scrapbook where kids would cutting out and create new scenes using pre-drawn printed elements. I'm getting out my scissors and glue as I write this.

    £8.99, pbk

• • Bob the Artist

    past Marion Deuchars

    Bob is some kind of crow who has skinny legs. If I were advising Bob I would say, "Don't worry most your skinny legs. Your friends, an owl and a true cat, are being mean!" I like the image where Bob is inspired by Matisse cut-outs. But painting your nib equally a diversionary tactic considering you've got skinny legs is not wise. Bob, get some new friends.

    £10.95, hbk

    

• • 

    SPLAT! The Most Heady Artists of all Fourth dimension

    by Mary Richards

    Great tabloid newspaper-takes on the stories behind art. In this book artists are full of plots and plans to alter the earth and create small-scale revolutions in how nosotros sympathize what we see and experience. This would be a slap-up gift to requite to a family unit fellow member earlier heading out to a gallery or a trip to Paris or Italy. The volume is blindside up to appointment, including modernistic-24-hour interval artists such as Cornelia Parker RA and Pipilotti Rist.

    £12.95, hbk

• • Arnold's Extraordinary Art Museum

    by Catherine Ingram and Jim Stoten

    Catherine Ingram and illustrator Jim Stoten take u.s.a. on a fantastical journey into an esoteric museum run by Arnold, who is a scrap of a controlling geek, armed with a chalk to draw a line over which one must not pace. Oddly, nosotros encounter a cartoon Rachel Whiteread, who tells us she likes "forgotten spaces", which she casts in plaster. Arnold's museum houses cardinal works in conceptual art that deal with bodily functions: Manzoni's Merda d'artista; Duchamp's famous fountain; and Yves Klein's bluish drinks, which made gallery goers' wee plough bluish. This volume might give your kids nightmares about going to fine art shows but your angry pre-teenager volition love it.

    £12.95, hbk

    

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Source: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/bob-and-roberta-smith-children-books-christmas-2016

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