The Stories of the Mona Lisa: An Imaginary Museum Tale about the History of Modern Art

(Hardback)

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Dad, will you tell me a story asks a little girl. Sure, artist Piotr Barsony responds. Ill tell you a story about a painting. And the Mona Lisa, the most beautiful painting in all the world, will be our subject. Thus begins the fascinating history of modern painting through what many consider the most famous work in the history of art: the Mona Lisa by Lonardo De Vinci. Piotr acts as the museum guide for his young daughter throughout the book, taking us on a journey through an imaginary museum. He describes famous art movements and artists, including: impressionism, cubism, expressionism, favism, minimalism, surrealism; Monet, Manet, Czanne, Picasso, Bacon, Pollock, and more. All of the most famous painters of the modern and contemporary art movements are explained with their own Mona Lisa portraits, in their signature styles.
Throughout the book, Piotr acts as a guide, explaining to his daughter (and the reader) each genre of paintings in a clear, simple, and entertaining way. By the end of the book, we discover that hes actually the artist whos been painting all those Mona Lisasand the results are spectacular. The Stories of the Mona Lisa is the perfect book for any child who loves art, history, and a good story.

Reviews

"As the book begins, a little girl asks: "Dad, will you tell me a story" The story her painter father tells is a history of art with the Mona Lisa as its central character.French artist Barsony here creates a charming, involving parent-child conversation around the iconic Leonardo da Vinci painting. Happily, he also succeeds in creating an unusually compelling personal response to the major Western movements of the last 150 years and their significant artists. He takes daughter and readers both on a journey of discovery through an imaginary museum, which is filled with a wide and amazingly diverse collection of paintings, but curiously, each painting is of only the Mona Lisa. These careful and astonishingly fresh paintings, rendered by Barsony himself, are so compelling because they are his own responses to and interpretations of Leonardo's masterpiece as filtered through the vision of other artists and movements. In fact, each one of these "new" Mona Lisas (paired with an accessible and wonderfully informed text) masterfully reflects the techniques, subjects and sensibilities of major European and American art movements and artists, including such painters as Monet, Turner, Manet, Cezanne, Picasso, Dix, Kandinsky, Bacon, Pollock, De Kooning, Warhol, Haring, Basquiat, Richter and more.Art lovers of all ages grown-ups, students and children alike will be engaged and captivated by this exciting and visually arresting entree into fine art." Kirkus Review, recipient of The Kirkus Star awarded to books of exceptional merit
"Framed as a conversation between a father and his inquisitive young daughter, this oversize book conveys the history of modern art through the Mona Lisa. This sounds overly ambitious and liable to bore. It is neither. Instead, Barsony treats the girl's questions with respect and sensitivity, replying with carefully pitched exposition. Add to this a visual feast of Mona Lisa pastiches in the style of other painters: there is a van Gogh Mona, with swirls of starlight; Matisse's Mona is a Fauve goddess." --Pamela Paul

Author Bio

Piotr Barsony is a painter, illustrator, songwriter, author, screenwriter, and cartoonist. His character Mark Edito was popular with readers of The Echo Savannah in the 1980s. Barsony recently created a comic for the perfumes by Thierry Mugler. He studied art at ecole des Beaux- Arts, Paris.