Joerg reviewed Beauty of the Flower by Stephen A. Harris
Review of 'Beauty of the Flower' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
The book is meticulously researched and still readable, and can certainly stand as a reference work on the history of botanical illustration. It also is well organized along different themes.
But it also suffers from two major problems:
While richly illustrated with relevant historical plates that have good descriptions, text and images are weirdly disconnected. At no point does the text refer to a figure. In a book that at some point explicitly talks about connection between image and text in historical works, this is truly bizarre.
While claiming to be about the "art and science", there is precious little of either. Mostly it's a historical catalog and, though some token effort is made to not just mention white European dudes, an endless list of "Rich white dude paid white dude explorer who took white dude artist to collect plants in (future/current) colony and give them pretentious Latin names honoring …
The book is meticulously researched and still readable, and can certainly stand as a reference work on the history of botanical illustration. It also is well organized along different themes.
But it also suffers from two major problems:
While richly illustrated with relevant historical plates that have good descriptions, text and images are weirdly disconnected. At no point does the text refer to a figure. In a book that at some point explicitly talks about connection between image and text in historical works, this is truly bizarre.
While claiming to be about the "art and science", there is precious little of either. Mostly it's a historical catalog and, though some token effort is made to not just mention white European dudes, an endless list of "Rich white dude paid white dude explorer who took white dude artist to collect plants in (future/current) colony and give them pretentious Latin names honoring themselves or rich white dude; then printed 25 hand-colored copies super-rich white dude assholes bought to show off to slightly less rich white dude assholes"