Nights From The Alhambra

Five reviews of books that paint portraits of the art world

The 14th-century palace and fortress complex known as the Alhambra (Arabic for “the red one”) was built by medieval Arabs in Granada, Spain, and is still admired today. Irwin, an Islamic art expert and author of “The Arabian Nights: A Companion” (Tauris Parke) and “Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents” (Overlook), offers a delightfully brainy account of its construction, describing it as a “machine for thinking in. Its lacework decorations and watery reflections hint at the impermanence of all material and visible things.”

Alhambra fans have ranged from 19th-century American author Washington Irving to Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher. But there also are those who loathe the structure, such as the British historian Gerald Brenan, who called it a “glorified gazebo … shoddy and bedraggled, like a gipsy girl sitting under a damp hedge.” Used as a splendid set for Ray Harryhausen’s 1958 “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” adventure film, the Alhambra itself has been a star for centuries, with no need of Hollywood’s attention.

Hogarth’s Marriage-a-la-Mode The 18th-century British artist William Hogarth was both a skilled painter and acute social-political satirist. Judy Egerton, an art historian and author of “English Watercolour Painting” (Phaidon) and “George Stubbs, Painter” (Yale University Press), explains how, in a series of six paintings, Hogarth “shows how a marriage was made and wrecked… the marriage which begins with money on the table ends with adultery, venereal disease, murder and suicide.” As the old saying goes, the British take their pleasures sadly. Yet Hogarth’s lively style adds vigor and verve to the cuttingly satirical subject matter, as in “The Inspection,” a scene in a creepy doctor’s office wherein the young bridegroom complains about his venereal disease. Egerton keenly observes that the doctor “polishes his spectacles on what must be the most disgusting handkerchief in the whole of British art.” A lovely gift item, this book comes with a DVD narrated by British playwright/novelist Alan Bennett, another master of finding humor in ghastly aspects of human behavior.

Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian

Minnesota-born Fritz Scholder, who died in 2005, explored his Native American heritage (he was one-quarter Luiseño, a California Mission tribe) in expressionist paintings and sculptures that still fascinate. Scholder incessantly probed his identity in complex work inspired by influences ranging from the passionately violent figurative art of the United Kingdom’s Francis Bacon to America’s proto-pop art master Larry Rivers. His most powerful creations, such as the oil on canvas from 1969, “Indian with Beer Can,” now in the collection of Ralph and Ricky Lauren, are his most ambiguous.