Art Forms in Nature: The Prints of Ernst Haeckel (Monographs),   ISBN:9783791319902

Customer Rating: 

What can I say. The illustrations are amazing, the subject matter is gorgeous, and the illustrator is from a generation of gentlemen (and occasionally, back then, gentlewomen) that made wonderfully detailed artworks as scientists, or as they used to call them, natural philosophers.

If you are curious, and tend toward the psychedelic, the complex, the ramified, and the 'Tiffany-twisted', you will be very happy looking at the pages of this text. If you are an artist of any kind, this book may inspire you. Breathe, nay, suck it in. You won't be disappointed.

However, if you think that 'art' is just a decorative discipline, or that art is something that should always be narrowly 'pretty', you may wish to look elsewhere. There's plenty of pretty here, but some of it is downright biologically-ugly, and by that, I mean gorgeous to me.

Sometimes ugly is pretty. Biology is refined, and crude. Sophisticated, and blunt. Space-age, and extinct. And so on... We will be searching, as natural philosophers, through all that biology has to tell us, long after any of us are dead, to find beauty and ugliness. Waste, rot, carnage. Sustainability, health, wealth, welfare, agreement. And enjoyment.

'nuff said.

Customer Rating: 

This is the first time I bought book on amazon.com. I feel very satisfied with the experience! I like the book very much and the shipping time is acceptable(for it's from USA to China)! Thanks very much!

Customer Rating: 

...As others have reviewed the images, this review is about the physical characteristics.
...The quality, in the Prestel edition, is good enough for framing if you want to take the book apart. It is printed in Germany on acid free paper, of decent weight, unlike the Dover edition,which has no color plates.

Customer Rating: 

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R3G0SX0PAICYS7 Video shows the size of the book, flipping through a lot of the plates and rambling.

Customer Rating: 

a brilliant draftsman and scientist, heackel shows us that the natural world is not only incredibly beautiful, but weirder than anything you can invent.
there are larger and more expensive editions of this book to be had, as well as smaller and digital versions. the 12" x 9" dover edition folio is a nice reference size, well printed, colorful, and a great price.