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List Price: $30.00 | | Publisher: Perceval Press
Salesrank: 567458
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| Our Price: $596.29 |
| Used Price: $62.28 |
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| Media: Hardcover |
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Editorial Review:
In this beautifully illustrated book, the artist combines photographs, paintings, and poems that span his artistic output from 1978 to 2002. Over 50 full-color reproductions are featured.
Coincidence of Memory Reviews:
my review 
2009-05-24 - I have enjoyed this book a lot. Being a Viggo Mortensen admirer I found it to be a Great Read.
Shades of His Mind in Clouds
2007-12-05 - I was thrilled to find that Viggo Mortensen, classically talented actor, had a flare for art that was more complex and unique than his beautiful face. Once I got this book, though, I found that "different" didn't even begin to describe it.
This beautiful little book is comprised of three artistic areas: Paintings, photography, and poetry.
The photography: gorgeous and original. Viggo catches beautiful moments of nature, reflections, light, and human form. Often, pictures that are already beautiful captures of color will have added features, like slashes and flickers of light, which you'd almost think were photographing errors except that they add so perfectly to the pictures. Sometimes these flashes of light merely add brightness, whereas at other times they take whatever mood the picture already possesses to a new level. For example: one of my favorite photos shows three dogs, two on leashes and one standing off to the side. One of the leashed dogs, a dalmation, is straining on the leash and has fangs bared towards the lone dog. In this picture, the two leashed dogs are blurred in motion and all three of them have glowing eyes! Again, you'd think that this was a photographic error, but it suits the picture perfectly: the dogs already look almost ethereal and the glowing eyes just enhance the aggressive and surreal mood of the image.
The paintings: beautiful and abstract. These paintings often feature slashes of color across blank backgrounds and are gorgeously presented; they are artistically abstract without being frusterating or making the reader feel like they're developing a migraine trying to figure them out.
The poetry: ah yes, the poetry. The poems in this book, unlike the paintings and photography, most likely will give you a migraine if you try to figure them out. Remember the title of this review? That rather abstract sentence was a small sample of the form of poetry in this book. Let's just say that if Picasso was a poet instead of a painter, his poems would probably look like this. Don't get me wrong, I love the poems. They're just not like any poetry I've read for a good while.
I actually wrote this review mainly to discuss the poems. You'll probably only appreciate them if you're willing to be very open-minded; in fact, the best course of action would be to knock the walls of your skull down and let your brain unravel in all its unlimited, unhindered glory. Maybe I'm making this sound too complicated, but I'm used to complex poetry and the sort in this book required an entirely new kind of mindframe. It's clear that Viggo totally let his mind run when he wrote these, and that's good; that's the beauty of poetry, after all. Just be warned not to take it too seriously or solidly.
Some of the poems are definetly more clear than others; if you have trouble reading the more complex ones, just do what I do: don't try to make sense of them until after you read them. Once you finish and turn your head away from the page, the different pieces of the poem start to become clearer.
Altogether, this book, in all its abstract and geometric glory, is a unique treasure that I'm happy to own. If you've an open, traveling mind and wish to possess a gem of new shape and beauty, I highly recommend it!
Viggo FAN must have 
2007-02-23 - Interesting photos. Viggo takes notice of details, in life's ordinary things and brings them to life. Some poems made my head spin to say, "this is one deep guy".
Coincidence of Memory
2006-03-27 - I wasn't aware that Viggo was a poet or photographer, but he is very good at both. This book has some very poignant poems and beautiful photos. I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in poetry, photography or just a fan of Viggo Mortensen.
Beautiful and intriguing
2005-08-02 - This book contains beautiful black and white and colour of Viggo's photographs with some poems and his paintings. Some images are crisp and others haunting and blurred which is very intriguing. Lovely blades of glass and old moss covered tree and flowers and lakes shows beauty of the country of New Zealand. You can see some of the images of the cast of the Lord of the Ring as well. Viggo shows us what he sees everyday through his lenses or with his paintings and his thoughts by his poems. They are very personal and delicate.
I love the photograph of shadowy trees in black and white very much yet every time I open this book, I found more images whispering, talking and singing to me. It is a lovely book to pick up time after time.
