Magic Color Flair: The World of Mary Blair Review

Title: Magic Color Flair The World of Mary Blair

Author: John Canemaker

ISBN: 9781616287931

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

I was in a pickle.  There were two Mary Blair artbooks that were coming out at roughly the same time and I was waffling on which one to buy.  My reasoning for picking this one was because it had more pages.  More pages = more art, right?  After much deliberation, I finally got my art book in the mail today and sadly, I found myself feeling ho-hum.

There was nothing wrong with the contents per se.  But as I flipped through the pages, I felt no excitement as I glanced through the images.  Nothing really caught my eye.  There were a few that I liked but not enough to offset my lack of interest.  There were two Disney movies that were well documented - Cinderella and Peter Pan.  The rest was dedicated to lesser known works throughout her career.   I found her later works to be my favorites.   At the start, there will be a chance to read about the life of Mary Blair and how she became the popular artist to this day.  So, impressively, for the rest of the book will be just art.  So, don't worry.  This is definitely an art book.

The book itself is of decent quality.  The pages are nice and glossy.  They do seem to be a little bit grainy.  The pictures are clear but underneath a light, you can see bits of weave in the paper.  But you will only notice if you are looking for it.  My main complaint would be that the dust jacket is cheap.  You can see the indent from the title on the front cover from being pressed on.  So, for the price that Amazon is selling for, I would say it is reasonable.  Just don't spend $40.  

Now, take my rating with a grain of salt.  If you are true blue Mary Blair fan, get it.  But better yet, invest in the other artbook.  That was published by Disney.  And maybe, I would also recommend this to aspiring artists looking for new styles.  Others, pass this one by or check my video to see if you like what you see.  In the end, this wasn't a keeper for my collection.  I regret not buying the other book.

Note: This was not published by Disney Enterprise itself (like the artbooks for Frozen, Wreck-It-Ralph, etc).  It was published by Walt Disney Family's Foundation.  That's my reasoning the quality wasn't there.