There is only wear on the front cover, as pictured. Such tremendous art! From Booklist: It's a commonplace to say that artists are unique, but Ivan Albright (1897^-1983) is truly in a class by himself. An influential and successful Chicago artist, he possessed a "singular vision," according to Courtney Graham Donnell, a contributor to this well produced volume. A master technician, Albright created meticulously detailed paintings, sculpted, carved his own frames, and devised a number of innovative techniques to explore his fascination with perception. A positive, energetic, and fun-loving man, he nonetheless painted dark and troubling portraits that focus, unnervingly, on decay, aging, and death. Albright wrote, "The body is our tomb," and admitted that he liked to make viewers uncomfortable by challenging their notions of art, beauty, and life. An artist with the unusual distinction of having one of his paintings star in a film, his Portrait of Dorian Gray (1943), Albright should be better known, and, with this outstanding monograph accompanying the striking exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he will be. Donna Seaman