Alphab'art: Find the letters hidden in the paintings

As its title suggests, this book invites the reader to search for each letter of the alphabet in each of 26 paintings by well-known artists of the last few hundred years. Originally published in France, this is an excellent introduction to the world of painting in the form of a puzzle, an opportunity to scour each image for the motifs that reflect the letterforms, sometimes to be found in the form of a simple graphic motif, sometimes an architectural construction or arrangement of shapes. The striking Fernand Léger image on the cover, ‘Still Life ABC, 1927’, is an ideal appetizer. At the back of the book the solutions to each pictorial conundrum are cleverly revealed graphically along with a short text that helpfully puts each artist and image into context. One problem with such publications though can be the inevitable aesthetic mishmash that ensues when bringing together such diverse genres spanning eight centuries of art movements and, in this case, accompanied by faux constructivist typography.