Speaking Volumes

Norman Parkinson: Photographs 1935-1990 (Rizzoli; $65). "I do not promote the idea that photography is an art form," said the late British fashion photographer, who attributed his success to "hobgoblins that live inside the camera." An impish lightness of being animates these superb images, all of them marked by a sure sense of the elegant line, be it the pose of a long- legged beauty or the curvaceous fuselage of a 1930s airliner.

Stations: An Imaginary Journey by Michael Flanagan (Pantheon; $21). The artist-author carries us back to Old Virginny with a dual-media performance: 38 paintings of bygone railroads and Shenandoah Valley townscapes juxtaposed with a 50-page story about the love affair between Anna, an enigmatic artist, and Russell, a photographer and train buff. The meticulous paintings depict Russell's old photographs, complete with creases and torn edges. The text is the reminiscence of an apocryphal ex-newspaperman whose attempt to reconstruct a forgotten romance resurrects family secrets and American history. This is an original example of Proust's observation that "the memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment."

The History of Decorative Arts: The Renaissance and Mannerism in Europe edited by Alain Gruber (Abbeville; $150). And the Lavishly Illustrated Award for 1994 goes to this first of a projected three-volume history of the decorative arts. Eight hundred plates, 500 in color, display ornamental works (painting, sculpture, furniture, textiles, ceramics and other glorious gewgaws) created between 1480 and 1630, a period in which European craftsman broke with the aesthetics of the Middle Ages and looked to antiquity for inspiration. This collection is stunning evidence that they found it.

Wire, text by Suzanne Slesin and Daniel Rozensztroch (Abbeville; $29.95), traces the 300-year history of utilitarian and decorative wirework from that of 17th century Slovak tinkers to the factory-made implements of the early 20th century. Many of these varied and whimsical shapes, collected and attractively arranged by the editors, were last seen in Grandma's house. Singled out or clustered in more than 300 photos, these whisks, racks, beaters (egg and rug), cages, baskets, candelabrums and hand-held toasters are reminders of a stable domestic world now bent out of shape.

Blue Dog by George Rodrigue and Lawrence S. Freundlich (Viking; $45). The hottest Louisiana purchase since the paperback rights to Anne Rice's vampire novels is a Blue Dog painting by the canny Cajun artist George Rodrigue, whose striking work can be found not only at his New Orleans gallery but also in Carmel, California, and abroad. Posed with barnyard animals or buxom nudes, Blue Dog is a captivating and mysterious mutt who stares out at readers with zonky yellow eyes. Did someone put hashish in her biscuits? No. As B.D. "explains," she is the cerulean ghost of the artist's departed four- legged companion Tiffany, now channeled back to inhabit her beloved master's work. Old timey with a New Age angle, this Bayou bowwow should get a good run for your money.

Cowboys & Images: The Watercolors of William Matthews (Chronicle Books; $40). One first notices the hats -- wide and weathered like Western landscapes -- covering all or most of the subjects' faces. Matthews paints great hats. Undoubtedly, he could do as well with what is under them, but his aim in this lyric portrait series is to convey the essence of buckaroo: the shoulder slouch, the pelvic hitch, the loose assemblage of bone and muscle shifting beneath coarse, stained cloth. The Colorado artist hits the bull's-eye nearly every time, a feat all the more impressive considering his medium: the difficult, one-shot art of watercolors.

Wildlife: The Nature Paintings of Carl Brenders (Abrams; $29.95). Species may be becoming extinct at a rapid rate, but nature painters still survive in record numbers. The Belgian-born Brenders appears to have flourished by expanding his range. The detailed realism of these 50 renderings of North American animals is startlingly similar to that of wildlife photography. The appeal is in the recognition that it is not -- that these life studies of deer, wolves, cougars, bears and birds are the work of a clear, polished eye and a rock-steady hand.