The New York house Assouline continues to publish wonderful introductions to visual artists deserving of wider followings. The most recent to come my way is Jean Cocteau by Patrick Mauries, a witty and forthright portrayal. Previous titles in the series include Picabia and Robert Indiana. All have the same format and trim size, and all feature aggressively individual introductions with plain English (not a syllable of Artspeak to be found). One wishes that Canadian artists were the beneficiaries of such treatment in their own land. Apart from Douglas & McIntyre, no Canadian house seems to want to break free, with any regularity, from the stranglehold imposed by the Group of Seven, native art, and Tom Thompson. One of the merits of the Assouline texts is their brevity: they are not monographs but rather well-illustrated, intelligent, adult initiations into the work of painters and sculptors whose work is not always easy to grasp at first viewing.