The Art Book

Product Information

The Art Book is a captivating introduction to painting, drawing, printing, sculpture, conceptual art, and performance art - from ancient history to the modern day - aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you'll discover more than 80 of the world's most groundbreaking artworks by history's most influential painters, sculptors and artists, through exciting text and bold graphics. Boltanski, reserve of dead Swiss (your reservation has been cancelled. Is that even legal by the way, using photographs of dead people from local newspapers for the unauthorized purpose of an art installation? I'd normally laugh at the artwork's description but considering the topic, the blurb angered me instead "in previous works, Boltanski had used photographs of Jewish children. Here, by using images of the Swiss, a race associated with neutrality rather than a specific and terrible fate, Boltanski lays greater emphasis on the universality of mortality").

This really should have been called The Western Art Book. There is only one Asian artist represented, and Latin America is limited to a few Cubans and Mexicans. Everyone else is completely absent. Embark on a grand tour of art history with this guide to the story of art, and the big ideas and themes behind the world's most important artistic movements, artworks, and artists.We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

The author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, who is also a ceramic artist, tells us about books that have influenced both his careers, from the life of a celebrated potter to a collection of Japanese haiku Also a theoretician and teacher, he was adamant that art should be completely separate from life, and life from art, saying "art is art as art and everything else is everything else, art as art is nothing but art". Prehistoric Art consisted mostly of cave paintings and crude sculptures with exaggerated features. The purpose of the Art was mainly for rituals regarding hunting and burial. Despite the limited pallets, artists were creative, drawing animals on bumpy cave-walls to give them a three dimensional feel and painting them in several, lifelike colours. I guess I'm being narrow-minded at best or philistine at worse, anyway these are old criticisms that others have expressed better. I vaguely remember many eloquent, fun lines from Tom Wolfe's "painted world" on the topic. Although in the spirit of negativity in this review, I also remember extremely repetitious blah blah, and what should have been a brief, fun, ranty article, not a "proper" book. Yet, let's find something good to quote from it from Wikiquote (and as it turns out, even the quote on its own is repetitive). Early Medieval and Renaissance artists used model books for their source materials. Woodcut printing also became popular as paper became cheaper.

The Art Book explores the more than 80 of the world's most groundbreaking artworks by history's most influential painters, sculptors, and artists with stunning visuals and insightful quotations. Discover key artworks and artists from across the globe, stretching from the prehistoric Altamira cave paintings and Chinese jade carvings to more impressionism, symbolism, cubism, and pop art. With years of art and design writing experience, Creative Bloq and our contributors have read, reviewed and ranked many of the best art books on the market. We’ve compiled all that knowledge into one place (right here!) and have found the best recommendations to help you become a better artist, from old classics to recent publications.

This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so. Robert Rauschenberg. [The telegram sent by the aforementioned artist when requested to paint a portrait, which since then is considered to be the "painting"]. The selection of artists has a decidedly Western and Christian bias. There are a few Japanese and South-American artists here and there, but the overwhelming majority are from mainland Europe and English speaking countries. Also the depicted scenes (at least until the beginning of the 20th century) are from either Roman or Christian mythology or Western European aristocratic and everyday life. After a while, seeing the same scenes over and over again, even if depicted by different artists, becomes quite monotonous and boring.For students who are unfamiliar with composition, design and colour distribution in a painting and sculpture, the colour-coded and labelled analysis of individual artworks is immensely helpful - highlighting the artist's emphasis on certain colours and lines to give the piece a specific meaning.

In the context of the visual arts, the Renaissance is a period of rediscovery of the art of ancient Rome and Greece. The oil paint medium was widely used.There was a lot of competition (competitive focus between artists) in this era. During these periods, Art was naturalistic and had a distinct purpose, often for burials, spirituality, fertility rites, ritual sacrifice (the Aztecs) and celebrating the great deeds of a God, King or a ruler. It was often used to highlight the beauty of the physical body as well. True to the idea of the entire series "Big ideas simply explained", The Art Book has a modern, informative layout which appeals to a new generation of learners. The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution, and Resilience: Five Hundred Years of Women's Self Portraits Photography emerged as a new art form. Aestheticism was an art movement (Art for art's sake) that evolved in the second half of the 19th century. The Femme fatale was a favourite theme of Symbolist painters.

What a delight! A selection of 500 works of art, paintings and sculptures alike, from 500 different artists with no reference to nationality, school of thought, medium, date or topic. The works are presented alphabetically by artist and each work is accompanied by explanatory information on it and its creator. THE ART BOOK is “an unparalleled visual source book and a celebration of our rich and multi-faceted culture.” For those fans particularly taken by any given work of art who might like to find an opportunity to see it in the flesh, each work and, of course, each artist, is cross-referenced with an international directory of galleries and museums to visit. This book sets out to present one work of art from 500 different artist. This sounds good in theory, but since all the artists and their one work of art are listed alphabetically, the end result is eclectic and chaotic. This would have been a much better book, had the same contents been arranged chronologically or at least thematically. As it stands though, the paintings (there are a few sculptures and installations here and there, but I will mostly refer to just paintings) jump all over the place in time and subject. It also seems unfair to have some amazing, iconic painters reduced to just one work of art, which is hardly representative of their overall contribution, whereas others (especially some of the more contemporary artists) could easily have been left out of the book altogether. The captions provide adequate details both about the paintings and the artists. You will learn a detail or two about the paintings, the lives of the artists and even a few fun facts every now and then. It is somewhat sad though to read references to all sorts of other paintings done by the same artists. The format of the book dictates that we can only see one painting per artist and to see the rest, we would have to turn to other books or the internet. Another amusing/sad detail, you can tell from each entry's blurb how good/bad the art is going to be. If the blurb is actually describing the painting or has some psychological/social context, chances are something imaginative or skillful follows and that something is from the nineteenth century or earlier. If the blurb is talking about symbols, concepts, ideas and the philosophy of the artist, chances are something ridiculous follows and that something is from the twentieth century (with exceptions of course, the century has had its share of impressive artists). Baumeister, mortaruru with red overhead (Willi by name, Baumeister by nature, or vice versa, just too easy, so no retitling. You'd think someone with such a fantastic three in one name would be extra self-conscious to do serious work).