Posts Tagged ‘western-art’
Art History: A Very Short Introduction
This clear and concise new introduction examines all the major debates and issues using a wide range of well-known examples. It discusses the challenge of using verbal and written language to analyse a visual form. Dana Arnold also examines the many different ways of writing about art, and the changing boundaries of the subject of art history. Topics covered include the canon of Art History, the role of the gallery, ‘blockbuster’ exhibitions, the emergence of social histories of art
(Feminist Art History or Queer Art History, for example), the impact of photography, and the development of Art History using artefacts such as the altarpiece, the portrait, or pornography, to explore social and cultural issues such as consumption, taste, religion, and politics.
Importantly, this book explains how the traditional emphasis on periods and styles originates in western art production and can obscure other critical approaches, as well as art from non western cultures.
Beauty and Art: 1750-2000
What do we mean when we call a work of art “beautiful”? How have artists responded to changing notions of the beautiful? Which works of art have been called beautiful, and why? Fundamental and intriguing questions to artists and srt lovers, but ones that are all too often ignored in discussions of art today. Elizabeth Prettejohn argues that we simply cannot afford to ignore these questions. Charting over two hundred years of western art, she illuminates the vital relationship between our changing notions of beauty and specific works of art, from the works of Kauffman to Whistler, Ingres to Rosetti, Cezanne to Pollack. Beautifully illustrated with 100 photographs–60 in full color–Beauty and Art concludes with a challenging question for the future: Why should we care about beauty in the twenty-first century?
