you pick up thispage book, you will realize you can't just sit down and READ it, However, it's a great book to sit down with and turn pages, stopping on the paintings you find interesting, The information provided for each piece is informative without being stuffy, I enjoyed reading the intro by the author and the next time I am in a museum, I will try to spend more than a few minutes with at least one or two pieces that I like or that intrigue me.
This would be a good book to own because it's hard to do it just in theweeks allowed by the library, When I go to an art museum I generally only look at the "contemporary"/lateth century stuff and I first picked up this book to look at the same thing.
But I started glancing through the older paintings and realized how amazing some of them really were, I thought, if some of these paintings were just being made today they would still shake up the art world, I became curious about the lives and stories behind these older paintings that I didn't know much about, The book has your Leonardos and Mona Lisa's and the like but there are also lots of amazing paintings and painters that I have never seen or heard of.
The paintings are predominately by Western/European/American males but there are also many paintings from other parts of the world and paintings by women dating back to before you would have thought and they don't come across like "tokens".
Some of the more modern/contemporary choices seem a bit questionable to me though, Not necessarily the choice of artists though there are some gaps but more the choice of the particular painting to represent that artist sometimes seems a bit off.
Great "democratic" layout and very well researched, The book itself isn't that bad but I had to give up aboutinto it because I found some of the paintings overrated and most of the paintings in this book are in Italy.
I was in Rome last week for my mum's birthday and I saw some of the pictures in this book but I didn't get why they were so popular because they weren't as great as the author tries making them out to be.
The editors and contributors are clear: this book is not an attempt to present to us a subjective list of the very best paintings in the world.
However, it does attempt to offer a retrospective of the history of paintings, That's a fine goal, but there are problems:
The editor states that only handpainted work is included, Thus, wall paintings from Egyptian tombs are represented, but we don't see a single prehistoric cave painting, for example, and those in France and in other places are certainly among the paintings I'd most like to see.
Every single painting receives either A a full page with the painting on top and exactly half a page of notes below it or B pages are split and we see two paintings at the top, with exactly a quarter page of notes for each painting.
The contributors go to great lengths to "fill up" their specifically allotted space for notes, and these notes are often repetitious and/or irrelevant,
Because all of the paintings are reduced in size, it's impossible in some cases to find the details noted by the contributors, That's very frustrating. It's a nice fantasy that we're all going to seek out the paintings we love so that we can see them live, but that's simply, indeed, a fantasy.
It's almost as if the contributor is saying to the reader: "I'm going to talk about something you can't possibly see here," and it feels insulting.
But on the plus side:
I found paintings I'd never seen that for me are simply stupendous, For example, Velazquez's "Christ on the Cross" is breathtaking, Kurzweil's "Woman in a Yellow Dress" is simply beautiful, Schiele's "The Embrace" is highly erotic and his technique is oneofakind, Durer's "Self Portrait With Gloves" presents to us a very handsome and oddly modernlooking man dressed sumptuously: it's as if we are looking at a rock star in a period costume.
Jansson's "Ring Gymnast" positions a male body in a highly unusual position, And Hoogstraten's interiors, specifically "The Slippers" invite one in to look for the unseen people in the house, There are some paintings I didn't particularly care for, but I have no background in art education I can't tell the difference in neoexpressionism and just plain ol' expressionism, but I do know about dots and drips and cubes.
The highquality Architectural Digest slickness of the pages is a joy to handle,
This is a great source to study the history of fashion and manners and of class struggles and of many great historical events, I've never thought about the following previously, but here goes: for most of art history,,of art is of people, or landscapes or still lives that did exist or could very well have existed, Then suddenly photography is invented, and off we go into "modern" art, Such a simple and obvious event took painting in a wonderful new direction,
And I've saved the best for last: every word written about a painting is on the very same page as the painting itself! if you've read/perused a number of art books, you know that you sometimes have to spend more time finding the painting discussed than enjoying the painting itself.
All in all, a fine introduction to the world of art, I enjoyed it, hence my threestar rating,
This is an amazing collection of small reproductions, one or two to a page, each with a short history of the painter and comments about the painting.
It is unlike any other view of historyseen through the eyes of recognized artists of every type of painting and world view, The chronological order of the paintings provides the orientation needed to understand the passions of each age from thes though part of thes.
I'm flagging the paintings that strike me as inspiring or striking, and there are more than a few, Una recomendación completa de pinturas de todas las épocas y estilos, Los comentarios a cada cuadro ayudan mucho a entenderlo, situarlo en su época, conociendo los estilos y percibiendo detalles del mismo, Muchas me han sorprendido, la mayoría agradablemente y dan ganas de poder contemplar el original, aunque también con alguna uno no entiende como le pueden dar tanto valor como el Círculo negro.
La lástima es el pequeño tamaño en que se reproducen las obras, ya que a veces encontramos dos y hasta tres cuadros en una página y sus respectivas explicaciones, lo que en ocasiones no permite siquiera apreciar algunos detalles que se comentan.
Desde luego hubiera sido
preferible una edición en mayor tamaño y dedicar una página completa a cada imagen pictórica, dejando las notas e interpretación en otra página, aunque ello hubiera supuesto reducir el número de obras o imprimir dos volúmenes.
A majority of the paintings from thes and on are part of private collections so good luck seeing those in person, Otherwise this is a very informative book, I loved the Egyptian art, and all of the older styles, The more modern art doesn't really interest me, Evil takes root and flourishes in societies where art and freedom of expression are censored,
"The Man with the Golden Helmet" painting was attributed to Rembrandt for several years, During thes, some pieces of evidence revealed that the painting was not by Rembrandt, After this disclosure, the painting lost its artistic and economic value, even though the artwork itself had not changed!
In the artistic world, artists' relationships lead to the construction of a network that affects individuals' commercial or artistic success and defines the artwork's value.
Since the quality of art cannot be assessed, the importance of painting depends on factors outside of its value, such as the name of the artist, their artistic background, and a network of experts, curators, collectors, and art historians whose judgment on artwork is the gateway to the world's leading galleries and museums.
It is why Maurizio Cattelan was able to sell a painting for,, consisting of a banana taped on a wall in Art Basel Miami Beach!
The reason for writing this introduction is due to the twentiethcentury paintings presented in the book, some of which are awful.
I don't understand why I should see them before I die! I believe theth century was the peak of painting art until American artists took control of thought flow and distorted the artistic path, and it is not a new scenario :D Don't take it seriously.
By watching the ups and downs of the art of painting, the prominent role of the Europeans, especially Italians, English, and French, can be clearly seen how they have evolved painting over many centuries among various range of topics, from religious and moral subjects to still life and sexual themes Undoubtedly artistic society owes them.
Aristotle believed that the experience of art, especially tragedy, helps the people of society get rid of dangerous emotions by experiencing catharsis, Artists are messengers Not only is the purpose of art to unite the inner world of feeling a healthy feeling and the outer world of color and form, but also artists should pay attention to their social responsibility.
Postscript: The verses of Khayyam kept reverberating in my mind when I was turning the page and looking carefully at the eyes of those pretty, shining, and live sitters:
The kings, the heads, and lords are all beneath the clay.
See fair faces like the moon in the mouths of ants,
thcentury masterpiece by van Eyck
thcentury masterpiece by Bruegel the Elder
thcentury masterpiece by Caravaggio
thcentury masterpiece by van Honthorst
thcentury amazing landscape by Canaletto
thcentury painting.
The kiss by Hayez
thcentury landscape by Eakins
thcentury masterpiece by Edward Hopper From Ancient Egyptian frescoes to the Renaissance masters, from French Impressionists to American Abstract Expressionists, this highly browsable guide embraces all cultures and every style of painting from,BC to the present.
A visually arresting reference for art lovers and students, it provides a truly comprehensive worldwide gazeteer of paintings organized chronologically by date of completion, Each entry includes the history of the painting, information about the artist or artistic movement, the current location of the painting all are on view to the public, as well as other details.
The works are also indexed by artist and by title, making for easy crossreferencing, Included are popular paintings, key works that are the most breathtaking for their extraordinary power and beauty, paintings that were turning points in the history of art, and rediscovered masterpieces, making Paintings You Must See Before You Die an art museum in its own right.
I saw this in the library, and who could pass up such a title I did look at every painting, but only read the descriptions that interested me.
Descriptions are very well written by multiple writers! The book begins with theth century, and is somewhat international, I loved finding artists I did not know, such as Vincent Desiderio, a conceptualist working in oil and Malcolm Morley, winner of the Turner Prize long ago.
However, the only century I could judgest, seemed very repetitive multiple paintings from David Hockney, but maybe that is the message: once you arrive at the lastyears, who knows As other people said before me, this is pretty unbalanced, biased and subjective.
But I still enjoyed reading it as an artful way to enhance my visits to the toilet ahem,
But despite all said flaws, it's still very much worth it to see these works chronologically, I saw many works I did know, a lot I didn't know and a fair few I didn't care to know, but putting it all in perspective does add a lot to seeing them all one by one.
Норм, але є претензії до підбору картин наприклад, хотілось би більшестоліття, але меншеої половинитаполовини, і, головне, як для "paintings you must see", тут забагато картин з приватних колекцій. Mr. Farthing presents a sampling of paintings from prehistoric to modern times until, Though the paintings tends to reflect Western civilization, there are selections that show an appreciation of worldwide art,
As usual, my review reflects what I found in this volume, and I pleased to say I found some new artists and works of arts.
An amazing, enlightening book I learned so much and the attention to details was insightful, I will never look at a painting the same way again! When I ordered this I didnt expect it to be so compact, Its very thick, almost like a bible, The paintings are organised by date fromBC toAD, On each page is the painting at the top with the title, date, type of painting e, g. oil on canvas, size dimensions and the paintings location underneath as well as a description which sometimes includes titbits about the artist and places the painting in a sociohistorical context.
There is even a helpful glossary of art terms and indexes of the titles and artists featured, My only problem with this book is the size of the paintings some of them are too small to see the detail mentioned in the descriptions.
Due to its fairly expansive nature and as a complete novice when it comes to art, I now feel I have a better idea of what kind of paintings I like and dislike.
Most of the early paintings contain religious and mythological imagery with a few commissioned works of royalty, the later ones tend to be more political and abstract.
I preferred the earlier works, I could have done without most of the modern paintings,
Ive learned a lot from just this one book, though I did notice that the majority of the paintings were by male European artists.
.
Access 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die Picturized By Stephen Farthing Accessible As Digital
Stephen Farthing