| Title | : | The Art Museum |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0714856525 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780714856520 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 992 |
| Publication | : | First published October 17, 2011 |
As any great museum the book is divided into galleries, presenting the extraordinary variety of artistic output, from ancient Greece, to Australasia and Oceania, Byzantine art to that of the Pre-Columbian Americas, the Renaissance to twentieth-century art, with an emphasis on later western art. Rooms examine important aspects and movements within the gallery. Corridors between the rooms allow the reader to focus on seminal works of each period and culture, with the huge reproduction format allowing for detailed examination.
The rooms present the finest examples of human creativity, each piece labelled with key data (including dates, medium and dimensions) alongside a brief description, and the group of works explained by a curator. Painting, sculpture, metalwork, textiles and ceramics comprise the wide variety offered to the reader, as individual works are all contextualised with expert contributors detailing the works’ significance to the evolution of art history. With cross-references throughout, a comprehensive glossary and detailed location maps,
The Art Museum Reviews
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Happy Birthday to me!
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Wow, big treat for me! Saw this in Waterstones and thought I had to have it! Lovely, lovely. Just wish it wasn't so large.... maybe a third of the size and three books? Reproduction quality good which is the name of the game with art books.
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I rarely buy books anymore. I figure the public library can hook me up for free and has a lot more storage space than I do. But the combination of savvy marketing by Phaidon, a recent one-day, 50%-off sale at BN.com, and $75 of BN credit sitting in my wallet brought this beast into my possession this week. I was totally taken in by the scope of the project. Who wouldn’t after reading this:
“It is the most comprehensive and visually spectacular history of world art ever published. Ten years in the making, this unique book was created with a global team of 100 specialists in art history, who have collected together important works as they might be displayed in the ideal museum for the art lover.”
Now that I have it though, I'm thinking of returning it. It is humongous, I mean seriously mammoth, and very heavy, I’m not even sure where to put it. The paper is pretty thin so it’s not one for the kids to look at alone. I imagined many hours of pouring through it together, but it's not easy to leaf through because of its size, and again, I think it could be easily torn. My kids love Janson’s (much less) huge History of Art, and The Art Musuem has more range, more pictures, bigger pictures, but it's unwieldy. Also, because so much is packed in--30,000 years of art, many mediums, spanning the globe--it is a very brief treatment for each section. For instance, impressionism is covered in 12 pages, minimalism another 12. In addition, though the picture quality and color is okay, I expected to be more impressed by it. As an odd side-note, the book emits an unpleasant chemical smell, I assume from the printing process. The text is also incredibly sparse, pretty much just identifying the works and giving very brief descriptions of movements.
As I’m sure is inevitable with any project of this scale, there are idiosyncratic choices of who and what to cover and how much. In photography there is one small Ansel Adams mixed in with 4 others on a page, followed by an entire page, with 3 pictures, by Cindy Sherman (kudos to Sherman, she is wonderful). Photography in general gets short shrift. Absent are Edward Weston, Helen Levitt, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Caponigro. Hiroshi Sugimoto gets a nod, but unfortunately it’s one of his Theatres pics, rather than one of the more spectacular Seascapes.
The Art Museum fits the bill as a comprehensive survey, displaying great works throughout time and inspiring ideas of what to explore in more detail elsewhere. With the first flip through I learned of artists and movements I'd never heard of before and was intrigued by, but I'm thinking it might be better left to the libraries. I wish I could give it a better review, because I think it's a worthy idea, but an idea better suited to a computer program, website, or app, because the medium of the book cannot hold the scope of this project.
As I see it, art books should serve at least one of two purposes: 1) High quality reproductions of beautiful art, and/or 2) A solid, durable, user-friendly reference work. Unfortunately, “The Art Museum” fulfills neither. The reproductions are too poor for the former, and the physical object of the book is too fragile and unwieldy for the latter. It’s an ambitious (and exciting idea), but I suspect that the scope of “human art” is too broad for a single work. -
A visual feast. Art from the stone age to the end of the 20th Century. No effort has been spared to make this book a treasure. All art is in color. Some are full page, others are actual size. The narrative is educational and covers both the general and then the specifics of each picture. This book given as a gift will be remembered for life. Some of the artwork is not suitable for young children, but if you know art you'll understand that. I've been reading a two page spread a day or a bit less since I started reading it. Like any such rich fare you'll want to savor it and enjoy each new delight.
Update: I'm about 2/3 through this vast work, moving through it in sequence. Each page provides new insight. It's not a book to rush through. My approach has been to read a page or a two page "room" each day, but I don't push it. If I don't feel I'm up to it I save the next room for a day when I can truly savor it. This seems to be the most enjoyable approach for me and assures that I won't just focus on the art I like. As a result I've learned a tremendous amount about art from this magnificent volume.
One caution: Some of the art contains nudes which may not be appropriate for younger readers. -
The only disadvantage to me personally is that is it is so huge and so very heavy, and maybe also the fairly thin paper on which the book is printed (although that just means one has to be careful browsing through it). Let me hasten to add, however, that the contents of the book is absolutely gorgeous... What a treat! I don't think I've ever seen such a great collection brought together in just one book.
If you love art but can't afford to travel all over the world to see it (who can?), then this definitely is the book to have.
I bought the Dutch edition (and amazingly enough had to add the Dutch edition to GR), which means the book has been published in at least one other language than English. And although there are no editions on GR (yet?), I'm guessing there will be also a German, French and Spanish edition available, at least?
See also
Non-fiction by foreign authors of the Netherlands & Flanders group. -
Just an amazing collection, very big though!!!
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Beautiful, beautiful book. Also very smartly curated. One of my great treasures.
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992 pages. 2700 color illustrations of high-quality. 18.5 pounds of paper. Comprehensive and complete overview of art history.
My most beautiful and most expensive book.
It took me almost one years to go through it. I've read it a few times, and will definitely go through it several times more, as each sitting offers new details.
Of this quality I do want to have more books.
Some notes
"Room 158 stained glass of notre dame... :0 wow"
"Room 16-24 egypt. So beautiful. I like the meaning they gave to all kind of animals"
"Black figure vase painting depicting Greek heroes room 31"
"Room 56 and so on..hail to the roman emperor. Stunning portraits"
"Room 98 scary!! Ninja Buddha's"
"162 early renaissance not that beautiful yet.."
"168 Donatello's David"
"189 Mannerism mooi"
"Jan van Eyck! Room 196"
"Albrecht Durer room 209 superb indeed"
"I forget room 200 netherlandisch portraits."
"All is so bulky and muscular in baroque. Dont like that."
"Ok it is just Rubens that I dont like"
"Room 260 love Johannes Vermeer"
"Room 267 velasquez his pope innocent X"
"Room 274 rococo in italy venice edition. Vedutes really nice!"
"Neoclassicism is one of my favorite movements"
"Johannes Zoffany"
"Room 295 European realism. Show me an angel and I will paint one. Striking and beautiful"
"Volga barge haulers ilya repin must see"
"Manet. Monet. Renoir liking the frenchies"
"Pictorial purity - pre Raphaelite brotherhood. Beautiful room 302"
"Room 307 starry night Van Gogh."
"Room 310 don't like Cezanne"
"Is Nabis an art movement...not for me"
"In Africa they like there masks and statues it seems...where are the paintings? Room 314 - 323"
"Room 331 Easter island. By the gods"
"Room 332 - 337 we have reached fauv dada primitiv pur surreal -ism! Lets wonder"
"Gustav Klimt. Viennese modernism and I like it!!"
"Wow hellish and impressive. George grosz the funeral. WW1 emotion"
"Room 351 Neue Sachlichkeit. Characterization. Weird but interesting"
"Room 354 mondriaan nahhhh"
"Room 356 love the interpretations possible with these paintings. Metaphysical and surrealistic"
"Room 367 famous grant wood. American gothic"
"Room375 I don't mind having a Pollock on the wall but a Newman I wouldn't even want on my toilet"
"Room 385 ikb79. Yves Klein. A blue square. At least it is a nice color"
"I don't like conceptual art. Pop art. Room 405 etc."
"Ellsworth Kelly you're not worth it.. Room 434. So boring plain ugly. Three colors and abstract forms."
"Lets end the book with Damien Hirst. The end of art. Luckily it seems all movements return one time or another as I like the old Classical movements up to about impressionism the most!" -
Eeeek! Just saw this on the B & N web site. I don't need a $200.00, 1,000 page book, but part of me wants to have acquire a nice, recently-published art book on paper before eBooks take over the world. From the Goodreads description:
"The Art Museum is the finest art collection ever assembled between two covers. This revolutionary and unprecedented virtual art museum in a book, features 1,000 oversized pages of over 2,500 works of art. It is the most comprehensive and visually spectacular history of world art ever published. Ten years in the making, this unique book was created with a global team of 100 specialists in art history, who have collected together important works as they might be displayed in the ideal museum for the art lover." -
Beautiful collection of art. This is a tome I will return to again and again.
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Giant photographic reproductions of important works of art from all over the world and various time periods. Awesome for reference.
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A blockbuster of a book that, on and off, took me about eighteen months to get through. It comprises nearly 1,000 pages of art works, with useful references at the back, on a large pictorial scale. This means that you get a better sense of the scale of a work than you would from most art books.
My edition lost a star because of a gripe. Perhaps the publishers were keen to get the book out for Christmas 2011 but there are persistent problems with inaccurate cross references in some sections. However, it is an achievement of great educational value, covering all periods and regions from the stone age to contemporary work.
I tend to have a jaundiced view of much recent art which strikes me as simply reflecting the same bubble that burst with the crash of the financial engineers in 2008 - cynics servicing fools.
Despite that, there are signs of recovery. Relational art takes conceptual art out of the hands of the alleged creative genius and makes the artist a potential educator and facilitator of liberation.
In addition, there are individual geniuses for our age - the late Cy Twombly speaks to the great tradition and Eliasson tries to make us think again while installations are there to create wonder.
Even the neo-pop of Murakami and Koons is, at the least, fun and sculptural techniques continue to subvert materials. Perhaps we can now move on from the constant hommages to Duchamp.
This book is a great table top item - albeit very heavy to carry around. It is highly recommended although I hope a second edition corrects the referencing. Such sloppy editing, for whatever reason, is not good enough from the House of Phaidon - and certainly not at the relatively high price. -
Received this awesome book as a Christmas present. Really fantastic. Possibly the greatest art book I have ever read. Excellent, high quality images of all of the important schools of art in the past 2000 years. Excellent commentaries. Only flaw that there is no indication as to the present location of each work of art. Besides that, this mammoth book will keep me busy and blissful for at least a couple of weeks.
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Love love love this.
