30,000 Years of Art: The Story of Human Creativity across Time and Space by Phaidon Press

30,000 Years of Art: The Story of Human Creativity across Time and Space Reviews

• 
  Peter Tillman

  Your public library likely has a copy of this enormous (12.5 lbs!) and well-produced book. You should check it out and, well, check it out. Make sure you have your sturdiest book-bag to lug the thing out to the car! I'm particularly partial to the prehistoric and ethnographic stuff, but the whole thing is really, really nicely done. One of my 100 (or so) best books ever. Five stars! And a book that, given our pokey little Calif house, I have zero desire to own. Where would I put it? Best just to check it out from the library from time to time, Real Soon Now....
  
  Sadly, our local library disposed of most of their copies, and the 2 they kept are for ref. use only. Sad & dumb.
• 
  Meredith

  You could kill someone with this book. Seriously. It's the biggest book I've ever read. According to Amazon.com, it is 12.1 x 12.1 x 2.8 inches and weighs 13 pounds.
• 
  Steve

  Will probably take me another 30,000 years to fully read, but this is one the most prized books in my collection. I hope to pass it on to my children.
• 
  Unpil

  An art museum in one's home, spanning the circumference of the globe and the width of the time. Recommended!
• 
  Robert Adam Gilmour

  There's about 600 works of art, it's impressively wide ranging and roughly a third of this is spent on anonymous ancient art. I admit I couldn't be bothered reading every single entry, much of the writing about the anonymous art is highly speculative (repetitively so) and so much of the text just describes what can obviously be seen in the pictures. I noticed the 1960s is when there started being more and more art I was less keen on but this is a historical overview. I understand sticking to films shown in a gallery context but I really don't understand the tiny selection of photography.
• 
  Kirsten Gorter

  Visueel 💯 met goede, inhoudelijke uitleg.
• 
  Courtney

  This book reminded me why I consistently sucked at Art Theory in high school.
  
  There's a lot here. And at the same time... not a lot. But that is the subject matter, there is no way to condense 30,000 years of art into a book that everyone would be happy with. Subjectively I think a lot of the art in this collection is male orientated and european focused. But then again, I am also a layman when it comes to art so it's not like my opinion is educated.
  
  I think this is a great book to have sitting somewhere where visitors can see it and flick through and maybe you can talk about art together even though that sounds pretentious as hell. There's a nice scope, sure the actual art in the BC section is thin of the ground, a more accurate title would be 30,000 years of art except three quarters is going to be the last two thousand years. Again. Not a connosseur of art, just making an observation.
  
  The layout is lovely, the size is nice, heavy as hell and not a book that you can transport around, I wouldn't be reading this on the train to and from work. The last couple of pages include performance pieces and video art and it doesn't translate well to print. But overall an interesting book.
• 
  Andrew

  This was an awesome book I was fortunate enough to find on sale at Barnes and Nobles. The premise is that the authors picked the most influential or definitive pieces from every age (pretty much their favorites) starting 30,000 years ago and working up to the present. I'm not really into "art," but there is a lot of pretty amazing history and there are hundreds of beautiful things in the book to look at. The only gripe is that some of the pictures on the page are kind of small, but otherwise its an amazing book and well worth the price.
• 
  Poon

  A great coffee table book dedicated to art. Just flipping through this book to see the photos of artifacts is already a feast to the eyes but once you have time to read on, you will find more information to widen your appreciation in them.
  
  This book also makes a great present. I gave couple of them as 2008 New Year gifts to friends and they all raved about it!
  
  Highly recommended!!!
• 
  ZC Zhang

  1, A great and perfect composition of Art, History, and Archaeology,
  2, No personal views, opinions,
  3, Very even in chronology and geography, e.g, 500 pages are Art before A.D 1000, and 500 pages are Art after A.D 1000, etc.
  
  A HUGE book ! like a table ! Also a great art book, however is not available anymore.
• 
  Rhonda Hankins

  Extraordinarily well done and affordable art book. Lovely to keep open on a table and browse through at random to learn about art from different countries, from different centuries, and in different styles. One of my favorite books ever.
• 
  John Holdway

  I have owned this book for a number of years. I say I’ve read it but of course I haven’t read it exactly. I just look at and read it periodically. It is a time line with one art work on each page. The facing pages form interesting juxtapositions. It has art In chronological order from all over the world. The authors incorporate non western art. It seems to be less hierarchical where most art books put western art at the top. Perhaps they do a decent job. It seems to make an effort in the start to break down racism but only just a bit. It is great to have a whole overview of art from around the world over 30,000 years.
• 
  César Niño Rey

  He tardado tres años en leerlo y ojalá me durase otros tres. Las Venus paleolíticas y Lucian Freud, el arte vikingo y el románico, Grecia y la Dama de Elche, la cerámica de culturas alejadas miles de kilómetros, las máscaras africanas y Picasso, las xilografías japonesas y los impresionistas franceses, los mosaicos de los reyes normandos de Sicilia y Bizancio y los omeyas del norte de África: todo está conectado.
• 
  翰林院编修

  艺术三万年
  8.8 (76人评价) [英] 费顿出版社 / 夏海宁 / 后浪丨四川美术出版社 / 2020
  纵贯三万年，横跨六大洲，俯瞰世界艺术演变史 八百余幅高清图片，网罗全球近六百件艺术珍宝 六百余页超大容量，三十五位艺术领域大师级学者倾力撰写 国际首席艺术出版
• 
  Anna

  Hmmm. I've been looking at this book (thank you, Lena) for an hour now, wondering if it will be as good as it sounds, thinking it probably won't - that it can't be.... but it looks absolutely ...delicious.
  
  My clearly impaired ability to make straightforward decisions (it's a one-click, totally non-committing thing for crying out loud) and my inner vision of devouringa chocolate cake makes me thik it's time to sign off for dinner.
• 
  Lisa Vegan

  This is actually an amazing book but it doesn’t get 5 stars from me because so much is left out that I wish was included. I especially like the timeline that shows the history of the art along with general human history. I doubt that I will ever read every page of this book, the way I normally do with art books.
• 
  Stephan

  This book has alot of ground to cover. It goes page by page matching art from all cultures at the same time at the pace of about 100-1000 years per page, picking one particular piece with some short text.
• 
  Rhesa

  This looks good actualy, but it's so biggg!!!, almost the size of a small table. I'll need to pay extra baggage to carry this on the plane. Well hopefully gonna see this book in Jakarta soon. I'd rather buy this than the small 10,000 years one also recently published by Phaidon.
• 
  Stephanie

  Due to it's size and weight, 30,000 Years of Art is not frequently taken down from my bookcase. The spine is far too weak and thus causes me more trepidation upon handling this book. While in theory this is a fantastic reference book, it's a pain to use.
• 
  Ellis

  Anyone wanna get me this book??
• 
  Chloe

  This was a birthday present. It arrived by mail and is the size of a smallish meteor.
• 
  Leonard Pierce

  Big and clumsy and pretty much focused on the mainstream, but for the price, you can't beat this, and the layout, design and big, beautiful reproductions of art can't be beat.
• 
  Pamela

  Got this for my birthday. It is exquisite. It will take 30,000 years for me to read, reread and digest.
• 
  Gen

  Fabulous book! Love it to bits.