Need some recommendations for building your art history book collection? We've put together a list of must-read books below that cover art history from classical antiquity to the present. Art history is a malleable discipline, subject to recurrent revisions and reassessments. But understanding developments in art depends on it. Enhance your studies in this field with one or many of our choices.
1.Penelope JE Davies, et al., Janson's History of Art (9th edition)
For over 60 years, Horst Woldemar Janson's book has served as a reference for art history courses, promising a comprehensive view of painting, sculpture and architecture from the dawn of civilization to the present. For the most part, that's right – except for the titanic omission of women artists. Janson did not believe there was anything in female artists worthy of serious consideration, a prejudice consistent in the Mad Men era, which the author maintained until his death in 1982. However, a 2006 review essentially wrote Janson out of her own book, although his name remained in the title. Masterpieces (such as painting Arrangement in gray and black #1 by James McNeill Whistler, 1871, also known as Whistler's mother) once suppressed, while previously ignored disciplines (photography and decorative art) were added – as well as, finally, female artists. Furthermore, it replaced Janson's focus on the male artist as genius for a more comprehensive reading that takes class and gender into account. This most recent edition, published in 2013, expands coverage of Islamic art.
2.Hal Foster, Rosalind Krauss, et al., Art Since 1900 (3rd Edition, two volumes)
Compiled by contributors associated with october, the quarterly art critic known for his dense and difficult writing, has published Art Since 1900, in 2005. The book maintains a poststructuralist attitude and bent, which is to say, that it is skeptical of the notion that art embodies individual expressions that transcend time. Thus, the book does not follow the development of what is called modernism, anti-modernism and postmodernism through artists or movements. Instead, it treats 20th-century art with a textual deconstruction with short essays linked to certain cultural or historical events for each year between 1900 and 2003, starting with the publication of Dream Interpretation of Sigmund Freud and ending with the 50th Venice Biennale. Art Since 1900 exemplifies the non-hierarchical nature of historical discourse that prevails to this day.
3. Giorgio Vasari, Artists' Lives
Giorgio Vasari's biographies of the leading artists of the Italian Renaissance introduced the concept of art history as we know it. Many of the artists were near contemporaries (he lived from 1511 to 1574), making the text a primary source for studying the historical era that inaugurated the Western tradition in art (until recently linked to the narrative genre invented by Vasari). Originally published in 1550, Lives covers the period between Cimabue (1240–1302) and Michelangelo (1475–1564) and is preceded by a general treatise on architecture, sculpture, and painting. Later historians would blame Vasari for being too focused on the artists of Florence and Rome, although the book was expanded in 1568 to include members of the Venetian School such as Titian. But while lived looked no further than Italy, its influence spread rapidly across Europe, with the first of many translations appearing in the Dutch Republic in 1604.
4. Mary Beard and John Henderson, Classical Art: From Greece to Rome
Although the second half of its title suggests research beginning with Ancient Greece, this book is really more about the latter civilization. It proposes that without the Roman Empire, classical art would not have lasted to trigger the Renaissance. The authors argue that the transmission of Greek aesthetics from Rome laid the foundations for Western art, and further argue that the Romans did not imitate Greek art, but rather reinterpreted and reinvented it. The book's five chapters cover painting, sculpture, portraits and monuments, looking at the role of lust - for power, posterity and sex. Side trips to archaeological sites like Pompeii explore how new discoveries maintain our fascination with objects from antiquity, noting that their survival is ultimately a matter of luck.
5. HH Arnason, History of Modern Art
With more than 650 pages, the History of Modern Art of HH Arnason looks daunting, but since his appearance in 1968, he has served as the essential account of twentieth-century art. The book begins with Paris during the 19th century, when notions of art for art's sake begin with artists such as Manet, Monet, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Seurat and Cézanne who fired the first shots of modernism. It continues to recount the main movements - Cubism, Dadaism, Bauhaus, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art - that have impacted the last 100 years of painting, sculpture and architecture. Using generous illustrations and accessible language, the book tells the story of a revolutionary era that transformed our thinking about the world and the place of art. Already in its seventh edition, History of Modern Art has been repeatedly updated to include the latest artistic developments as the 20th century gives way to the 21st century.
6. EH Gombrich, The History of Art
At the beginning of this book (which also appears between Art in America's Picks Essential Readings), author EH Gombrich observes, “There really is no such thing as art. There are only artists.” That statement sets the tone for what has become one of the most popular books in art history. Abjuring sweeping discussions of movements or concepts, Gombrich focused on individual works of art and the figures behind them. Except for some diversions into ancient and tribal art, this invariably means painters from the West. Still, Gombrich takes a remarkable position for an art historian in maintaining that art history can obscure as well as elucidate the experience of art by conveying information extraneous to the act of seeing. Linking artists as diverse as Raphael and Cézanne over time, Gombrich insists that they all faced similar challenges in making their work.
7. Phaidon Edition, The Art Book
Smart and richly crafted, Phaidon's A to Z Artist Directory through History is the must-have coffee table accessory in your library. From the Middle Ages to today, the book features 500 artists, and while some are better known than others, each is given the same treatment: a full-page, full-color reproduction of a key work printed with sharp attention to detail. Each entry is accompanied by a short text giving an overview of the respective artist's career written in clear, easy-to-follow language. Everywhere you open this volume you will find breathtaking images, and as the artists are listed alphabetically, you will find unexpected juxtapositions of movements and eras on every page, such as the 17th-century Dutch painter Hendrick ter Brugghen and the French conceptualist contemporary Daniel Buren. However The Art Book leans heavily towards painting, also encompasses sculpture, photography, video and installation.
8.Richard Shone and Jean-Paul Stonard, eds., The Books that Shaped Art History: From Gombrich and Greenberg to Alpers and Krauss
Although an art history book about art history books, this book is a compilation of essays covering the milestones of the 20th century, noting that developments in art are linked to changes in scholarship. Bringing together a broad group of leading scholars and curators, The Books that Shaped Art History examines 12 texts that introduced important critical concepts to the field, starting with Religious Art in 13th Century France, written by Émile Mâle in 1898, the first studies of medieval art, Mâle's book was also one of the first to use iconography to unravel the meaning of images. another book, Principles of Art History Heinrich Wölfflin of 1915 formulated the now common method of comparing works of art on the basis of style.
9. Sharon F. Patton, african american art
Sharon F. Patton's 1998 survey connects African American art to the African experience between the early 18th and late 20th centuries. Patton begins with slavery, addressing plantation architecture and the African influences that inform enslaved housing built for Southern states. Moving to the folk and decorative arts of the 19th century, Patton considers the impact of major events—such as the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Great Migration—on art made by African Americans. Finally, the author explores how African-American aesthetics were shaped during the 20th century by people such as the New Negro movement of the 1920s, black nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s, and identity politics of the 1990s.
10. Charles Townsend Harrison and Paul Wood, eds., Art in Theory 1900–2000 , (2nd edition)
As the title notes, this book examines twentieth-century art's unique reliance on theory. In the period before what is known as modern art, aesthetic debates centered mainly on technique; During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, for example, the French Academy was rocked by arguments between two groups - the Poussinistes, named after the 17th-century neoclassical Nicholas Poussin, and the Rubenistes, named after the most contemporary Poussin's old man, Peter Paul Rubens - about which was more important for painting, line or color. Modernism, however, formulated an entire philosophy to radically transform art, propelling the movement, as Charles Harrison and Paul Wood write, from the “margins of public notice to the center of the cultural economy”. Harrison and Wood incisively capture this revolution from post-impressionism to postmodernism.
11.Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art and Society (6th edition)
For centuries, art historians ignored female artists, and the few who managed to gain recognition did so only because it was assumed that they had somehow overcome the limitations of their sex. According to this belief, women could not become artists in their own right because their gender made it impossible to do so. This idea began to fade during the final decades of the last century, as the achievements of women artists became too visible to ignore. Forgotten names from the past were being reassessed, and this 1996 study sheds light on many of these artists from the Middle Ages onwards. Most importantly, the book illuminates their struggles with the misogyny of their respective times and how they persisted in pursuing their work.
