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Most comprehensive guidebook in
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Recommended Readings:
ART AND ART HISTORY, PAINTING,
SCULPTURE, ARCHITECTURE
History of art: general
ANDRES, Glenn, John M. Hunisak and A. Richard Turner. The Art of Florence (2 Volume Set). Principal photography by Takashi Okamura. A breathtaking book: two thick folio volumes in a slipcase, with the most gorgeous full-page color photographs yet printed of Florentine art from ca. 1200 to 1600, including every major painting, sculpture and building, with works by Giotto, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, Masaccio, Alberti, and Michelangelo, and many others. The text is authoritative and readable.
GOLDWATER, Robert, and Marco Treves, eds. Artists on Art, from the XIV to the XX Century. Anthology of the writings of 142 artists on technique, aesthetics, and the process of creation. The editors provide a short introduction to each artist.
GROVE DICTIONARY OF ART. From Renaissance to Impressionism: Styles and Movements in Western Art, 1400-1900. Ed. Jane Turner. The next step up (and it’s a big one) from reference works such as the dictionaries of art and artists by Piper or Read (see below). Over 180 articles on styles and movements in painting, sculpture, architecture and the decorative arts, including discussion of origins, leading artists and influence. Derived from the 34-volume, indispensable Grove Dictionary of Art, this volume (meant to stand alone) has color plates and many B&W illus. in the text.
GROVE DICTIONARY OF ART. From Rembrandt to Vermeer: 17th-Century Dutch Artists. Ed. Jane Turner. Same series as above; this volume (meant to stand alone) includes hundreds of Dutch painters of the Baroque era, covering life and work, methods and technique, critical reception and posthumous reputation, with bibliography. Many B&W illustrations, 32 pages of color plates.
GROVE DICTIONARY OF ART. From David to Ingres: Early 19th-Century French Artists. Ed. Jane Turner. Same series as above; this volume is especially good on the Neoclassicists and Romantics, entries on Ingres, David, Delacroix, Houdon, Gros, and hundreds more. 32 pp. of color plates, many B&W illus. in the text.
GROVE DICTIONARY OF ART. From Monet to Cezanne: Late 19th-Century French Artists. Ed. Jane Turner. Same series as above; this volume is especially good for the Impressionists. There is some overlap with the volume on David to Ingres. 32 pp. of color plates, many B&W illus. in the text.
GROVE DICTIONARY OF ART. From Expressionism to Post-Modernism. Ed. Jane Turner. About 350 essays on 20th-century art, ranging from Surrealism, Expressionism, and Pop Art to environmental art, the Donkey's Tail, and the Stupid School.
JANSON, H.W., and Anthony F. Janson. History of Art: Slipcased (Sixth Edition). As a source for high-quality photographs of Western painting, sculpture and architecture from prehistoric times to the present, Janson’s History gives more bang for the buck than any other book: 1,352 superb illustrations, 865 of them in color. In addition it offers timelines that show at a glance, for example, what was happening in politics, science and art when Thomas Aquinas was writing. Among the hundred supplementary readings are extensive quotations from Aristotle and Ingres, the Inquisition’s interrogation of Paolo Veronese, and Sullivan’s comments on skyscrapers. Sidebars on music and the theater make this as close to a comprehensive survey of Western art as one can find.
The number and quality of the photographs has improved dramatically since H.W. Janson’s History of Art first appeared in 1962. The text, alas, has not. The elder Janson’s broad overview and integration of artistic and cultural developments with economic, political and scientific changes is being progressively disintegrated by the revisions of his son, who baldly asserts in the first paragraph of the Introduction that he can’t define art and doesn’t intend to try. It’s still the elder Janson’s broad viewpoint that holds the work together, and has made it the most popular art-history textbook for decades.
MINOR,
PIPER, David, ed. The Random House Dictionary of Art and Artists. Handy reference for major movements (Baroque, Rococo, etc.) and techniques (chiaroscuro, perspective); for artists, it notes dates, major works and important biographical information. Not illustrated. Compare the work by Read below.
READ, Herbert, ed. The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art and Artists. Revised ed. Similar to Piper's work above, but includes 426 B&W illustrations.
TAYLOR, Joshua C. Learning to Look: A Handbook for the Visual Arts. Second edition. A useful introduction to the basic terminology and study of painting, sculpture and architecture; although not organized by any rigorous system, Taylor's analyses are usually sound if not inspiring, and he does not pay too much attention to modern "art." However, the concluding essays include some bizarre statements: e.g., "The mind ... is not a very tractable organism. In spite of our most reasoned efforts it tends often to seek refreshment in uncontrolled chaos.”
TAYLOR, Joshua C., ed. Nineteenth Century Theories of Art. A hefty volume of 19th-c. writings on art by the major names in the field, soporific if taken straight but indispensable as a reference.
VASARI, Giorgio. The Lives of the Artists. The standard source for the lives of Italian Renaissance painters, sculptors and architects, written by a well-known 16th-c. Italian painter; includes the lives of Cimabue, Giotto, Ghiberti, Masaccio, Brunelleschi, Donatello,Fra Angelico, Fra Filippo Lippi, Botticelli, Verrocchio, Mantegna, Leonardo, Correggio, Giorgione, Raphael, Michelangelo, Titian, Luca della Robbia, Pontormo, and many others. Vasari is by no means a scholar or a critical historian, but he’s one of the earliest sources on most of these artists, and he tells charming anecdotes.
Painting Back to top
These are mostly books that I’ve referred to in the Museum Exhibitions list. More will follow.
ADLER, Kathleen. Pocket Guides: Impressionism. A good basic introduction to the original Impressionists.
[BRONZINO]. Maurice Brock. Bronzino. The most recent and most authoritative work on this Mannerist portraitist, with excellent photos (including many details).
[BRONZINO]. Alessandra Cecchi. Bronzino. Photos and text of lower quality than the Brock book on Bronzino, but with a correspondingly lower price tag. The Scala/Riverside series on individual artists is very good for photos, but the text varies from quite competent to nearly incomprehensible.
CUMMING, Robert.
Annotated Art: The World's Greatest Paintings Explored and Explained.
The 45 works featured in this large-format (14"x 10") book offer a quick guide
to the history of painting. The annotations explain the paintings and place each
work in its artistic and historical context. Excellent color reproductions show
one painting per two-page spread. Among the works discussed are Giotto's
Adoration of the Magi, Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, Raphael's
School of
[LEONARDO da Vinci]. Sir Kenneth Clark. Leonardo Da Vinci. New Edition. A classic study, with B&W illustrations.
[MICHELANGELO]. William E. Wallace. Michelangelo: The Complete Sculpture, Painting, Architecture. The best picture book currently available on Michelangelo, including photos of the renovated Sistine Chapel ceiling.
[PARRISH, Maxfield.] Laurence S. Cutler and Judy Goffman Cutler. Maxfield Parrish: A Retrospective. This catalogue of a 1995 exhibition includes a good biography of Parrish and over 130 excellent color illustrations of his works, many taken from the original paintings rather than prints. Most of Parrish's works shown in Dianne Durante's lecture "NIneteenth-Century Artist-Entrepreneurs" are included here.
[PARRISH, Maxfield]. Alma Gilbert. Maxfield Parrish: The Masterworks. 3rd ed. Nice illustrations of the most popular and most important of Parrish's works, by one of the authorities in the field.
[PARRISH, Maxfield.] Margaret E. Wagner. Maxfield Parrish and the Illustrators of the Golden Age. Covers not only Parrish but his contemporaries. Good photos, with excerpts of the stories they illustrate.
[RAPHAEL]. Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny. Raphael. Combined biography and critical study, readable and with excellent photos, many in color.
[RAPHAEL]. Richard Muhlberger. What Makes a Raphael a Raphael? This series focuses on what makes an artist's work distinctive: color, line, composition, brushwork, subject matter. The School of Athens is used as a summary. Written for children, but the lack of jargon make it appealing for adults as well.
STURGIS, Alexander. Faces (Pocket Guides). Short but excellent work discussing how the pose, angle, eyes, mouth, and so on affect a viewer's interpretation of the faces in paintings. Top-notch color illustrations.
[VERMEER, Johannes]. Schneider, Norbert. Vermeer 1632-1675: Veiled Emotions. A short, readable biography of Vermeer, discussing each of his paintings in terms of style, composition, the accuracy with which he represents various details, themes, symbolism, historical context, and points that are debated among scholars. At the end are comments on Vermeer’s reputation through the years and a chronology of his life. Each of the paintings that are now attributed to Vermeer is illustrated in a decent color photo and some details; for comparison, paintings by other artists of the 17th century are also shown.
[VERMEER, Johannes.] Guillaume Cassegrain, Catherine Guégan, P. Le Chanu, O. Zeder, with John Michael Montias, tr. & adapted by S. Doris and C. Wiener. The Little Book of Vermeer. The quality of the illustrations is slightly better than in Schneider (above), but that's offset by the poor organization. After a short bio Vermeer, the volume is simply an alphabetical listing of terms, too choppy to read straight through, from "Accessories and materials" through "Woman Holding a Balance." It includes entries on contemporary Dutch artists, symbols, intellectual and economic matters (e.g., "Art market"), and each of Vermeer's paintings. You have to wonder who the audience is for this book: a layman wouldn't sit down and read through it, but a scholar wouldn't find enough detail for research, either.
[WYETH, N.C.] John Edward Dell. Visions of Adventure: N. C. Wyeth and the Brandywine Artists. Profiles N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Harvey Dunn, Frank Schoonover, Philip R. Goodwin and Dean Cornwell; lavish illustrations.
Sculpture Back to top
[AMERICAN SCULPTORS.]
American Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue
of Works by Artists Born Before 1865. The definitive catalogue of American
sculpture at the
[AMERICAN SCULPTORS.] American Sculpture in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Works by Artists Born Between 1865 and 1885. Second volume in the series, with nearly two hundred works by seventy sculptors, among them Paul Wayland Bartlett, Frances Grimes, Adolph Alexander Weinman, Bessie Potter Vannoh, James Earle Fraser, Gaston Lachaise, Max Weber, Elie Nadelman, José de Creeft, Paul Manship, and John Henry Bradley Storrs. Each entry summarizes the artist's life, and discusses the sculpture in terms of its subject and creation, its place in the artist's oeuvre, other extant versions of the work, and so on.
[BERNINI]. Charles Avery. Bernini: Genius of the Baroque. Photographs by David Finn. An important scholarly text, with about 400 gorgeous photographs (80 of them in color) by David Finn.
[CELLINI]. John Wyndham Pope-Hennessy and John L. Hennessy. Cellini. Authoritative study, with stunning photos by Takashi Okamura.
CONNOR,Janis, and Joel Rosenkranz. Rediscoveries in American Sculpture: Studio Works, 1893-1939. Fabulous photographs by David Finn. Includes extensive biographies and commentaries on works by MacMonnies (the best photos I've ever seen of his Nathan Hale), and works by Harriet Frishmuth, Anna Vaughn Hyatt Huntington, Paul Manship and others.
DUBY, G., and Jean-Luc Daval, eds. Sculpture from Antiquity to the Present. The next step up from Janson for sculpture-lovers: a detailed survey of sculpture from ancient times to the present, with over 1,000 photographs (good but not splendid), some in color. Duby covers how and why sculpture is created, and its historical and political background. Only the last 200 or so pages (of over a thousand) deal with modern sculpture.
[GIAMBOLOGNA]. Charles Avery. Giambologna: The Complete Sculpture. Another major critical study with splendid photos by David Finn.
POPE-HENNESSY, John Wyndham, and John L. Hennessy. Introduction to Italian Sculpture. 3 vols. The definitive survey of Italian sculpture of the 13th to 17th centuries; covers Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque sculptors (including Michelangelo and Bernini) with well written, comprehensible text.
RICHTER, Gisela. Handbook of Greek Art. A
Survey of the Visual Arts of Ancient
[SAINT GAUDENS, Augustus]. John H. Dryfhout. The Work of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Lovely illustrations of every single known work by Saint Gaudens, with every known location (original and copies) and a thorough bibliography for each.
[SAINT GAUDENS, Augustus]. Burke Wilkinson. Uncommon Clay: The Life and Works of Augustus Saint Gaudens. Photographs by David Finn. The only recent biography of Saint Gaudens--most were written just after his death--but with some oddities and flaws, such as several pages devoted to analysis of Saint Gaudens' handwriting. As always, Finn's photos are superb.
Architecture Back to top
FLETCHER, Sir Banister. Sir Banister Fletcher's a History of Architecture. Centenary edition, 2nd ed. Detailed and definitive work on architecture from prehistory to the present, around the world (but mostly Western), with hundreds of photos (mostly B&W), many line drawings, and numerous maps. Also valuable for the study of sculpture, so much of which was designed for architectural settings.
COWAN, Henry J., ed. The World's Greatest Buildings: Masterpieces of Architecture and Engineering. (Time-Life Guides) Double-page spreads with details and plans of great buildings; includes chapters on places of worship, fortresses, centers of power, homes, leisure, transportation and communication, and monuments and memorials. Among the works discussed are Angkor Wat, Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple, the Tower of London, the Castle of Neuschwanstein, the Chrysler Building, the Theater at Epidauros, Grand Central Station, the Forth Bridge and the Arch of Titus.
MACAULAY, David. Building Big. The illustrated text, based on a PBS series, explains the building of bridges, tunnels, dams, skyscrapers and domes. Although Macaulay sometimes writes for kids, the text in this volume is too difficult and technical for young children.
SUTTON, Ian. Western Architecture: From Ancient Greece to the Present. A solid work, much shorter than Fletcher's.
STEVENSON, Neil. Architecture: The World's Greatest Buildings Explored and Explained. Similar to Cummings’ Annotated Art: The World’s Greatest Paintings Explored and Explained, in the Painting section above; large format with double-page spreads on each building, and discussion of many details.
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