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Art: A Brief History
This book, an introduction to the history of art that features excellent scholarship, takes a global approach with an emphasis on the Western tradition in art. It reflects new interests and issues, expanding the topic to include women and minorities, and showing media and techniques other than painting, sculpture, and architecture. Written in clear, standard English without art historical or aesthetic jargon, A Brief History is visually appealing as well as intellectually stimulating. This comprehensive survey of world art is based on the most recent scholarship, and includes coverage of arts inspired by all the major religions, the contribution of women and minorities, and contains discussions of all the arts, including ceramics, glass, metal, enamel, and the fiber arts. This book serves as an introduction to the history of art and a ready reference for people working in the arts, including museum docents, and art gallery employees, owners, and managers.
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First published January 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 27, 2018
For an endeavour to frame the big picture of art history in more than six hundred pages, such a book is appropriate inasmuch as formal analyses are thoroughly written along with a good quality of exemplification. Providing a wide range of knowledge for especially students as well as art enthusiasts, Art: A Brief History is a great starting-point to adventure into arts from the past, sailing to contemporary arts and perhaps, linking to the future. Anyhow, the book still has its flaws from my personal perspective. A few unclear classifications of renowned pieces (such as chapter 18 of European and American Art from 1840 to 1910) and a multitude of definitions are far more complex than they should be.
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Quyển sách đắt đỏ mình quằn quại mua cho môn Lịch Sử Nghệ Thuật và bây giờ thì không hối hận. Thời gian học cũng không đủ trải đều cho từng chương nên mình cố gắng đọc bù lại ở nhà. Quyển sách to, xem tranh rất đã, tới nỗi ban đầu còn say sưa xem tưởng như là đang đứng trước tranh thật (xong về sau tụt hứng một tẹo vì là tranh in sai màu cũng nhiều, mà cũng không trách được); dày cộm nhưng vẫn là ít ỏi để đi sâu vào bất kì điều gì, vẫn là một nền tảng tốt để tích cóp thêm kiến thức cho những quyển sau này đọc. Vì cùng đọc với bài giảng của giảng viên nên nhận ra là có một vài chi tiết, cách định nghĩa có vẻ quá phức tạp (đúng kiểu học thuật). Khi tự đọc thì một số phân loại tranh vào thời kì vẫn khiến mình bối rối (cũng chỉ có thể cân nhắc do sách được tham khảo từ nhiều nguồn khác nhau); về Nghệ Thuật Đương Đại, đối với mình thì có chút dư thừa khi nói về quá nhiều tác phẩm mà thật sự vẫn cần thời gian để minh chứng cho giá trị của chúng.
Một quyển sách tốt để giữ làm của như bách khoa toàn thư ấy, khi nào cần ôn lại điều gì cũng có thể tìm thấy (hầu hết) thứ mình cần.
March 17, 2020
Very good and comprehensive overview over Western art and its main influences from prehistoric times until recent days. I find the book well-structured, easy to follow and adequately illustrated. The small boxes with additional information on techniques or details of a specific artwork are a great addition. The detailed glossary in the back is very helpful for an art history student like me.
The chapters about Central and South American as well as African art are both quite short and cover only a very generalised overview over some of the most known art, craft and architecture. Enough to kindle curiosity for more detailed literature on the subjects.
The chapters about Central and South American as well as African art are both quite short and cover only a very generalised overview over some of the most known art, craft and architecture. Enough to kindle curiosity for more detailed literature on the subjects.
May 27, 2020
When I was undergraduating, many moons ago, the standard art history text was H.W. Janson's A Basic History of Art. It lacked color photos (except for a few plates), non-Western art for the most part, and ignored women artists.
But when my daughter took an introductory art history course, Janson was replaced by Art: A Brief History by Marlyn Stokstad, perhaps the new standard. It's much more multi-cultural (Asian art, African art, Islamic art, and Art of the Americas are developed at great length now). And women artists are included now both in text and picture. That's the good news.
Now the bad news. Very bad news. The omissions by Stokstad in regards modern art are numerous and quite unbelievable.
NOWHERE in this 400 page volume can you find any mention of these major artists of the Twentieth Century:
Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Giorgio DeChirico, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Beckman, Georges Roualt, Gustav Klimt, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Cartier- Bresson, Rene Magritte, Pierre Bonnard, Amadeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Man Ray, Arshile Gorky, Edouard Vuillard, Juan Gris, Balthus, Marc Chagall, and Kurt Schwitters. Paul Klee is only mentioned in passing as a teacher in the Bauhuas. Yikes!
No mention of the women artists Anni Albers, Hilma af Klint, Joan Mitchell, Berenice Abbott, Yayoi Kusama, Louise Bourgeois, Diane Arbus, Nancy Graves, and Agnes Martin. No mention of post-war artists as Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Clifford Still, Franz Kline, Hans Hoffman, Ad Reinhardt, Morris Louis, Frank Stella, Lucian Freud, Joseph Albers, or Brice Marden, among others.
INSTEAD we get such artists as Joseph Kosuth, Hugo Ball, Judith F. Baca, Wenda Gu, Jennifer Steinkamp, Jenny Holzer, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, Bruce Nauman, Yves Klein, Roland Barthes, Emily Carr, Marianne Brandt, and Emmy Hennings.
But when my daughter took an introductory art history course, Janson was replaced by Art: A Brief History by Marlyn Stokstad, perhaps the new standard. It's much more multi-cultural (Asian art, African art, Islamic art, and Art of the Americas are developed at great length now). And women artists are included now both in text and picture. That's the good news.
Now the bad news. Very bad news. The omissions by Stokstad in regards modern art are numerous and quite unbelievable.
NOWHERE in this 400 page volume can you find any mention of these major artists of the Twentieth Century:
Max Ernst, Francis Picabia, Giorgio DeChirico, Oskar Kokoschka, Max Beckman, Georges Roualt, Gustav Klimt, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Cartier- Bresson, Rene Magritte, Pierre Bonnard, Amadeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, Man Ray, Arshile Gorky, Edouard Vuillard, Juan Gris, Balthus, Marc Chagall, and Kurt Schwitters. Paul Klee is only mentioned in passing as a teacher in the Bauhuas. Yikes!
No mention of the women artists Anni Albers, Hilma af Klint, Joan Mitchell, Berenice Abbott, Yayoi Kusama, Louise Bourgeois, Diane Arbus, Nancy Graves, and Agnes Martin. No mention of post-war artists as Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Clifford Still, Franz Kline, Hans Hoffman, Ad Reinhardt, Morris Louis, Frank Stella, Lucian Freud, Joseph Albers, or Brice Marden, among others.
INSTEAD we get such artists as Joseph Kosuth, Hugo Ball, Judith F. Baca, Wenda Gu, Jennifer Steinkamp, Jenny Holzer, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, Bruce Nauman, Yves Klein, Roland Barthes, Emily Carr, Marianne Brandt, and Emmy Hennings.
May 28, 2026
Art – A Brief History by Marilyn Stokstad – on Realini’s Best 150 non Fiction books list http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u...
10 out of 10
The erudite and very well educated, plus the snobs and pretentious ruffians will dismiss this work as too simple, basic, maybe irrelevant for them, as they have accumulated much more than they can find within and it may well be that this meant for those with little information and knowledge about art, trying to educate the masses (as those ‘fool’s guides’) and remind those who have forgotten periods, classic paintings, authors, styles, including names like Constantin Brancusi, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso.
This is a turbulent time for the under signed and he is very upset with a question of…art, wherein this Brief History would come in handy, for it is good to remember Marcel Duchamp, who is mentioned within and the readers are invited to answer a question related to him – at the end of the various sections, we are offered choices for the questionnaires and in this particular case, I think they gave the choice between Deschamps and Brancusi – and his perhaps most famous, iconoclast work, Urinal called Fountain…
Evidently, this has caused an outcry, just like other breaks with tradition had done and will do in the future, when people have questioned the validity of the new proposition, or most often, dismissed it as nonsense or garbage, the impressionists (my favorite of all) have been rejected and not allowed to expose within the confines of the main arena, until of course they would become mainstream and then they would be left behind by the new waves, currents such as the fauves, best represented by Henri Matisse, or the action painters with their leader Jackson Pollock, the abstractionists with the most famous of all, Pablo Picasso.
There is also Damien Hirst, the best-known, most successful artist of the moment presumably, and his famous animals cut in half and then presented in formaldehyde of which he says he prefers it ‘'because it is dangerous and it burns your skin…If you breathe it in it chokes you and it looks like water…I associate it with memory…’
In other words, the concept of what art is a fluid, and there is no universal definition, accepted template, and this why books like Art – A Brief History would help, albeit at the end, what constitutes art would depend very much on the perspective of the viewer - ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ – and for the traditionalists, Rembrandt will always be paramount and the preferred choice, while new waves bring in new thinking…
If the artist’s shit constitutes art remains to be debated, unless that has been established and I am not aware of it, when I came across the concept, I laughed and it was included in a short story collection, where that was the intention
Mircea Cartarescu, the dominant author in this land, for about two decades the talk of the literati, who think he deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature, has a collection of short stories http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/i... and in one he mentions this incident, of the can with the shit of the artist that is supposed to be a work of art, and it is both humorous and apparently a serious thing.
Now let us move to the present and see what we can do about another situation like this, which affects the Mogosoaia Palace, a historic and architectural monument, one of a handful of examples of Romanian, Brancovan Architecture, that is the site of an ‘art exhibition’, which means they have gathered some dead branches and placed them within the walls and then on them, near the entrance to the Palace.
When I first saw the things, I was sure that they had been dumped by workers who had been constructing, repairing something, and in their negligence and disregard for something alien to them – they lack the education, they are not familiar with the paramount importance – they just threw this against the walls of what is a Protected Building, that is a construction where we are not allowed to Interfere.
Aghast at what was going on – there are other circumstances that I find appalling, such as the waste of energy with public lights that are left unattended for four hours, or maybe ten, each day, the fact that the security guards sleep, or just do not show up for work, a while back, they had watered the lawns with the lights on, because the two systems were connected and nobody bothered to find a remedy, who cares, if it is from the public purse - - I have sent a complaint to the Town hall of the capital, which has control over the place.
Twice, they had not answered, sending instead my email to the local ‘Cultural Center’, which has replied pompously that what I saw as garbage is in fact an ‘Art Installation’ and then they continued with a brazen, arrogant, ghastly tone, dismissing the notion that they must stop wasting, for the lights are needed for the security of that ‘oh so important monument’, but hey, what about the security company, and then the tens of lights are always on surround the tennis court, and are far away from the palace.
Then to the question of the art installation, let us assume that it is priceless – just like the animals cut in half by Damien Hirst, well, the corpses, he does not kill them – and needs to be exhibited, but to the detriment of the Place itself, do they have to put the safety, preservation in danger to the extent that they damage the walls just to put some dead branches in evidence, is that the New Thing, the theme is
Destroy the History and Make Way for the Nihilist new Wave, paid for by taxpayers, under the ‘supervision’ of someone so vain that he destroys the very thing that ensures such a cushy job – there are plenty of other failures, but let me finish with this…they have brought in for the alleys of the area stones that are so big (they are supposed to be fine pebbles) that they make walking almost impossible, never mind people with locomotion issues or the joggers, ordinary humans have trouble using the park…
As they say in Under The Volcano, salud y pesetas
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
10 out of 10
The erudite and very well educated, plus the snobs and pretentious ruffians will dismiss this work as too simple, basic, maybe irrelevant for them, as they have accumulated much more than they can find within and it may well be that this meant for those with little information and knowledge about art, trying to educate the masses (as those ‘fool’s guides’) and remind those who have forgotten periods, classic paintings, authors, styles, including names like Constantin Brancusi, Claude Monet, Pablo Picasso.
This is a turbulent time for the under signed and he is very upset with a question of…art, wherein this Brief History would come in handy, for it is good to remember Marcel Duchamp, who is mentioned within and the readers are invited to answer a question related to him – at the end of the various sections, we are offered choices for the questionnaires and in this particular case, I think they gave the choice between Deschamps and Brancusi – and his perhaps most famous, iconoclast work, Urinal called Fountain…
Evidently, this has caused an outcry, just like other breaks with tradition had done and will do in the future, when people have questioned the validity of the new proposition, or most often, dismissed it as nonsense or garbage, the impressionists (my favorite of all) have been rejected and not allowed to expose within the confines of the main arena, until of course they would become mainstream and then they would be left behind by the new waves, currents such as the fauves, best represented by Henri Matisse, or the action painters with their leader Jackson Pollock, the abstractionists with the most famous of all, Pablo Picasso.
There is also Damien Hirst, the best-known, most successful artist of the moment presumably, and his famous animals cut in half and then presented in formaldehyde of which he says he prefers it ‘'because it is dangerous and it burns your skin…If you breathe it in it chokes you and it looks like water…I associate it with memory…’
In other words, the concept of what art is a fluid, and there is no universal definition, accepted template, and this why books like Art – A Brief History would help, albeit at the end, what constitutes art would depend very much on the perspective of the viewer - ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ – and for the traditionalists, Rembrandt will always be paramount and the preferred choice, while new waves bring in new thinking…
If the artist’s shit constitutes art remains to be debated, unless that has been established and I am not aware of it, when I came across the concept, I laughed and it was included in a short story collection, where that was the intention
Mircea Cartarescu, the dominant author in this land, for about two decades the talk of the literati, who think he deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature, has a collection of short stories http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/12/i... and in one he mentions this incident, of the can with the shit of the artist that is supposed to be a work of art, and it is both humorous and apparently a serious thing.
Now let us move to the present and see what we can do about another situation like this, which affects the Mogosoaia Palace, a historic and architectural monument, one of a handful of examples of Romanian, Brancovan Architecture, that is the site of an ‘art exhibition’, which means they have gathered some dead branches and placed them within the walls and then on them, near the entrance to the Palace.
When I first saw the things, I was sure that they had been dumped by workers who had been constructing, repairing something, and in their negligence and disregard for something alien to them – they lack the education, they are not familiar with the paramount importance – they just threw this against the walls of what is a Protected Building, that is a construction where we are not allowed to Interfere.
Aghast at what was going on – there are other circumstances that I find appalling, such as the waste of energy with public lights that are left unattended for four hours, or maybe ten, each day, the fact that the security guards sleep, or just do not show up for work, a while back, they had watered the lawns with the lights on, because the two systems were connected and nobody bothered to find a remedy, who cares, if it is from the public purse - - I have sent a complaint to the Town hall of the capital, which has control over the place.
Twice, they had not answered, sending instead my email to the local ‘Cultural Center’, which has replied pompously that what I saw as garbage is in fact an ‘Art Installation’ and then they continued with a brazen, arrogant, ghastly tone, dismissing the notion that they must stop wasting, for the lights are needed for the security of that ‘oh so important monument’, but hey, what about the security company, and then the tens of lights are always on surround the tennis court, and are far away from the palace.
Then to the question of the art installation, let us assume that it is priceless – just like the animals cut in half by Damien Hirst, well, the corpses, he does not kill them – and needs to be exhibited, but to the detriment of the Place itself, do they have to put the safety, preservation in danger to the extent that they damage the walls just to put some dead branches in evidence, is that the New Thing, the theme is
Destroy the History and Make Way for the Nihilist new Wave, paid for by taxpayers, under the ‘supervision’ of someone so vain that he destroys the very thing that ensures such a cushy job – there are plenty of other failures, but let me finish with this…they have brought in for the alleys of the area stones that are so big (they are supposed to be fine pebbles) that they make walking almost impossible, never mind people with locomotion issues or the joggers, ordinary humans have trouble using the park…
As they say in Under The Volcano, salud y pesetas
http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
January 12, 2021
تعداد کتاب های تاریخ هنری که خوندم انگشت شمارن و بیشتر با مستند با این موضوع برخورد داشتم. در بین همین چند کتاب تاریخ هنر اما، این بهترینشون بود.
تنوعی که کتاب داره واقعا عالیه. زمان های مختلف، کشور های متنوع، و همینطور سبک های بسیار زیاد. کتاب به این هم توجه میکنه که توی سبک هایی که میگه حتما حداقل یک هنرمند زن رو معرفی کنه.
حتی انواع هنرهایی که توی کتاب اشاره شدن هم بسیار متنوع بودن. اما خب این قدر تنوع یه نکته منفی داره که اون هم فشرده بودن مطالب و اشاره کردن به بعضی مباحثه. تعداد زیادی از هنرمندهای بسیار مهم و تاثیر گذار فقط یک اثر ازشون توی کتاب هست. برای همین این اثر برای بررسی کل تاریخ هنر عالیه اما برای جزئیات نیاز به سرچ یا مطالعه کتاب های دیگه حتما حس میشه.
تنوعی که کتاب داره واقعا عالیه. زمان های مختلف، کشور های متنوع، و همینطور سبک های بسیار زیاد. کتاب به این هم توجه میکنه که توی سبک هایی که میگه حتما حداقل یک هنرمند زن رو معرفی کنه.
حتی انواع هنرهایی که توی کتاب اشاره شدن هم بسیار متنوع بودن. اما خب این قدر تنوع یه نکته منفی داره که اون هم فشرده بودن مطالب و اشاره کردن به بعضی مباحثه. تعداد زیادی از هنرمندهای بسیار مهم و تاثیر گذار فقط یک اثر ازشون توی کتاب هست. برای همین این اثر برای بررسی کل تاریخ هنر عالیه اما برای جزئیات نیاز به سرچ یا مطالعه کتاب های دیگه حتما حس میشه.
July 5, 2020
This is a good introduction to art history for someone (like me) who needs to get a bit acquainted with terminology and different schools. Perhaps not the most inspiring reading - but it is a comprehensive volume with a lot of information.
May 14, 2017
Read this for my History and Appreciation of Art I class. I am a fan of any art so I thought this book was interesting to read.
September 22, 2011
Last year I originally took Art History because it was an art requirement. I had taken a ceramics class the year before and realized that not only can I not make ceramic materials well, but I didn't really enjoy it. But when I got into Art History, I realized that I could appreciate art all day. I know it may seem silly that I'm reviewing an Art History textbook, but this one of my favorite textbooks I've ever had. The amazing detail and the interesting facts the textbook gave made Art History so fun (I also have to give credit to my amazing teacher!)!
I could look at all the Western art found in this book all day. From the Hellenistic art piece Laocoon and His Sons, to Caravaggios's Calling of St. Matthew, to Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon or Guernica, to Dali's Persistence of Memory. This textbook definitely tries its best to be faithful to the composition of the original art pieces it displays (but it's definitely not the same as actually seeing the art pieces!). I'd definitely purchase this book just to read it in my spare time; appreciating art is actually calming. It definitely boosts your cognitive processes.
I could look at all the Western art found in this book all day. From the Hellenistic art piece Laocoon and His Sons, to Caravaggios's Calling of St. Matthew, to Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon or Guernica, to Dali's Persistence of Memory. This textbook definitely tries its best to be faithful to the composition of the original art pieces it displays (but it's definitely not the same as actually seeing the art pieces!). I'd definitely purchase this book just to read it in my spare time; appreciating art is actually calming. It definitely boosts your cognitive processes.
June 10, 2019
Art can be anything: from telling a story well, to having a good speech, to how to wear your hair. Stokstad is ignorant enough to feel "I know it all", and instead of restricting it to let's say "one armed, three eyed statues made in late Hellenic style", Stokstad gives a "brief" history of everything. Is it crap? Of course, but because Stokstad did not have the time to write it all, right?
August 12, 2014
I was never that much into art until one day an artist friend said to me:
Corrine: Kellie, let me explain it to you this way: art is a physical manifestation of the artists opinion, emotion, desire, hunger...what have you. You are not a plebeian if you don't like a piece of art. That is not it's purpose. Art has only one purpose: to make you FEEL something. Anger, happiness, disgust, desire, sadness, elation. If you, as an observer, feel ANYTHING, then the artist has done his or her job.
Oh, that Corrine-she is a wise woman. I actually have favourite artists now: Mark Ryden, Ray Caesar, Marion Peck just to name a few.
Thank you Corrine.
Corrine: Kellie, let me explain it to you this way: art is a physical manifestation of the artists opinion, emotion, desire, hunger...what have you. You are not a plebeian if you don't like a piece of art. That is not it's purpose. Art has only one purpose: to make you FEEL something. Anger, happiness, disgust, desire, sadness, elation. If you, as an observer, feel ANYTHING, then the artist has done his or her job.
Oh, that Corrine-she is a wise woman. I actually have favourite artists now: Mark Ryden, Ray Caesar, Marion Peck just to name a few.
Thank you Corrine.
November 16, 2015
This is one of my favorite textbooks this quarter. The images were stunningly clear and the composition accompanying them were just enough to evoke a bit of history of the piece and artist as well as its tie to that particular era in history. Granted, the version we used was specifically for MCC, but it was perfect for a quarter-long class. I found myself reading quickly through each chapter and anticipating the coming chapters.
October 18, 2014
Ultra-Readable. An excellent, high-quality textbook. One of the best I've read. It has as many beautiful, glossy images as you could wish for in an art history book and the writing is very enjoyable.
June 13, 2011
This of course was a book for school, but I always find myself going back to it to remind myself of things because it has a lot of good works and artists in it.
December 15, 2012
UNT
Honors Art Appreciation
Professor: Tracy Bays-Boothe
Fall 2012
Honors Art Appreciation
Professor: Tracy Bays-Boothe
Fall 2012
December 11, 2015
I love learning about art and this book can help learn a few things from history in an artistic scope.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews