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The Knowledge
Awful Art
First cave-dwellers hid their mammoth doodles in dark, damp caves. Next - you name it, they painted it - from luscious landscapes and mouldy meat to diabolical dream-sequences. Now anything can be art - building bricks, half a cow, even a bin full of rubbish! In this imaginative guide, you'll meet rich artists, poor artists, dead artists and artists who really made an exhibition of themselves. Find out about some forgers and fraudsters who brushed with the law, palette loads of ancient artefacts, and how to create your own priceless masterpiece. 'Plus' are you the owner of an artistic temperament. If you want to know, get The Knowledge!
192 pages, Paperback
First published September 19, 1997
About the author
Michael Cox
223 books232 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
This is Michael^Cox, where ^=space. (default profile)
About the Author:
Michael Andrew Cox was an English biographer, novelist and musician.
He also held the position of Senior Commissioning Editor of reference books for Oxford University Press.
This is Michael^Cox, where ^=space. (default profile)
About the Author:
Michael Andrew Cox was an English biographer, novelist and musician.
He also held the position of Senior Commissioning Editor of reference books for Oxford University Press.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 22, 2026
With their 1997 Awful Art (which is part of the Knowledge series, although Awful Art does not seem to in current print anymore), author Michael Cox and illustrator Phillip Reeve basically use humour and so-called "horrible" facts to teach art history (but not sequentially and thus in a rather hugely unorganised, all over the place manner, which is most definitely kind of majorly frustrating, as is that Awful Art has no timelines, no bibliographies, no indexes included by Cox and no visual examples of the artwork being showcased and discussed either). But well and indeed, for the right kind of audience, for in particular boys from about the age eight to twelve or so, Awful Art is something that is not only sufficiently factually enlightening (covering cave painting to modern art) but is also (and probably even first and foremost) meant to be lighthearted, so that the young readers mentioned above will (and should) probably both appreciate and also enjoy Brian Cox’ humorous and jokey tone as well as Reeves’ often silly and equally so caricature like parodistic black and white accompanying illustrations (which are basically cartoons).
However yes and unfortunately, with regard to Awful Art, both my inner child and even more so adult I, we most definitely are more than a trifle annoyed at the majority of the featured humour (it is simply not at all for us and far too often hugely artificial, much too groan-worthy, in other words not really all that funny) and we also find it rather problematic at best just how regularly Michael Cox throughout Awful Art is using words like the awful of the book title and similarly negative descriptors, that we thus have in fact pretty all encompassingly not enjoyed the majority of our reading time with Awful Art (and that our two star rating is as high as we are willing to go). Thus and finally, while Awful Art does certainly feature (and also teach) quite a bit of art history, sorry, but even my above mentioned inner child and even more so my adult reading self, we find Awful Art much much too unorganised, not really all that funny (and that we also consider it rather annoying how Cox seems to focus so much and almost exclusively on the grotesque and on the strange regarding artists in Awful Art, such as for example, that we consider it more than a bit off how the only German artists showing up in Awful Art are Max Ernst and Josef Beuys, and that the former has obviously been showcased because he got stoned before doing his surrealist art and that Josef Beuys, after his experiences with Tatar nomads in Russia during WWII when back in Germany started often using animal fat and felt in his often grotesque and indeed also odiferous creations, since the animal fat usually turned rancid).
However yes and unfortunately, with regard to Awful Art, both my inner child and even more so adult I, we most definitely are more than a trifle annoyed at the majority of the featured humour (it is simply not at all for us and far too often hugely artificial, much too groan-worthy, in other words not really all that funny) and we also find it rather problematic at best just how regularly Michael Cox throughout Awful Art is using words like the awful of the book title and similarly negative descriptors, that we thus have in fact pretty all encompassingly not enjoyed the majority of our reading time with Awful Art (and that our two star rating is as high as we are willing to go). Thus and finally, while Awful Art does certainly feature (and also teach) quite a bit of art history, sorry, but even my above mentioned inner child and even more so my adult reading self, we find Awful Art much much too unorganised, not really all that funny (and that we also consider it rather annoying how Cox seems to focus so much and almost exclusively on the grotesque and on the strange regarding artists in Awful Art, such as for example, that we consider it more than a bit off how the only German artists showing up in Awful Art are Max Ernst and Josef Beuys, and that the former has obviously been showcased because he got stoned before doing his surrealist art and that Josef Beuys, after his experiences with Tatar nomads in Russia during WWII when back in Germany started often using animal fat and felt in his often grotesque and indeed also odiferous creations, since the animal fat usually turned rancid).
June 1, 2019
'......if you want to find out which artist liked to use toilet rolls as sketch pads, which one dyed his hair with boot polish and which one wanted to put dynamite in a duck's bottom - read on!
Included are:
'Fascinating facts about the art that is so horribly old and ancient that even your head teacher won't remember it!
Things about the art that is so new (and weird!) that the people who read the news on TV probably don't even know about it.
Stories about the artists whose work was so nightmarish and shocking it caused a riot.
Terrific tales of doxy fraudsters, fab finds, doomed daubers, jammy bodgers and genuine geniuses....
and......an interview with an apple!'
If you have read the 'TOP TEN' and 'DEAD FAMOUS' series of books, you will be aware of the way in which MICHAEL COX puts knowledge across, in a humorous way.
This book is no exception.
Included are:
'Fascinating facts about the art that is so horribly old and ancient that even your head teacher won't remember it!
Things about the art that is so new (and weird!) that the people who read the news on TV probably don't even know about it.
Stories about the artists whose work was so nightmarish and shocking it caused a riot.
Terrific tales of doxy fraudsters, fab finds, doomed daubers, jammy bodgers and genuine geniuses....
and......an interview with an apple!'
If you have read the 'TOP TEN' and 'DEAD FAMOUS' series of books, you will be aware of the way in which MICHAEL COX puts knowledge across, in a humorous way.
This book is no exception.
October 13, 2014
I've been looking for this book for ages. The first time I've read it, I copied a lot of facts described in here in a little notebook I have. Because every single crazy fact was amazing, these artist were so mad. I have to get a copy. Amazing book for any age: adult, child, etc.
September 22, 2021
A mio parere, il meno ben fatto tra quelli letti sinora... Nessuna cronologia, si salta qua e là a caso e soprattutto si confonde il lettore meno esperto. Va bene che è un testo per bambini, ma puntare tutto solo su aneddoti rivoltanti mi sembra riduttivo.
February 1, 2015
It made me so excited about art when I was a child, and I'm still excited, so it worked really well for me:)
February 23, 2015
baby baby baby huuu huu
April 2, 2023
Le miglior peggiori atrocità del mondo dell'arte, degli artisti e dei collezionisti, il tutto condito da un umorismo che adoro mentre maschera da mera parodia piccole nozioni sul concetto di arte e artista, senza troppe pretesa se non quella di divertire il piccolo (e il grande) lettore per avvicinarlo ad un mondo meno serioso di quel che possa sembrare a prima vista.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews