10,000 Years of Art

by Phaidon Press

Five hundred great works of art from all periods and regions in the world have been carefully selected and are arranged in chronological order, breaking through the usual geographical and cultural boundaries of art history to celebrate the vast range of human artistry.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History, Reference, Art History, Collections, Visual Art

544 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Phaidon Press is a global publisher of books on art, architecture, design, fashion, photography, and popular culture, as well as cookbooks, children's books, and travel books. The company is based in London and New York City, with additional offices in Paris and Berlin. -wikipedia

Reviews

[Paul H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

So this is not exactly a review of Phaidon's 10,000 Years of Art -- which I recommend! -- but rather of the project that I started after reading this book in July 2022, i.e., when I finally got around to taking a (very) deep dive into all of art history.

I'd always had a medium-strong amateur interest in the topic: I took various college/graduate courses on aesthetics and art history, I'm a working artist (in fine art photography), I had read a couple hundred artbooks (prior to this project), etc. Nothing super-serious, but it was always something I'd kept meaning to explore more deeply. When I was going through all fine art photography a few years ago, I wrote in my notes (jokingly) "at some point just do this whole process, but for fine art . . . easy."

Photobooks are the main venue/medium for fine art photography and thus I had a relatively simpler task, there (just track down all the books!). With fine art, I found that I had to approach it from a number of angles: (1) sifting through the back catalogs of all major artbook publishers (Phaidon, Taschen, Rizzolli, Hatje Cantz, Kehrer, etc.), including the out-of-print stuff, (2) pulling names from the indexes of all those artbooks, along with museum indexes, and then finally, by far the most time-consuming part, (3) going through ALL artwork in the collections of the top 50 or so world museums (e.g., Rijksmuseum, Hermitage, MoMa, Louvre, Tate, Met, Prado, Pompidou, Tokyo National Museum, etc.). The average museum only has about 5%-10% of its collection on the walls, and most art is never (or very rarely) exhibited. Therefore, going through online museum archives (a process that wasn't possible a couple decades ago) is technically the only way to see the vast majority of fine art.

I was surprised to learn that viewing HD archival photos of paintings on my color-calibrated 4k monitor (that I use for photo editing) is . . . not bad?, and is at least loosely analogous to seeing art in person. I saw an ukiyo-e exhibit in Portland in late 2022, then saw online versions of the same prints a couple weeks later; color-corrected photos taken in perfect lighting actually provided a superior experience to seeing the same prints in person, in that case. With that said, for certain kinds of art (large-scale paintings, installation art, sculpture), I think it's fair to say that in-person viewing is better. However, given that ~90% of art is just sitting in a warehouse somewhere, viewing it online is certainly better than nothing.

Leaving aside anonymous art, of which there is a massive amount, my final list was roughly 20,000 artists. I sorted them alphabetically, started with Herb Aach in late 2022 and finished with Alexander Zyw in mid-2023. If you don't care about my rambling thoughts on art history, theory, blah blah (a reasonable position!) and just want some recommendations for good art, then feel free to skip ahead to the first comment below for various best-of artist lists by genre / period / etc.

My top 100 list is here (sort by position, which fyi you can't do on mobile). (Also I saved every imo interesting/notable artwork as I went through, many thousands of jpgs; if you're interested in the zip file, just DM me.) The images themselves are of course somewhat incomplete without historical context -- I looked at the history of each as I went through -- so if you'd like more info on any one painting, just drag the photo file itself into Google images to do a reverse image search.


TRADITIONS, SYMBOLISTS, ETC.

Anyway it was a rewarding but occasionally maddening process! I stopped doing the math at a certain point but my best guess is that I looked at something like 700,000 individual works of art, including:

* A baby riding a bird!

* This ridiculously impressive French naturalist painting of the Virgin Mary!

* This guy who painted what dreams feel like!

* This crazy Dutch realist painting of the temptation of St. Anthony!

* This 1920 painting of the Earth as seen from the Moon!

* European painters becoming obsessed with Japanese woodblock prints and making, like, art deco ukiyo-e, somehow!

* This lady who painted what pain feels like!

I have a ton of notes on individual artists and movements that will probably end up in other reviews, but in general, I was mainly surprised by the fact that there was (1) a higher proportion of low-quality classical art than I expected -- so many mediocre, derivative oil paintings of the same handful of themes -- and (2) a higher proportion of high-quality post-WW2 art than I expected. I've defended (some) postmodern art elsewhere in GR reviews, but did not expect to find so many talented artists -- especially painters -- working in the past few decades.

I had also expected to be more impressed by anonymous art in traditions that were new to me (Persian, Indian, Tibetan, West African, Incan/Mayan, Nepalese, etc.). While this work was often compelling theoretically or historically, it was not especially effective or moving as art, for me, personally. I was definitely a fan of anonymous art created by Sumerian, Egyptian (ancient / Ptolemaic), early Islamic, Greek (ancient / Hellenistic), and Byzantine cultures. I can't easily give recommendations, precisely, except to say "hey check out all of those traditions" (Louvre and the British Museum have the best collections for those areas).

For cultures that had clear artistic 'schools' and strongly emphasized work by individuals, by far the greatest artists (imo) were painters in the European, Japanese, and Chinese traditions. I'm not quite sure why the most talented artists have generally been funneled into painting (cheaper materials? easier to practice?) rather than pottery, textiles, sculpture, etc. -- most of which I stopped bothering to deeply explore after the first few museum archives -- but it's certainly not accidental that the most famous artists are primarily known for painting.

I was initially tracing out and taking notes on exactly how the Old Masters, Symbolists, French naturalists, Pre-Raphaelites, Nabis, surrealists, impressionists, et al., had influenced each other etc., until I finally concluded (a couple months into the process) that this sort of art criticism is simply not that interesting. In the end, the constellation of schools and movements and manifestos rarely illuminates anything beyond "oh, Duchamp was influenced by Redon, I guess that's sort of interesting" or "I see, Dürer and Tintoretto sort of halfway started tenebrism before Caravaggio, okay" . . . it's definitely worth reading art history to learn about the big picture of how different schools developed, as well as their relationship to broader historical or religious trends, but in most cases this sort of art criticism/history is the equivalent of understanding precisely how, say, Radiohead's music was influenced by the Pixies or Talking Heads or R.E.M., but then realizing that this fact -- or music critic categories ("80s college rock," "alternative rock") as a whole -- add almost nothing to one's appreciation of the music itself.

I also reached the surprising conclusion that a significant portion of the best painters in the West were born between 1830 and 1880 in Western Europe, which seemed quite odd, to say the least; beyond my random bias, my theory is that this was maybe due to the combination of massive population growth, a rising middle class, larger markets for art, the professionalization of art (in schools, academies) and decline of the patron-based model, etc. We see a similar surge of high-quality art in the early Edo period in Japan (1600s-1700s), and you could also make the case for the high T'ang dynasty in China . . . in Europe, you also see a similar drastic increase in great poetry, novels, etc., starting in the mid-1800s, and often with interesting parallels across fine art movements.

In terms of these 19th-century European artists, I found myself drawn most strongly to the Symbolists (e.g., Redon, Duncan, Denis) and related schools. There were so many impressive painters working with those moods/themes; at their best, the Symbolists create art that is dreamlike in the best possible way, a visual representation of myth/religion that is somehow perfectly suited to painting qua medium, I think. Similar to Joyce or Proust in literature, Holderlin or Rilke in poetry, Schelling in philosophy, or Florensky in theology, there's a defense of (and sublation of) subjectivity into a higher and more luminous objectivity, all as an understandable reaction against industrialization, realism, materialism, etc. ("All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned," wrote Marx, understandably, in 1848.)

I also found that the best twentieth-century painters (imo) were influenced by the Symbolists; aspects of Francis Bacon and then all the abstract/figurative painters after him, especially the dreamlike subjectivity in Doig and Hauschka, though without the Greco-Roman-Christian content of the Symbolists (Bacon inverts or defaces this traditional content, while later painters further denude/reduce down to purely individual subjectivity, memory, etc.). Even within photography, I realized, some of my favorite photographers (such as Bill Henson) are working with similar themes.


MY KID COULD PAINT THAT

Due to the massive increase in world population after WW2 and the proliferation of MFA programs in the past few decades, a surprisingly high percentage of total artists tracked by museums and publishers (maybe half?) were born in the past 70-80 years, and accordingly I worked through a ton of such artists -- indeed, I hope, roughly all of them.

The main issue with pre-modern art is the sheer amount of mediocre, mannered, derivative work (I could happily go the rest of my life without seeing another third-rate painting of the Annunciation). The main issue with modern/postmodern fine art is that it is very often pretentious, inert, vacuous, and overly reliant on theory/bullshit to justify gimmicky, boring art that does not work aesthetically or indeed at any level.

With that said, in the end, I found myself preferring the failures of postmodern art. At least when they fail they were trying to show me something I haven't seen before, and enough postmodern artists actually care about craft/ideas that you still have some very good work out there, certainly more than I expected from living artists. The stereotype is both true and not true: yes, most postmodern art is kind of garbage and your kid really could paint that, in many cases (there are multiple instances of postmodern artists literally having children paint their work), but there are also some abstract painters who create superficially childlike work that is in fact deeply impressive; it's a mixed bag.

Ultimately I think the main problem with postmodern art is what has been called International Art English; following Duchamp's crusade against 'retinal' art, we find the transformation of visual art into a minor afterthought or accessory subsumed into an abstruse bullshit language invented by a handful of second-rate art critics, the mastery of which is essentially a requirement to be taken seriously in the now-highly-academized world of curators/galleries. IAE is a symptom of not merely a division between high art and low art, but a more serious split between high art (which traditionally aimed at a transcendent horizon of some sort) and 'academic art', which is a soulless, deracinated late-capitalist robot wearing the corpse of high art like a skinsuit.

In practice, this means that everyone just picks a gimmick and repeats that gimmick for the rest of their life (painting huge letters on a wall! painting toy balls! painting a pattern of color squares! sculpting identical metal rabbit statues!). It's essentially market differentiation for MFA students; you pick your gimmick, your sad little academic niche, your one idea, where the execution of the idea is largely meaningless -- in almost all cases, seeing the art has zero effect beyond hearing the idea, and craft, talent, etc., are not required (and are probably bourgeois/patriarchal, or whatever) -- and it's more about who does the best job at justifying their gimmicky, mediocre work with IAE ad copy.

For example, I researched various video artists on Youtube and also ended up watching a ton of artist interviews, and let me tell you, Rachel Rose's ability to FLUENTLY speak International Art English (start at 1:15 or so) -- and to make you believe that she actually understands and believes what she's saying -- is the true work of art here, far more impressive than anything in her so-called artistic practice, which is deeply uninteresting (though actually not as bad as some other video artists). Most artists who try to do this sort of IAE logorrhea live, without running it through a pomo text generator first, end up failing pretty hard (see here, for example).

Accordingly, I was unsurprised to learn that the vast majority of postmodern art is incredibly unpopular, and it all boils down to curators trying to impress other curators (and also impress the handful of hedge fund guys who keep the whole grift going). After slogging through thousands of articles, videos, interviews, etc., the main thing that always struck me was how few people were engaging with any of this content. The top few percent of these artists (in terms of fame, not talent) get a single article in the NYT Arts section for their biggest career show, an article or two in Artforum or October or some Brooklyn art blog, and zero engagement, no one reads any of it, there are no comments, no Twitter threads, 99% of YouTube videos of artist talks have 500 views at most. And this is really a shame, because there are dozens of highly talented postmodern artists whose work is crowded out by all of the B-tier MFA grads.

The most intriguing thing about postmodern art, to me, is all of the completely new artforms, which have a ridiculous amount of untapped potential: installation art, especially, but also video art, body art, performance art. To be fair, it's very rare to find anything of interest in performance art (beyond outliers such as Abramović, who is very good), which mostly tends to attract tedious narcissists, and then the people with actual talent for creating video art tend to go into filmmaking, but installation art . . . when you stop and think about it, the lack of creativity in this field is almost frustrating: the ability to create multi-media, multi-sensory, 3-D art experiences (?!) is arguably the greatest untapped creative medium that has ever existed, imo; you can basically create waking dreams, at that point, bespoke experiences. But of course most installation art is terrible: MFA grads place a few random objects in a brightly-lit gallery space and call it a day (folding chairs in an empty room! random pieces of furniture! piles of garbage! a pile of shoes! some things a lady found in her garage or whatever! a bunch of tiny TVs playing the same 10-second video loop!), but there are some amazing artists working in this space: Sarah Sze, Hans Op de Beeck, Charles Ross, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, et al. (see the lists below).


Partial source list:

British Museum: britishmuseum.org/collection/
Hermitage: hermitagemuseum.org/wps/portal/hermit...
Louvre: collections.louvre.fr/en/
Met: metmuseum.org/art/collection
MoMa: moma.org/collection/
Prado: museodelprado.es/en/the-collection
Tate: tate.org.uk/art/artists/a-z
Tokyo: tnm.jp/modules/r_free_page/index.php?...
Boston: collections.mfa.org/search/Objects/cl...
Wikimedia: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:P...
Google a+c: artsandculture.google.com/partner
Phaidon: phaidon.com/store/art/
Artbook: artbook.com/catalog.html
Literally all ukiyo-e: ukiyo-e.org/

[Sharon Barrow Wilfong · Rating 5 out of 5]

The greatest strength of this book is that it gives equal time to art from Asia, Africa and South America as well as European and North American art.

It also delves into a lot art through past ages, especially B.C. The collection is a combination of sculpture, painting, frescoes, jewelry, and religious artifacts. Because I have a lot of art books, this book's emphasis on works other than Western art from the last 1000 years, is interesting for me, since I am familiar with Western art.

It is a small book, but the pages and photos are good quality. All the photos are in color.

In a nutshell, a good combination of famous and lessor known works.

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

DURING THE READ!!!:
Although I am on page 481, I've only read 23 pages !!!
This is because I am reading this BACKWARDS...!!
There are 500 paintings/sculptures/installations on show here NOT 10,000 as the cover proclaims...which may be a relief if you are in a hurry.There is ONE work per page...very civilised.
I decided to begin with my own era,the one that offers you your MOST immediate challenge and confusion.
If I mention "Abstract Expressionism", who amongst us would feel truly confident???
What does it mmmmmmmmean??? we wail.
No need to panic !!!
Do you like clouds??....Even LOVE clouds???
Of course you MUST!!!
Well, THEY are ...abstract.
And THEY DON'T upset you, do they??
Course NOT !!!

Of course a book like this will raise a Chorus of Complaints because "my favourites are NOT included".

You have just learned a Good lesson!!!!

The Judging of a work of art is Highly Subjective.
And here are 500 of Them.
And Perfectly Valid.
Which in no way excludes YOUR favourites.

BUT Any Exposure to the Opinions of Others is NOT to be taken Lightly.
And Whoever voted in This Lot,, THIS is a Scrumptious Feast and can only assist you in deciding - or undeciding - exactly what Your Favourites may - or may not be.
You may possibly Go Insane during this process if you take it on.
Hopefully you will emerge at the Other End, and with Some Remnants of Insanity to assist you on Life's Journey.
You are not expected to BELIEVE anything just because it is between the Covers of a Book.
So just ENJOY the Feast presented and continue to like what you like because you're going to Change Your mind about Your own 500 anyway!!!!
This book can only be an Aide.

[Castles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Is it even normal to read a coffee table book from start to end? I don’t know but I did.

It’s a very good collection of works of art from the ancient times to modern. Chronologically ordered with no artist repeating twice (which I think is really not fair considering Michaelangelo for example).

I did like that the book focuses not only on western art but the rest of the world as well. You can see works from India, Africa, the far east and South America and it’s beautiful that at last the art world seems to be more open to different narratives of history. It’s also interesting to see at which points in history the west and east progress/styles began to part.

For some weird reason, the book screams to be placed in the toilet for random flip-through (I suspect the air-spray purple cover). Don’t. I mean, a little respect won’t do any harm considering the history and religions of most of mankind. Use it as an index for tasting different styles, cultures and times and then explorer deeper with different books and media.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

good for a coffee table book or a book to place by the toilet. greater division between periods would be helpful for organization

[7jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

In those days when I wake up early to go to work, I like to read short bits from a chosen book, and art books work well for this purpose, at least those with short text accompanying the pictures. This one is a very good choice for that. In a line that stretches from 8000 BC to present day-ish (1995), there are 500 masterworks from various countries, continents etc. to see. Some are known better than others, and it’s interesting to see what kind of art was made around the same time period in different places (of course, particularly in earlier times, some of the art was not just art but for various uses, including religious ceremonies).

With each, information is given beyond the text below the picture: when it was made (or circa), what country, name of the piece, artist (or ’artist unknown’), material(s) used, size, where now if not in-situ (in original place) but also mentioning if in private collection (maybe lent out to exhibitions sometimes), time period/culture.
At the end of the book is a glossary for some words. Sometimes the commentary says that one should also check another work of art (or more) elsewhere in the book.

There is certainly something for every reader. One can certainly get a feel that the compiler(s) made an effort to make sure that not only just Western art was included – some other books don’t make this much effort – and they IMO succeed pretty well. The pictures are big enough to see well, and it’s nice to just pause and soak good art before starting your day; it makes everyday life feel better and not just a (good) repeat. I’m glad that I have this and other art books in my collection.

[Nicola Waldron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leafed through this at 2 a.m. -- in the bathroom, unable to sleep :) A provocative introduction to world art that surprises and shocks, and ultimately challenges the reader's ideas of art with its wild juxtapositions. Useful, brief annotations. An interesting view of world history, along with all the visual gifts.

[Keke Aulia · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you want to broaden your world art knowledge, this book is surely the one. Each pages has one historical artwork with short explanation of its history that sorted in periodical. Some artworks need more space for explanation though, but you can always read another book to look for the missing info from this

[sooha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art is my world and this book manage to broaden my imagination on how various forms of artworks could be. They're stunning, abstract and each one of them hide a history that we might never know the truth. All that we know, we do learn from them and the cycle will keep passing on to the next generation, as long as the conservation and formation of next artworks are made.

[Crystal M · Rating 4 out of 5]

hmm! I liked how the book was arranged- the reader would see artworks next to each other that would never be displayed together in a museum, which made it interesting to compare pieces. The paragraph descriptions read like info signs in a museum- informative but a bit dry. I’d rec to an older teen or young adult that already has a bit of a background knowledge of art.

[Polly Esber · Rating 5 out of 5]

So glad i purchased this book. A great summary to some of the great works in history and this is a great book if you want to have knowledge about art. Even though it's not extensive, it has all the right information.

[noel lockley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Polloi

[Merahnaga · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buku seni yang bisa masuk poket dan enak dibawa ke mana pun! Salah satu buku Phaidon yang aku suka dan murah.

[Thaddeus Yeung · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant bite sized crash course in history and art

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book came to me as a gift both in literal and figuratively sense. It's a great start for more throughout research. Got inspired seeing works outside Western bubble. Feels great. :)

[D · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book! As a complete non-expert in art, I found this collection of the great art works captivating.

[Beck Frost · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has probably been my favorite art book of all time. It has EVERYTHING. I keep it and two other art books on my shelf for reference.

[Amye Quigley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for browsing.