Art: Books & Ebooks

Paul Johnson puts the creative originality of the individual at the heart of his story. He pays particular attention to key periods: the emergence of the artistic personality in the Renaissance, the new realism of the early seventeenth century, the discovery of landscape painting as a separate art form, and the rise of ideological art. He notes the division of 'fashion art' and fine art at the beginning of the twentieth century, and how it has now widened.

Basic History of Art provides students and instructors with a beautifully illustrated and masterfully concise introduction to the Western tradition of art history. The Seventh Edition builds on the best of this tradition with the contributions of several scholars who made many critical improvements to the book.

Careers in the Arts: Fine, Performing & Visual contains twenty-seven alphabetically arranged chapters describing specific fields of interest in this industry. Merging scholarship with occupational development, this single comprehensive guidebook provides students planning to pursue a career in the arts with the necessary insight into potential opportunities, and provides instruction on what they can expect in terms of training, advancement, earnings, job prospects, and working conditions.
This book can be found both in print and online.

The Dictionary of Art is the only comprehensive source of information on all aspects of the visual arts of every civilization from prehistory to the 1990s.

As fascinating as a real visit to the world's famous museums and architectural sites, GARDNER'S ART THROUGH THE AGES gives you a comprehensive, beautifully illustrated tour of the world's great artistic traditions.

An enthralling journey through Western art's defining moments, from the ancient Egyptian tomb of Queen Nefertari to George Lucas's volcano planet duel in "Revenge of the Sith."

This text is the thoroughly updated and revised second edition of Judith Rubin's landmark 1999 text, the first to describe the history of art in both assessment and therapy, and to clarify the differences between artists or teachers who provide ""therapeutic"" art activities, psychologists or social workers who request drawings, and those who are trained as art therapists to do a kind of work which is similar, but qualitatively different.

Viewed through a lens of music and art histories rather than philosophical theory, it covers dozens of artists and works not found in any other book on the subject. Locating sound art's roots across the centuries from spatialized church music to the technological developments of radio, sound recording, and the telephone, the book traces the evolution of sound installations and sound sculpture, the rise of sound art exhibitions and galleries, and finally looks at the critical cross-pollination that marks some of the most important and challenging art with and about sound being produced today."

Contemporary art has never been so popular, but what is its role today and who is controlling its future? Contemporary art is supposed to be a realm of freedom where artists shock, break taboos, flout generally received ideas, and switch between confronting viewers with works of great emotional profundity and jaw-dropping triviality.