Customer Reviews

ArtSpeak : A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1945 to the Present (Speak Series)

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I'm a BFA student at Virginia Tech heading to grad school and this is an excellent book to teach from, have as a reference, or just thumb through for fun. Simple and succinct while still thorough. It's really an invaluable thing to have for ready info at your fingertips. This book has been part of the curriculum here for Performance Art, Found Object Sculpture, and Installation classes, and everyone in the class universally approves and finds it helpful.

Perfect for writing critiques and analyses from all art movements. Great glossary of terms for a beginning art student looking up hard-to-understand words in text books.

A glossary of art terms. This book is a definite must for those writing analyses of art. It's also good for looking up those tricky terms in your text books. It is filled with artsy terms and illustrations. I used it in all my art history classes.

I am a docent and at times a docent trainer, and this guide came in very handy when I was preparing for an exhibition on contemporary artists. It is well-written, to the point, and has extensive coverage for a little book!

Artspeak: A Guide to Contemporary Ideas, Movements, and Buzzwords, 1945 to the Present (Artspeak) is exactly what is says: a guide. It is written in dictionary form. After a couple useful pages that show the movements in timeline form, the rest of the 208 pages is basically word and definition. Contemporary art words and movements are explained briefly. Major artists and the movement's location are also included in the definition. Some definitions contain pictures.
The benefits of Artspeak come from the compilation of all these definitions in the same book and the relatively simple and short explanations of each movement. These definitions seem to target an audience that is unfamiliar with the Contemporary art world. The book does not offer very deep or rigorous information. Artspeak teaches just enough to get a taste of what the movement offers as to allow people outside art, or students, to recognize movements as they come up in conversation. I doubt that after reading this book, anyone would be able to recognize art from the various movements. I do not recommend reading this book from cover to cover: look up a movement as needed.

I recently completed my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and this book was very helpful as a reference for my art history classes!

Dada? Neo-Dada? Mono-Ha? Sots Art? If you find yourself utterly confused by art terms, timelines, and general overall descriptions of art movements since the 1940's, Art Speak is a great book to have. Robert Atkins of Village Voice fame, has put together a dictionary/mini-encyclopedia of "ideas, movements and buzzwords" touching on everything of note that evolved in the art world from WWII through 1989. The books opens with a timeline 1945-1989 detailing and comparing (in capsulized form) major world and art events, giving the reader/student an idea of the corellation between history and how art evolves and intertwines with it. The remainder of the book is an alphabetical listing of art movements with descriptions and snazzy graphics. It isn't a huge text book with intensive essays and pages and pages of commentary on each style, but it is a great set of "Cliff Notes" for those trying to find a jumping off point to learn more about that slippery entity called art. I highly recommend it.

This product contained a lot of markings with a highlighter that was not stated in the book's condition status.