Customer Reviews

A Concise History Of American Painting And Sculpture: Revised Edition

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I am reading this book as background to become a museum docent. I am finding the writing to be overly convoluted and dense, very jargony. I am finding that the author will create very long sentences full of words that need explanation for the context of the book. Lacking a description of the work itself, giving only critical words, and then having the image ( black and white only) several pages away left me with a pile of words not tied to anything immediate, proximate or specific.

He quotes lots of people, refers at a distance to words and works and fails to have them coherent. He, like many art analysts doesn't give the sense that what is implied is reflected in the writings or statements of the artists. I get the feeling that very often meanings are imputed without the support of the artists own words.

All this negative being said, I have not finished the book and perhaps at some point down the line the lack of linearity will be overcome. All the images are bad black and white and with out supportive description don't mean a lot. Not a book for someone who is not an art historian or with an encyclopedic memory for paintings and sculptures they might have seen somewhere else. I would like to have seen a timeline included, to make the book concise.

Well written although Baigell assumes in Chapter 1 that you know about some areas that he doesn't define. Google was useful in clarifying these.