Art History For Dummies [Paperback]

Jesse Bryant Wilder MA MAT (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0470099100 | ISBN-13: 978-0470099100 | Edition: 1

Art history is more than just a collection of dates and foreign-sounding names, obscure movements and arcane isms. Every age, for the last 50,000 years has left its unique imprint on the world, and from the first cave paintings to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, from the Byzantine mosaics of the Hagia Sophia, to the graffiti-inspired paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, art history tells the story of our evolving notions of who and what we are and our place in the universe.

Whether you’re an art enthusiast who’d like to know more about the history behind your favorite works and artists, or somebody who couldn’t tell a Titian and a De Kooning—but would like to—Art History For Dummies is for you. It takes you on a tour of thirty millennia of artistic expression, covering the artistic movements, major artists, and indispensable masterworks, and the world events and cultural trends that helped spawn them. With the help of stunning black-and-white photos throughout, and a sixteen-page gallery of color images, it covers:

• The rise and fall of classical art in Greece and Rome
• The differences between Renaissance art and Mannerism
• How the industrial revolution spawned Romanticism
• How and why Post-Impression branched off from Impressionism
• Constructivism, Dadaism, Surrealism and other 20^th century isms
• What’s up with today’s eclectic art scene

Art History For Dummies is an unbeatable reference for anyone who wants to understand art in its historical context.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jesse Bryant Wilder holds a MAT (Masters in Teaching) and a MA in Literature and is the founder, publisher and editor of NEXUS, a series of interdisciplinary textbooks used in high schools around the country. He has written several textbooks on art and art history and was an art critic for the Plain Dealer.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies; 1 edition (April 30, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470099100
• ISBN-13: 978-0470099100
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #41,931 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thumbs way up, February 17, 2008

By 

Anita B. Vecchio "Anita Vec" (Akron) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Art History For Dummies (Paperback)

I used my brother's standard art history textbook for the fall semester of my Art History survey course. I didn't like it anymore than he did. It's dry and scholarly, weighs a ton, and costs about $140--if you buy it new. For around $20 on Amazon, I purchased a new Art History for Dummies book for the spring semester, which has most of the same information (plus quite a few extra things, that in some cases, my prof didn't know). Art History for Dummies is great--easy, fun to read and very inspiring. I really enjoy reading it. There are not many textbooks I can say that about! Despite its title, Art History for Dummies puts me ahead of most of my classmates who are struggling to make sense of the required text by Stokstad. For less money, I'm learning a lot more than I would have with the textbook. The chapters on Neoclassicism and Romanticism, for example, had a lot of really useful information that my other book lacks, which helped me enormously on the essay section of the test. We had to interpret David's THE OATH OF THE HORATII and DEATH OF MARAT as Neoclassical works and Delacroix's THE TRAGEDY OF SARDANAPALUS and Caspar David Friedrich's THE WANDERER ABOVE THE MISTS as typical Romantic paintings. All these masterpieces are examined in depth in Art History for Dummies. I aced the two tests we've had this semester. Last semester, using the required text (Stokstad), I barely managed a C.

I even took the dummies book with me to the two art museums we were required to visit. It really opened up the paintings and sculpture for me. I understood art like I never have before and had the best art-museum experience I've ever had.

The color art reproductions in the book are fantastic. (Some of the b&w are very good, other's are too dark or too small.) At first I wished there were more pics. Then I discovered that the book has an appendix with Websites of all the art that's discussed but not shown. I just type in the Web address on my laptop, and voila, there's the painting. These are really super Web sites, and I can make the pics as big as I need to (much larger than you find in any book) and zoom in on details. Plus, with most of the Web sites, you don't just get one or two works by the artist like you do in a textbook; they give you a whole chronology of paintings or sculptures. You can see ten or twenty (and in some cases over a hundred) paintings by each artist! You gain a much better feel for the artist's style and how it progressed throughout his or her career. If you're writing an essay on a painter, that's the way to do it. It helped me anyway. Once I started using the appendix, I really came to like it. (Make sure your browser saves the addresses you type in; because you use a lot of them more than once.)

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Art History for Dummies, September 17, 2007

By 

Roy V. Harrington (Cleveland, Ohio) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Art History For Dummies (Paperback)

Jesse Wilders "Art History for Dummies", for me, is a revelation. Art history, to my surprise, can be written clearly, concisely, perceptively and with wit. It's a joy to read. It's fun to peruse. It's 434 pages are divided into 29 chapters, an appendix and an index of about 1500 entries make it easy to use as a reference book. It covers art, photography and architecture from the cave drawings to the present.

The informative text is sprinkled with anecdotes, cartoons, asides and tips. The 200 or so (I didn't count them) illustrations of the paintings and photographs of art and architecture (25 are in high quality color) are carefully chosen to illustrate the matter being discussed. The author often picks less well known examples to add interest and diversity to his book. (But the good old Mona Lisa and the Pantheon are there too.)

Art criticism writing is often as pompous and impenetrable as philosophy. But not this book. It was a labor of love, I think. It should be considered as as a high school text and (perhaps with a different cover and title) for colleges. All public libraries can afford to have a copy or two. I recommend it highly.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More helpful than Gardner's, October 27, 2007

By 

James L. "J. L." (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Art History For Dummies (Paperback)

I'm not an art major but I recently signed up for an art history class ("Modernism"), which I thought would be an easy elective. Unfortunately, the professor expects us to memorize a lot of facts and I found that the overpriced textbook for the class (Gardner's Art Through the Ages) was not very helpful in sorting out all the different artists, works, and styles that I had to learn about. I didn't want to drop the class and mess up my GPA, so I decided to see if there was a "dummies" book on the topic. I've used other "dummies" books before, and I've always found them to be well organized, informative, and entertaining. I was pleased to discover that this is also the case with Art History for Dummies, by Jesse Bryant Wilder. Wilder brings the subject to life with descriptions that are both thorough and easy to understand. In addition, he explains the motives of the artists in creating their most famous works, which is something my professor thinks is really important. One thing that I found particularly helpful is Wilder's way of explaining the various "isms" that we are studying. For example, he compares Cubism to cracking an egg and then reassembling its fragments on a flat surface: "you can see all sides of the egg at once, and yet it's hard to recognize the egg" (p. 303). Expressionism is compared to bashing in a classical "gilded box" (like a Gainsborough portrait of a placid aristocrat) so we can see the emotional struggles going on inside the box (inside the person) (p. 296). These kinds of analogies make the different movements of the Modernist period more understandable and memorable than the descriptions in Gardner's. Of course, Art History for Dummies covers much more than just the Modernist period and I've already started reading through other sections of the book, not for class but because the topics are so interesting to read about. The book includes clearly labeled headings as well as lots of photos, illustrations, anecdotes, and definitions of technical terms. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about art history and have an enjoyable reading experience at the same time.