Customer Reviews

Art History For Dummies

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.)

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.

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.

I found this text to be clear and informative. It was not "dumbed down" too much by jokes and I thought it was a quick read. The only problem I found was that there was a lot of page flipping in the many instances that the author tried to illustrate an example through referencing a figure that was located on a different page. It was easier to google the composition for a more detailed color picture.

I learned more about Art History just reading the Introduction than I have ever known before! I have a big Art History book from my daughter's college class and it was way too complicated and thorough for someone trying to learn without a professor on hand. I would highly recommend this book.

This book will definitely not take the place of attending lecture. May or may not be able to replace the textbook. In my case, it did. It doesn't have many of the works of art we covered, but it gives a great summary of each period's art in only 3 pages max. It's witty, it's easy to understand and, unlike Gardner's, fun to read. I feel like with this and my lecture notes, I was set.

This books helps one learn about Art History in a compact, easy reading, fun way. I gave a copy to one of my friends who read the entire book to her children while they moved. The children loved it! As with other Dummies books all the information you need is at hand!

I was planning a trip to the MET and decided that I really wanted to "understand" art. This book was perfect for me, a person that never liked anything with "history" in the title.
Never boring, with vocabulary everyone can understand, I actually enjoy this book.

I'm using this book, Gardner's, and Barron's for a self study of AP Art History. So far I love it! Gardner's might have more information and works covered, but frankly I get lost in the scholarly rhetoric and find myself skimming to get information. This is Gardner's condensed and clarified. I love that the historical context of each period is given at the beginning of the chapter (In more or less a page of text), and that the works analyzed are not the run of the mill examples that almost all textbooks use. Sure the big BIG hitters are still there but the concepts learned from the lesser known works can still be applied to their well known counter parts. Wilder writes in a clear and meant to be understood tone that really does make art history understandable to "dummies".

With that said, cultures outside of Europe are not covered, and the book lacks quality pictures for many of the works. I understand that this is meant to be an introduction to art history and that printing each and every work covered would make this book far too expensive and bulky to the kind of book it is. However, it is a little aggravating to always have to read this alongside a computer or a true textbook like Gardener's. But, Wilder does try his best by providing links to all works mentioned that don't have a black and white or colored picture. About the book only focusing on European art, I understand that European art is what most people think of when the phrase "art history" is heard, but and outside of Europe section would be welcomed. I'm lamenting the fact that I must read through Gardner's to cover this to prepare for the AP test.

While "Art History for Dummies" does have it's limitations, Wilder truly does and excellent job of presenting Art history in a down to earth and informative manner. I can't recommend it enough for anyone trying to learn this traditionally scholarly and difficult subject. This made me love art history.

Came in great condition and a very helpful book. It's clean, clear and simply laid out. If you want to have an extremely thorough brush up on Art History, this book is the way to go.