Customer Reviews

The Oxford Dictionary of Art

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This is a very handy and informative dictionary of terms you will likely encounter in reading about painting and sculpture. If you think of the definitions as short articles on a topic you will be closer to the mark. There are also many short biographies of important historical artists. One of the nice conventions is an asterisk before terms used in the articles that are also themselves the subject of articles.

There are no illustrations, plates, or diagrams in the book. However, there is a short foreword and an introduction.

All in all, this is quite a useful handbook and I use it with some frequency.

Over the past few years, Oxford University Press has continued to develop its line of excellent reference works, revising older volumes and adding new subjects. The latest edition of "The Oxford Dictionary of Art" carries on that tradition.

The guide offers to the general reader an excellent grounding in the facts and philosophies that underlie the media. The entries cover artists, movements, museums (with addresses and websites), materials and, in the back, a chronology listing key works and when they were completed.

While it sometimes falls into the thicket of scholarly jibber-jabber -- and one should recognize the possibility exists while trying to describe visual art using only words, in a book which contains no pictures -- the dictionary is even-handed in describing the critical reaction to a work. With its wide range of descriptions, both geographically and chronologically, this revised guide allows armchair art appreciators to brush up on their learning.

This is a must have for any art history person or anyone in sales for art. It's a complete who's who and what's what of art. It has useful information and is a great resource.
I highly recommend this book.