Painting Today [Hardcover]

Tony Godfrey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 16, 2009

Painting Today is a comprehensive overview of the last 30 years of painting, presenting work by celebrated figures like Gerhard Richter and Neo Rauch alongside emerging artists like Jumaldi Alfi and Ingrid Calame. Photo-realism, landscape, still-life, portraiture, neo-expressionism, installation painting and the Leipzig school are just some of the areas of this thriving art medium explored by Tony Godfrey. Organized by themes, Painting Today showcases the broad range of styles, materials and methods that comprise contemporary painting. Insightful and accessible, Painting Today?s approach will appeal to scholars and newcomers to the subject alike.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Recommended?nearly eye-bogglingly global view of the medium in all styles."
–Roberta Smith, The New York Times

"Impeccably curated and exhaustively annotated?Painting Today is another Phaidon tour de force of scholarship and sumptuous pictorialism. Powerful and eye-dazzling."
–National Public Radio

About the Author

Tony Godfrey is Director of Research at Sotheby?s Institute of Art. He studied at Leeds University and has taught in various art schools in England. He has worked at Sotheby?s Institute since 1989, and since 2006 he has also been a Professor of Fine Art at Plymouth University. An expert in the field of contemporary art, his publications include The New Image: Painting in the Eighties (1986), Drawing Today (1990), and Conceptual Art (1998, also published by Phaidon).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press (November 16, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714846317
• ISBN-13: 978-0714846316
• Product Dimensions: 11.7 x 10.3 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #467,773 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful book, January 20, 2011

By 

Hunter Rauso (Denton, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Painting Today (Hardcover)

I've gotten through about half of Painting Today so far, and I'm terribly impressed. It's difficult to balance breadth with depth, but Godfrey succeeds at this quite well. Painting Today covers most of the relevant figures while weaving the right amount of detail and description into the text. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in understanding the scope of contemporary painting, as well as what the future holds for art.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars interesting pictures, obscure text, March 13, 2010

By 

R. Heiderer (boulder) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Painting Today (Hardcover)

An interesting collection of paintings, well printed, organized into useful categories. The text varies from being obscure to being useful, hopefully accurate. No great insights. I must confess that I am a beginner with little tolerance for art-speak. I gather that at this time it must be particularly difficult to look over the current painting scene and make much sense out of it much less write a history of the last twenty years. But the collection of paintings is definitely worth the effort to seek out this book. For me it was more interesting than "Vitamin P"

4.0 out of 5 stars Very nice book, December 26, 2011

By 

Juan Elizalde Ch "JCElizalde" (Guayaquil, Ecuador) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Painting Today (Hardcover)

-First of all in my opinion, I think I did a good investment. The quality of the book is excellent, as is usual with books produced by Phaidon. It has lots of pictures and each one has an explanation of the work or the artist who created it. The selection of artists and works pleasantly surprised me. The way in which the author classified the issues can perhaps be seen as it was not the best, but to some extent helps to more easily find the type of image you might want to review at any time without having to go page by page. I see it more as an encyclopedia makes an overall reading of gender to the author that have been treated pictorially since 1970 until today. Occasionally tells certain stories or anecdotes that we do not always come to know (and can even be fun). It has no pretensions of being a book that focuses too much on theories of aesthetics. Does not follow a specific order (even in regard to follow a chronological order), but even this "apparent" disorder makes it hard to read. Personally I do believe that is the kind of books that deserve to be part of the collection. It's worth having it.

-En primer lugar en mi opinión, creo que hice una buena inversión. La calidad del libro es excelente, como es lo usual con los libros que produce Phaidon. Tiene gran cantidad imágenes y cada una tiene una explicación acerca de la obra o del artista que la creó. La selección de los artistas y de las obras me sorprendió gratamente. La forma en la que el autor clasificó los temas puede talvez percibirse como que no fue la más adecuada, pero hasta cierto punto ayuda a encontrar más fácilmente el tipo de imagen que podrías querer revisar en cualquier otro momento sin tener que ir página por página. Lo veo más como una enciclopedia que hace una lectura global de los géneros que a criterio del autor se han tratado pictóricamente desde 1970 hasta la actualidad. Ocasionalmente narra ciertas historias o anécdotas que no siempre nosotros llegamos a conocerlas (y que pueden ser inclusive entretenidas) . No tiene las pretensiones de ser un libro que se concentre demasiado en teorías sobre estética. No sigue un orden específico (ni siquiera en lo que respecta a seguir un orden cronológico), pero ni siquiera este "aparente" desorden lo vuelve complicado de leer. Personalmente yo sí creo que es ese tipo de libros que merecen ser parte de la colección. Vale la pena el tenerlo.