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The Art Museum [Hardcover]

Phaidon Press
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)

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Book Description

October 17, 2011 0714856525 978-0714856520
The Art Museum is the finest art collection ever assembled between two covers. This revolutionary and unprecedented virtual art museum in a book, features 1,000 oversized pages of over 2,500 works of art. It is the most comprehensive and visually spectacular history of world art ever published. Ten years in the making, this unique book was created with a global team of 100 specialists in art history, who have collected together important works as they might be displayed in the ideal museum for the art lover.

Unrestricted by the constraints of physical space, this volume contains an unprecedented wealth of masterworks spanning three millennia and culled from 650 museums, galleries and private collections from 60 countries to tell the history of world art. It is organized by innovative color-coded, galleries, rooms, corridors and special exhibitions, which display the paintings, sculptures, frescos, photographs, tapestries, friezes, installations, performances, videos, woodblock prints, folding screens, ceramics and manuscripts that tell the history of world art. This is the only museum to house Leonardo's Mona Lisa, a collection of Rembrandt's finest self portraits, Velázquez's Las Meninas and Picasso's Guernica, as well as ceramics from China, Hokusai's woodblock prints, gold artefacts from Peru, and works by Jackson Pollock in one place.

With intelligent in-depth text throughout, explanatory lels for each artwork, a comprehensive glossary and detailed location maps, The Art Museum, is accessible for everyone from casual art fans to experts in the field.

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The Art Museum + Art: Over 2,500 Works from Cave to Contemporary
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Unprecedented, unique, and vast in scope, this visually spectacular survey of world art belongs in large public, academic, and special libraries. Destined to delight, inspire, and educate, as well as become an invaluable classic, art reference resource, it is very highly recommended."- Library Journal Starred Review

"A category killer. Packed with 3,000 large illustrations of the world's greatest artworks."- VOGUE

"The dream collection. . .The appeal of having 3,000 years of masterpieces at your fingertips is obvious."- Art & Auction

"If this [The Art Museum] were a real museum and not just a book, there would hardly be need for another."- NPR's "All Things Considered"

"If the world's best curators could create a collection containing every notable work for all time, its catalog would resemble The Art Museum."- Conde Nast Traveler

"It's an original and compelling concept: a book conceived and organized to resemble a museum - one that happens to take readers on a tour of art history from King Tut to Jackson Pollack and beyond."- Worth magazine

"The 2,500 works that really matter in 1,000 stunning pages."- Reader's Digest

"The monster of all Christmas art books, this year and maybe for a while. . .this tome is chock-full of things you don't often see reproduced on this scale, and other things you may not even know about and will love on sight."- The New York Times

". . .as in an actual museum, once you plunge into its 990-some pages, you risk getting lost. So turn off the stove, walk the dog, and text the kids before you spend the evening looking at vase paintings and no one hears from you again."- Town & Country

". . .an astonishing book. . .an exciting, nearly perfect collection of the greatest visual art in human history. . .The scope of the book encourages readers to make unexpected connections, as when rooms devoted to African masks and carvings usher us into a section on the Cubists, hinting at the affinities between the two."- BookPage

"If someone asks you, 'What is art?' you could launch into a lecture. Or you could just hand them this battering ram of a book."- Entertainment Weekly

"An encyclopedic art museum between covers, with "permanent" holdings for some 3,000 creme-de-la-creme objects appropriated from collections around the globe."- Holland Cotter for The New York Times Book Review

"The boldest publishing experiment of 2011."- NPR

"Not only does The Art Museum showcase rarely seen works from private collections, it also benefits from the wisdom of 65 of the world's most respected curators and art historians. . .this extensive compendium is easy to digest."- The Washington Post

". . .you couldn't give a more impressive gift. . .Imagine some ten-year-old getting lost in it over Christmas."- Blake Gopnik for The Daily Beast.com

"An astonishing book?an exciting, nearly perfect collection of the greatest visual art in human history."- Bookpage

". . .the most colossal and ambitious publication in the field. . .Indeed, it has some of the characteristics of a real museum, among them an invitation to wander on and on. . .Recommended."- Bloomberg News

"Like a world-class museum that fits on a coffee table."- USAnetwork.com

"Planning a trip to Paris to visit the Louvre? Headed to New York City for a tour of the MoMA? Cancel those plans. All you need is The Art Museum."- The National Post, Canada

". . .the book is a perfect crash course for art-world novices and a collectible for experts."- ELLE.com

About the Author

Conceived and edited by Phaidon editors, with a consulting global team of specialists in all fields of art.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 992 pages
  • Publisher: Phaidon Press (October 17, 2011)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0714856525
  • ISBN-13: 978-0714856520
  • Product Dimensions: 12.6 x 2.8 x 16.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 18.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #69,313 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

I would recommend this book to any art lover. jenksbisbing  |  17 reviewers made a similar statement
The image quality is very good. L. Schattman  |  11 reviewers made a similar statement
It will surely stand the test of time and be passed down someday. Amy Y.  |  7 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
157 of 157 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A visual treat October 21, 2011
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I purchased this book for my library, and rather than immediately putting it on the shelves, I have left it out, opened to a different page each day. As I had hoped, everyone who passes stops to look!

This book is noteworthy not only for its large format and myriad illustrations, but for its global coverage. In addition to the "western civilization" art, it includes Native American, Asian, African, and Oceanic art. It begins with cave art and goes through the 20th century, featuring paintings, murals, frescoes, architectural details, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, jewelry, masks, and more. The breadth of coverage is outstanding. It's also wonderful to be able to see together items that are held by museums in different countries.

The image quality is very good. (I wouldn't call it superb: the colors of some seem a little off, and a few aren't as sharp as I expect from Phaidon, but they are definitely very good.) There are many full-page images, and quite a few two-page spreads (for example: the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel). For the price, and particularly given the challenges of photographing many of these works, the quality is astonishing.

I highly recommend this book for any library with an art section, and for anyone who loves art. It's a rare treat to see this many works, this well photographed, all in one volume.
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33 of 34 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A Fine Arts degree in a book.. November 5, 2011
Format:Hardcover
Okay, maybe not, but this is the closest you will ever come. I'm not a big coffee table book person but when I came across this on a friend's coffee table, I had to get one of my own. It is a ginormous book at almost 3 inches thick and nearly 20 lbs but it is full of the most amazing art from what appears to be almost every age. I love the capturing of the brilliant, velvety colors of the pre-Raphaelite artists and the feeling the authors give that one is actually travelling through the world's largest, most complete, elite museum. There is such an education to be had in this book about art, life, history- you can literally see the growth and transition from period to period as you 'walk' through The Art Museum.

I think the collection captured is eclectic enough to be interesting and inspiring even to those who know a great deal about art and the information presented alongside the pieces will provide gratification to those who are more unfamiliar with the various periods of art history represented.

This is a dream book for someone who wishes they could travel the entire world and see examples of all times and types of art or maybe it will entice others to actually do so- it certainly has made me want to change my vacation plans for, oh, the next twenty years or so. If you can't travel to Rome or Paris at the drop of the hat to visit art museums, this is the next best thing.

Like other Phaidon Press books, I look forward to sharing this with my children over the years. It will surely stand the test of time and be passed down someday. Another example of why we still can't do without 'real' books- this brings art alive in a way that I think no electronic format could.
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87 of 110 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars ambitious idea, lacking execution November 19, 2011
Format:Hardcover
I rarely buy books anymore. I figure the public library can hook me up for free and has a lot more storage space than I do. But the combination of savvy marketing by Phaidon, a recent one-day, 50%-off sale at an online bookstore, and $75 of unnamed bookstore's credit sitting in my wallet brought this beast into my possession this week. I was totally taken in by the scope of the project. Who wouldn't after reading this:

"It is the most comprehensive and visually spectacular history of world art ever published. Ten years in the making, this unique book was created with a global team of 100 specialists in art history, who have collected together important works as they might be displayed in the ideal museum for the art lover."

Now that I have it though, I'm thinking of returning it. It is humongous, I mean seriously mammoth, and very heavy, I'm not even sure where to put it. The paper is pretty thin so it's not one for the kids to look at alone. I imagined many hours of pouring through it together, but it's not easy to leaf through because of its size, and again, I think it could be easily torn. My kids love Janson's (much less) huge History of Art, and The Art Musuem has more range, more pictures, bigger pictures, but it's unwieldy. Also, because so much is packed in--30,000 years of art, many mediums, spanning the globe--it is a very brief treatment for each section. For instance, impressionism is covered in 12 pages, minimalism another 12. In addition, though the picture quality and color is okay, I expected to be more impressed by it. As an odd side-note, the book emits an unpleasant chemical smell, I assume from the printing process. The text is also incredibly sparse, pretty much just identifying the works and giving very brief descriptions of movements.

As I'm sure is inevitable with any project of this scale, there are idiosyncratic choices of who and what to cover and how much. In photography there is one small Ansel Adams mixed in with 4 others on a page, followed by an entire page, with 3 pictures, by Cindy Sherman (kudos to Sherman, she is wonderful). Photography in general gets short shrift. Absent are Edward Weston, Helen Levitt, Imogen Cunningham, Paul Caponigro. Hiroshi Sugimoto gets a nod, but unfortunately it's one of his Theatres pics, rather than one of the more spectacular Seascapes.

The Art Museum fits the bill as a comprehensive survey, displaying great works throughout time and inspiring ideas of what to explore in more detail elsewhere. With the first flip through I learned of artists and movements I'd never heard of before and was intrigued by, but I'm thinking it might be better left to the libraries. I wish I could give it a better review, because I think it's a worthy idea, but an idea better suited to a computer program, website, or app, because the medium of the book cannot hold the scope of this project.

As I see it, art books should serve at least one of two purposes: 1) High quality reproductions of beautiful art, and/or 2) A solid, durable, user-friendly reference work. Unfortunately, "The Art Museum" fulfills neither. The reproductions are too poor for the former, and the physical object of the book is too fragile and unwieldy for the latter. It's an ambitious (and exciting idea), but I suspect that the scope of "human art" is too broad for a single work.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent overview of Art History
This book is a dream come true for the artist, educator, historian. Have spent many enjoyable hours blissfully exploring this oversize volumn.
Published 2 days ago by L A Calkins
5.0 out of 5 stars A Quick Study in Art History
Wonderfully comprehensive for a "quick" overview of art through the ages. A perfect image book to gain a little understanding of a myriad of different periods of art and... Read more
Published 2 months ago by S. Williams
4.0 out of 5 stars Discover art
One of the most beautiful books I have ever held and looked through The Art Museum has a good broad overview of art. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Dr. Wilson Trivino
5.0 out of 5 stars The Art Museum
This book honors its title! It is a large set of museums. The pictures are larte and crisp and the texts beside them are just enough to let you informed. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Alberto Flavio A. Aguiar
4.0 out of 5 stars beautiful
Only disad is that it is so heavy and big which makes it more difficult to read, plus that i miss location of the art piece where it can be viewed. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Phil Koken
5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Armchair Art Tour Ever
I was intrigued by the idea of this book--who could imagine the whole world of art in one book, even if was a very big one? Read more
Published 5 months ago by D. R. Ransdell
5.0 out of 5 stars Unbelievable.
I stopped by the local barnes and noble....and I took this book opened it and wanted to take a look. I was amazed. Read more
Published 7 months ago by A. Romero
4.0 out of 5 stars Great BIG book
I've really enjoyed this book. The sheer volume and breadth of the works is fabulous and anyone who loves art history could spend hours flipping through this book from one... Read more
Published 7 months ago by James Fisher
5.0 out of 5 stars So great
Got this for my mother who teaches art and already has lots of art books and she still goes on about how great it is months later.
Published 13 months ago by Jared P
4.0 out of 5 stars The Art Museum, Phaidon Press
This lush, huge, complete art book is satisfying in almost every way. The color reproductions are exquisite, and the information included about each item is informative, from both... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Brenda Z
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