Customer Reviews

The A-Z of Art: The World's Greatest and Most Popular Artists and Their Works

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

 

 

This book is being used by a group of women artists who are studying a wide range of painting styles. There is an incredible range of artists and their techniques to be seen and studied in this book. The bibligraphies are conicse and very informative. Not only does it wett the appetite of the young and old, but it encourages them to delve into and study the artists who interest them and opens up a new world of art hisotry, thus educating even more. A wonderful resource and text book. The reproduction of the paintings are very good and the book is a credit to the two authors.

The flyleaf claims: "This stunning art book provides a guide to 360 of the world's greatest artists . . . from medieval times to the present day". Off course any such claim as to who are the greatest is open to debate, but I did not detect any glaring omissions, but I might question some of the inclusions; however that is a minor point as there are bigger problems with this book.

The book is arranged alphabetically, although this make it very easy to find a particular artists with a book such as this it might have been more instructive to have it arrange chronically. The page layout is consistent throughout: each artist allocated a page and a painting, alongside each artist's name are his/her date and place of birth/death, and at the bottom of the page about 150 words by way of description along with a short list of "Other Masterpieces".

With 360 artists that means 360 illustrations, all in full colour, but herein lies the big let down of the book, the quality of reproduction is poor. Ye, the colours are rich and intense, but I would say too intense with the red area of the spectrum particularly being too strong, add to that the problem that the colours are flat, with the dark areas completely lacking in detail this gives a false impression of the artwork. In addition the page design is rather intrusive and detracts from the paintings.

This is should be an ideal book for someone who is looking for an introduction to art, but I find it hard to recommend due to the poor quality of the printing.

NOTE: this review is for the edition: THE A-Z OF ART. THE WORLD`S GREATEST AND MOST POPULAR ARTISTS AND THEIR WORK., I do not know if other editions are as bad as this as regards the printing quality.

This book was a beatiful tribute to some oof the worlds most talented artists! I greatly enjoyed thumbing through it, and the small paragraphs on each page were a quick informative summary of the artists life and work. I adore this book!

The previous reviewer must be corrected in turn, as "appetite" is spelled with two p's - if I'm not mistaken - and as for "blurb for...," well, it's "blurb on...!"

Just a comment about your blurb for the book:
"... not only does it wett the apetite..." should read,
"... not only does it whet the apetite..."
Thank you.
Jay Rasmussen