Reviews for Oxford History of Western Art

The average rating for Oxford History of Western Art based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-11-01 00:00:00 Zachary Boult This is a very well done, very disciplined attempt at an impossibly ambitious project: a one-volume history of western art from the ancient Greeks to post-modernism. Kemp's contributions to the anthology are consistently interesting and he keeps all of the God-knows-how-many contributors focused, which couldn't have been easy. Some sections are better than others, which is inevitable in a book like this, but at the end of the day I learned alot and think I'll enjoy a day at the museum more for having read it. I think all I can really do is just relate a few of the things I found most interesting- Like alot of people with a half-knowledge of art history, I bought into the maxim that perspective was an invention of the early 15th century, where as the illustrations here clearly prove that a crude form of perspectival painting could be seen in late Roman wall painting. The section on medieval art suggests that the radical departure from perspectival representation was both a radical rejection of the Classical tradition, and a by product on the Judeo tradition's ban on graven images still affecting the early Church. The Emperor was God's appointed leader, and thus images of him were only semi-appropriate and could not be seen as attempts to replicate Him, or even to depict Him as human. Early Christian iconography was, however, deeply indebted to Classical portraiture in one way (this came as a revelation to me): Early Christian are depicted Jesus as a bearded Greek philosopher, and this vision of him has never been fully abolished. The sudden radical departure from Classical perspective in 4th century Byzantium represented a calculated political move. This Christian art was, perhaps, the most politically dogmatic art the world had seen up to that time- more than even anything produced under the "decedent" Roman emperors- one in which power relations determined all diagrammatic structure. I also found this tome's deconstruction of the stained glass genre quite interesting. I've visited some of the great European cathedrals, and wondered at the windows, but never noticed the ways the trading guilds, the ancestors of corporations, used their influence to have celebrations of their products placed next to images of the "divine." Along with my prior swallowing of chestnuts about the 15th century origin of perspective, I also thought that Van Eyck and the Dutch were the first to really go there, never having even heard of the Florentine Masaccio, who just barely beat Van Eych to the punch. Having associated "mechanical reproduction" so much with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it never occurred to me to associate its beginning in the 16th century print, although its only common-sensible. The book instilled in me a whole new appreciation for the print, and just how radically it transformed, in some ways even invented, "art" in the modern age- as a commodity. The book also introduced me to several new "characters" in the history of art, such as the Le Nain Brothers, who painted honest depictions of peasant life centuries before it was fashionable or even politically defensible, as well as several "third world" modernists. The book also takes on the history of "art history" and criticism, and some of the most fascinating chapters on the last two hundred years dealt with the flowering of "art history" in the wake of Hegel. I also loved the chapter on the history of the modern museum for demonstrating the ways in which European museums still inherently celebrate classical imperialism and American museums celebrate the individual, rather than national, conqueror, the capitalist.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-01-14 00:00:00 Robin Bridges This book is fabulous! I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. The pictures are among the most influential in Western Art History. Of course, this is an impossibly ambitious project. To bring Art History from Greek -Roman beginnings to Christian art, Medieval art, classical era and the renaissance, with a great summary on theory and criticism was always going to be difficult and a momentous task. But this book hasn't stopped there. It included American, South American, Soviet Union, African and African Caribbean art along with photography and well chosen 19th and 20th century pieces, which as a group became nearly too massive to comprehend. However, the reading is easy and immensely interesting. Having picked up a copy in my local library, I am now actively looking for a copy to buy. I wholeheartedly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in History of Western Art. Amazing. 5 stars!