Synopses & Reviews
The arts affect our lives whether or not we ever set foot in a museum. Advertisements use images to sell products; pictures and sculptures stimulate our senses and decorate our urban and rural spaces. These, along with the buildings we inhabit, are manifestations of the visual arts.
This book of eight brief chapters on different aspects of the visual arts is designed to explore the nature of imagery and its relevance to many facets of our lives. Drawing on a wealth of examples from Western and non-Western art through the ages, it examines a wide range of themes, from the relationship between form and meaning, to the methodologies of art-historical analysis, to the controversies that have surrounded certain works of art both past and present.
The author's concise and clear analytical approach to understanding and appreciating works of art helps readers understand the various ways of interpreting images by artists as diverse as Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, and Jackson Pollock. Beautiful illustrations accompany the text, making this book an ideal resource for students, museum visitors, and anyone interested in the arts.
Synopsis
This stimulating and fascinating introduction to art contains a series of thematic chapters covering a range of topics that will provide readers with a basis for approaching art and enjoying it. It also serves to dispel some preconceptions about the visual arts—assumptions made about a work based on an individual's own experience. Chapter topics include the appeal and aims of art, style and formal elements, artists at work, art themes, art in and out of context, approaches to art, and arguing about art. For museum goers and anyone who wants a better understanding of art.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [172]) and index.
About the Author
Laurie Schneider Adams teaches at John Jay College, City University of New York, and the Graduate Center. She has written widely on the arts. Her books include A History of Western Art, The Methodologies of Art, Art on Trial, and Italian Renaissance Art.
Table of Contents
1. The Appeal of Art.
2. The Aims of Art.
Decorating the Environment. Recording the Past. Religious Art. Political Art. Images that Heal, Destroy, Protect and Warn Advertising Images.
3. Style and the Formal Elements of Art.
Line and Shape. Sculpure: David by Donatello and by Bernini. Painting: Castagno's David. Color. Light and Dark. Texture. Space and Shape as Context and Illusion. Linear Perspective. Eastern Perspective Systems. Architecture as Form and Function.
4. Artists at Work: Convention and Training.
The Aesthetic Context: Convention. The Cultural Context: How Artists Learn. The Cult of Bohemia and the Artists as Rebel. The Artists as Individual: Jackson Pollock.
5. Themes of Art.
The Divine Circle. The Circle as a Sign of Burial. The Column. The Iconographic Theme.
6. Art In and Out of Context.
Narrative Context. Architectural Context. The Museum as Context. The Archaeological Dig as Museum and Context. The Natural Context. The Urban Context: Site, Politics, Economics, and Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
7. Approaches to Art.
Formalism. Iconography. Marxism. Feminism. Semiotics. Biography and Autobiography. Psychoanalysis.
8. Arguing about Art.
Art and Politics. Aesthetic Quarrels. Iconoclasm.