Title
Introduction
About This Book
Conventions Used in This Book
What You’re Not to Read
Foolish Assumptions
How This Book Is Organized
Icons Used in This Book
Where to Go from Here
Part I : Mankind in the Looking Glass: Art History 101
Chapter 1: Art Tour through the Ages
That’s Ancient History, So Why Dig It Up?
Did the Art World Crash When Rome Fell, or Did It Just Switch Directions?
In the Machine Age, Where Did Art Get Its Power?
The Modern World and the Shattered Mirror
Chapter 2: Why People Make Art and What It All Means
Focusing on the Artist’s Purpose
Detecting Design
Decoding Meaning
Chapter 3: The Major Artistic Periods and Movements
Understanding the Differences between a Period and a Movement
An Overview of the Major Periods
An Overview of the Major Movements
Part II : From Caves to Colosseum: Ancient Art
Chapter 4: Magical Hunters and Psychedelic Cave Artists
Cool Cave Art or Paleolithic Painting: Why Keep It a Secret?
Flirting with Fertility Goddesses
Dominoes for Druids: Stonehenge, Menhirs, and Neolithic Architecture
Chapter 5: Fickle Gods, Warrior Art, and the Birth of Writing: Mesopotamian Art
Climbing toward the Clouds: Sumerian Architecture
The Eyes Have It: Scoping Out Sumerian Sculpture
Playing Puabi’s Lyre
Unraveling the Standard of Ur
Stalking Stone Warriors: Akkadian Art
Stamped in Stone: Hammurabi’s Code
Unlocking Assyrian Art
Babylon Has a Baby: New Babylon
Chapter 6: One Foot in the Tomb: Ancient Egyptian Art
Ancient Egypt 101
The Palette of Narmer and the Unification of Egypt
The Egyptian Style
Excavating Old Kingdom Architecture
The In-Between Period and Middle Kingdom Realism
New Kingdom Art
Chapter 7: Greek Art, the Olympian Ego, and the Inventors of the Modern World
Mingling with the Minoans: Snake Goddesses, Minotaurs, and Bull Jumpers
Greek Sculpture: Stark Symmetry to a Delicate Balance
Figuring Out Greek Vase Painting
Rummaging through Ruins: Greek Architecture
Greece without Borders: Hellenism
Chapter 8: Etruscan and Roman Art: It’s All Greek to Me!
The Mysterious Etruscans
Romping through the Roman Republic
Part III : Art after the Fall of Rome: a.d. 500– a.d. 1760
Chapter 9: The Graven Image: Early Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic Art
The Rise of Constantinople
Early Christian Art in the West
Byzantine Art Meets Imperial Splendor
Islamic Art: Architectural Pathways to God
Chapter 10: Mystics, Marauders, and Manuscripts: Medieval Art
Irish Light: Illuminated Manuscripts
Charlemagne: King of His Own Renaissance
Weaving and Unweaving the Battle of Hastings: The Bayeux Tapestry
Romanesque Architecture: Churches That Squat
Romanesque Sculpture
Relics and Reliquaries: Miraculous Leftovers
Gothic Grandeur: Churches That Soar
Stained-Glass Storytelling
Gothic Sculpture
Italian Gothic
Gothic Painting: Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto
Tracking the Lady and the Unicorn: The Mystical Tapestries of Cluny
Chapter 11: Born-Again Culture: The Early and High Renaissance
The Early Renaissance in Central Italy
The High Renaissance
Chapter 12: Venetian Renaissance, Late Gothic, and the Renaissance in the North
A Gondola Ride through the Venetian Renaissance
Late Gothic: Northern Naturalism
Northern Exposure: The Renaissance in the Netherlands and Germany
Chapter 13: Art That’ll Stretch Your Neck: Mannerism
Pontormo: Front and Center
Bronzino’s Background Symbols and Scene Layering
Parmigianino: He’s Not a Cheese!
Arcimboldo: À la Carte Art
El Greco: Stretched to the Limit
Finding Your Footing in Giulio Romano’s Palazzo Te
Chapter 14: When the Renaissance Went Baroque
Annibale Carracci: Heavenly Ceilings
Shedding Light on the Subject: Caravaggio and His Followers
The Ecstasy and the Ecstasy: Bernini Sculpture
Embracing Baroque Architecture
Dutch and Flemish Realism
French Flourish and Baroque Light Shows
In the Limelight with Caravaggio: The Spanish Golden Age
Chapter 15: Going Loco with Rococo
Breaking with the Baroque: Antoine Watteau
Fragonard and Boucher: Lush, Lusty, and Lavish
Flying High: Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Rococo Lite: The Movement in England
Part IV : The Industrial Revolution and Artistic Devolution: 1760–1900
Chapter 16: All Roads Lead Back to Rome and Greece: Neoclassical Art
Jacques-Louis David: The King of Neoclassicism
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres: The Prince of Neoclassical Portraiture
Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Le Brun: Nice and Natural
Canova and Houdon: Greek Grace and Neoclassical Sculpture
Chapter 17: Romanticism: Reaching Within and Acting Out
Kissing Isn’t Romantic, but Having a Heart Is
Way Out There with William Blake and Henry Fuseli: Mythologies of the Mind
Inside Out: Caspar David Friedrich
The Revolutionary French Romantics: Gericault and Delacroix
Francisco Goya and the Grotesque
J. M. W. Turner Sets the Skies on Fire
Chapter 18: What You See Is What You Get: Realism
Courbet and Daumier: Painting Peasants and Urban Blight
The Barbizon School and the Great Outdoors
Keeping It Real in America
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: Medieval Visions and Painting Literature
Chapter 19: First Impressions: Impressionism
M & M: Manet and Monet
Pretty Women and Painted Ladies: Renoir and Degas
Morisot and Cassatt: The Female Impressionists
Chapter 20: Making Their Own Impression: The Post-Impressionists
You’ve Got a Point: Pointillism and Georges-Pierre Seurat
Red-Light Art: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Tracking the “Noble Savage”: Paul Gauguin
Painting Energy: Vincent van Gogh
Love Cast in Stone: Rodin and Claudel
The Mask behind the Face: James Ensor
The Hills Are Alive with Geometry: Paul Cézanne
Art Nouveau: When Art and Technology Eloped
Fairy-Tale Fancies and the Sand-Castle Cathedral of Barcelona: Antoni Gaudí
Part V : Twentieth-Century Art and Beyond
Chapter 21: From Fauvism to Expressionism
Fauvism: Colors Fighting like Animals
German Expressionism: Form Based on Feeling
Austrian Expressionism: From Dream to Nightmare
Chapter 22: Cubist Puzzles and Finding the Fast Lane with the Futurists
Cubism: All Views At Once
Futurism: Art That Broke the Speed Limit
Chapter 23: What You See Is What You Don’t Get: From Nonobjective Art to Abstract Expressionism
Suprematism: Kazimir Malevich’s Reinvention of Space
Constructivism: Showing Off Your Skeleton
Piet Mondrian and the De Stijl Movement
Dada Turns the World on Its Head
Surrealism and Disjointed Dreams
My House Is a Machine: Modernist Architecture
Abstract Expressionism: Fireworks on Canvas
Chapter 24: Anything-Goes Art: Fab Fifties and Psychedelic Sixties
Artsy Cartoons: Pop Art
Fantastic Realism
Less-Is-More Art: Rothko, Newman, Stella, and Others
Photorealism
Performance Art and Installations
Chapter 25: Photography: From a Science to an Art
The Birth of Photography
From Science to Art
Alfred Stieglitz: Reliving the Moment
Henri Cartier-Bresson and the “Decisive Moment”
Group f/64: Edward Weston and Ansel Adams
Dorothea Lange: Depression to Dust Bowl
Margaret Bourke-White: From Smokestacks and Steel Mills to Buchenwald and the Death of Gandhi
Fast-Forward: The Next Generation
Chapter 26: The New World: Postmodern Art
From Modern Pyramids to Titanium Twists: Postmodern Architecture
Making It or Faking It? Postmodern Photography and Painting
Installation Art and Earth Art
Glow-in-the-Dark Bunnies and Living, Genetic Art
Part VI : The Part of Tens
Chapter 27: Ten Must-See Art Museums
The Louvre (Paris)
The Uffizi (Florence)
The Vatican Museums (Rome)
The National Gallery (London)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City)
The Prado (Madrid)
The Hermitage (St. Petersburg)
The Rijksmuseum (Amsterdam)
British Museum (London)
The Kunsthistorisches (Vienna)
Chapter 28: Ten Great Books by Ten Great Artists
On Painting, by Leonardo da Vinci
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, by Giorgio Vasari
Complete Poems and Selected Letters of Michelangelo
The Journal of Eugène Delacroix
Van Gogh’s Letters
Rodin on Art, by Paul Gsell
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) Almanac, edited by Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc
Concerning the Spiritual in Art, by Wassily Kandinsky
The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait
Hundertwasser Architecture: For a More Human Architecture in Harmony with Nature, by Friedensreich Hundertwasser
Chapter 29: Ten Brushstrokes That Shook the World
The Man Who Mainstreamed Oil Paint: Jan van Eyck
What’s That Smoke? Leonardo Da Vinci
Lost and Found in Rembrandt’s Shadows
Does the Guy Need Glasses? Monet and Impressionism
Pinpointing Seurat’s Style
The Frenzied Brush: Van Gogh
Paint It Blue: Picasso
Painting Musical Colors: Kandinsky
Paint-Throwing Pollock
Squeegee Painting and Richter
Appendix: Online Resources
: Further Reading