Art History category: 15294 books

In 1935, the United States Congress began employing large numbers of American artists through the Works Progress Administration—fiction writers, photographers, poster artists, dramatists, painters, sculptors, muralists, wood carvers, composers and choreographers, as well as journalists, historians...

Handmade Holiday Cards shows how artists imagined the holidays through original watercolors, etchings, silk-screen prints, and drawings. Rarely seen beyond the eyes of their recipients, these cards confirm the irrepressible artistry of their senders. Handmade Holiday Cards offers personal insight...

The first comprehensive anthology of art historian Linda Nochlin’s work, including her landmark essays on the position and influence of women artists Linda Nochlin is one of the most accessible, provocative, and innovative art historians of our time. In 1971 she published her essay “Why...

Since the publication of Clement Greenberg's 'Modernist Painting' in 1960, the status of painting and its continued legitimacy as a medium has been repeatedly placed under question. As such, painting has had to continually redefine its own parameters and re-negotiate for itself a critical position...

In this distinguished work, which Hilton Kramer in The New York Times Book Review called "surely the best book ever written on the subject," Barbara Novak illuminates what is essentially American about American art. She highlights not only those aspects that appear indigenously in our art...

"A wonderful look at the many styles of wood engraving from the time period 1900–1950. The illustrations are sublime, and there is a lot of variation both in theme, execution and style. I really enjoyed looking at the engravings, and the text was interesting and very readable." — Jefferson-Madison...

One of the youngest recipients of a MacArthur “genius” grant, Kara Walker, an African American artist, is best known for her iconic, often life-size, black-and-white silhouetted figures, arranged in unsettling scenes on gallery walls. These visually arresting narratives draw viewers into a dialogue...

This book offers the first concentrated examination of the representation of the black female subject in Western art through the lenses of race/color and sex/gender. Charmaine A. Nelson poses critical questions about the contexts of production, the problems of representation, the pathways of circulation...

With outraeous anecdotes about everyone from Leonardo (alleged sodomist) to Caraviaggio (convicted murderer) to Edward Hopper (alleged wife beater), Secret Lives of Great Artists recounts the seamy, steamy, and gritty history behind the great masters of international art. You’ll learn that Michelangelo’s...

One of The Christian Science Monitor’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2018 “An engrossing read…a historically and psychologically rich account of the young Picasso and his coteries in Barcelona and Paris” (The Washington Post) and how he achieved his breakthrough and revolutionized modern...

A fascinating look at the history of painting and sculpture in France by American journalist and literary critic W. C. Brownell.

Working at a pivotal time in art history, artist Marsden Hartley was in the center of it all. In his classic collection of essays, Adventures in the Arts, he offers curious readers a friendly tour of his interests, personal experiences, and close acquaintances; so many of which proved to be the most...

Although considered a minor genre for a long time, the art of landscape has risen above its forebears - religious and historic painting - to become a genre of its own. Giorgione in Italy, the Brueghels of the Flemish School, Claude Lorrain and Poussain of the French School, the Dutch landscape painters...

The leading exponent of the Rococo style, Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s paintings are characterised by remarkable facility, exuberance and frivolous hedonism. Regarded as one of the greatest colourists of art history, Fragonard produced stunning artworks that capture the spirit of the final days of the...