"Since its first publication this book has been hailed as the most comprehensive history of art ever published in a single volume. Presenting art history as an essential part of the development of humankind, it offers an authoritative, balanced, and enlightening account, ranging from a statuette carved in central Europe some 30,000 years ago to the digital, video, and installation art of the new millennium. The volume covers painting, mosaic, drawing,...

In canvases of Millet, Courbet, and Manet, observe the Realist ideals of honesty, simplicity, and descriptive colors in revealing contemporary experience. Then, explore the phenomenon of Impressionism, highlighting Renoir, Monet, and Degas - their fascination with natural light, quest to capture the moment, and iconic subject matter of middle-class leisure life.

In examining the diverse functions and types of portraits, study the important elements of facial presentation and the subject's position and gaze with relation to the viewer and the pictorial space. See how Rembrandt added dramatic power to his group "corporation" portraits, and how David carefully rendered Napoleon in symbolic terms.

Across the centuries, self-portraits fascinatingly reveal the changing role of the artist. Follow this progression, from Renaissance painters subtly placing themselves within large compositions, to self-portraiture's emergence as a major form of self-revelation, noting many dramatic and colorful traditions within the form.

Examine geometric and "organic" shapes in painting and sculpture and the crucial relationship of figure to ground and mass to space. Then, explore the illusionistic use of shading, shadows, and overlapping shapes in Caravaggio's and Friedrich's works, and the compositional power of shapes in paintings such as Matisse's "Dance" and Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam".

The market-leading text for the art history survey course, GARDNER'S ART THROUGH THE AGES has served as a comprehensive and thoughtfully crafted guide to the defining phases of the world's artistic tradition. With this book in hand, thousands of students have watched the story of art unfold in its full historical, social, religious, economic, and cultural context, and thus deepened their understanding of art, architecture, painting, and sculpture....

The documentary draws an in-depth portrait of the masked Robin Hood of the art world. Each investigation reveals a facet of the artist: his political views; commitment to environmental causes and political refugees; his links with the music scene and his entrepreneurial side. All in search of an answer to the question: do we need to know the artist behind the name to appreciate the artwork?

An accessible introduction to the whole of art history, from prehistoric times to the present day - now revised and expanded. This updated edition includes over 25 new entries that expand the scope of the book further into the 21st century. Features 600 of the world's greatest works of art across all media (painting, sculpture, textiles, metalwork, ceramics), ranging from seminal masterworks to lesser known pieces in both the fine and decorative arts....

"Artists are expert lookers: they have learned to pay attention. The rest of us spend most of our time on auto-pilot, rushing from place to place, our overfamiliarity blinding us to the marvellous, life-affirming phenomena of our world. But that doesn't have to be the case. In his inimitable engaging style, Will Gompertz takes us into the minds of artists--from contemporary stars to old masters, the well-known to the lesser-so, and from around the...