Michael Kerrigan (4)

A brief crib sheet for the history of Western art. You can't argue with the objective quality of the Renaissance, Romantic and Impressionist pieces, though Kerrigan's book has the common problem, among art introductions, of discussing the importance of some painters without including their work as illustration.

Kerrigan's overview is useful if not particularly discriminating. I thought it would be better not to mention Chinese or Japanese art at all, if the only discussion of them was going show more to be a brief paragraph on page 16 and the sole inclusion of Hokusai's famous wave among the hundred masterpieces of the title. There's rather too much attention paid to the various superficial schools of modern art, relative to the proper art (though I did like Duchamp's clever Nude Descending a Staircase), and it is galling to see the likes of Vlaminck's juvenile At the Bar or Klee's The Goldfish in the same company as Turner, Rubens, Rembrandt and Caravaggio. The early wealth of this chronological book turns to despair as you realise Michelangelo put more intricacy and depth of thought into one of Adam's fingernails than entire schools of modern art do into their whole philosophy. show less

More than just an art book, Asian Art gives a history and a relevance to each of it's entries. A very good introduction to the works of many artists from China, Japan, Korea and the Indian sub-continent.

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Another great 'throne' book. This small but thick volume has a few hundred pictures of some of the greatest Asian art with descriptions and some history. Much of the art (includes paintings, sculptures, pottery, etc.) is from China and Japan, but there is also a decent selection from other Southeast Asian countries: Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and so on. It's a nice overview of some of the most beautiful art there is.