Selected Art Books
Art by
A chronological book features information on the history of more than 650 artists, as well as details on the major schools and movements of the art world, from Ancient Greece to Pop Art, as well as an extended, detailed focus on 22 masterpieces.
Call Number: N31 .C86 2015 (Waycross)ISBN: 1465436618Publication Date: 2015-09-01
The Arts: a Visual Encyclopedia by
Open your eyes to the wonderful world of art inside this beautiful book. The entire history of the greatest works in painting, sculpture, and photography are included on this comprehensive and colourful tour through time.

 From the first strokes of paint on prehistoric caves to contemporary street art in the 21st century, every artistic style and movement is explored and explained in stunning detail. Special features celebrate the lives of groundbreaking painters, sculptors, and photographers, from Dutch master Johannes Vermeer to photography pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron. Many best-loved pieces of art are showcased in iconic images. Marvel at Leonardo da Vinci's mysterious Mona Lisa, the most famous painted lady. March alongside China's statues of the Terracotta Army, and gaze in awe at Barbara Hepworth's stunning Pelagos sculpture. Packed with pictures and full of facts, Art A Visual Encyclopedia is guaranteed to become a family favourite, encouraging a love of art through the generations. 

 Series Overview: DK's Visual Encyclopedias are the first substantial series of encyclopedias aimed at young children, designed to excite and entertain, while offering a comprehensive overview of core subjects. From science and the human body to animals, the ocean, space, and more, each book combines fun facts, amazing pictures, and crystal-clear explanations to take kids into the wonders of our world.
Call Number: NX440 .H65 2017 (Camden)ISBN: 9781465462909Publication Date: 2017-08-01
Sublime Beauty by
Sublime Beauty: Raphael's Portrait of a Lady with a Unicorn focuses on one of the artist's most beguiling and enigmatic paintings and the idendity of the mysterious blonde sitter who epitomized his female portraiture during his Florentine period. Two essays by leading specialists in Renaissance art, Linda Wolk-Simon and Mary Shay-Millea, explore the stylistic relationship between this masterpiece and Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and the link to Petrarch's poetry and popular notions of beauty in Renaissance art. They examine attributions and the painting's distinct iconography, and why, in place of the usual lapdog, the woman holds a unicorn.
Call Number: ND623 .R2 A66 2015 (Golden Isles)ISBN: 9781907804731Publication Date: 2016-03-15
Selected eBooks
Abstraction in Medieval Art by
Abstraction haunts medieval art, both withdrawing figuration and suggesting elusive presence. How does it make or destroy meaning in the process? Does it suggest the failure of figuration, the faltering of iconography? Does medieval abstraction function because it is imperfect, incomplete, and uncorrected-and therefore cognitively, visually demanding? Is it, conversely, precisely about perfection? To what extent is the abstract predicated on theorization of the unrepresentable and imperceptible? Does medieval abstraction pit aesthetics against metaphysics, or does it enrich it, or frame it, or both? Essays in this collection explore these and other questions that coalesce around three broad themes: medieval abstraction as the untethering of image from what it purports to represent, abstraction as a vehicle for signification, and abstraction as a form of figuration. Contributors approach the concept of medieval abstraction from a multitude of perspectives-formal, semiotic, iconographic, material, phenomenological, epistemological.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9789048542673Publication Date: 2021-02-28
African Art by
African Art invites you to explore the dynamic origins of the vast artistic expressions arising from the exotic and mystifying African continent. Since the discovery of African art at the end of the nineteenth century during the colonial expositions it has been a limitless source of inspiration for artists who, over time, have perpetually recreated these artworks. The power of Sub-Saharan African art lies within its visual diversity, demonstrating the creativity of the artists who are continuing to conceptualize new stylistic forms. From Mauritania to South Africa and from the Ivory Coast to Somalia, statues, masks, jewelry, pottery and tapestries compose a variety of daily and ritual objects springing from these richly varied societies.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781780428833Publication Date: 2012-05-08
Art Appreciation by
Those who love art are guaranteed to further expand their knowledge of this form of expression when using this comprehensive 3-panel (6-page) guide, which examines in detail each type of art--from printmaking to photography--that currently exists. Key definitions, historical periods and lists of well-known art pieces are included for easy access.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781423216339Publication Date: 2011-05-31
Beyond Critique by
Critique has long been a central concept within art practice and theory. Since the emergence of Conceptual Art, artists have been expected by critics, curators, and art school faculty to focus their work on exposing and debunking ideologies of power and domination. Recently, however, the effectiveness of cultural critique has come into question. The appearance of concepts such as the "speculative," the "reparative," and the "constructive" suggests an emerging postcritical paradigm.Beyond Critique takes stock of the current discourse around this issue. With some calling for a renewed criticality and others rejecting the model entirely, the book's contributors explore a variety of new and recently reclaimed criteria for contemporary art and its pedagogy. Some propose turning toward affect and affirmation; others seek to reclaim such allegedly discredited concepts as intimacy, tenderness, and spirituality. With contributions from artists, critics, curators and historians, this book provides new ways of thinking about the historical role of critique while also exploring a wide range of alternative methods and aspirations. Beyond Critique will be a crucial tool for students and instructors who are seeking to think and work beyond the critical.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9781501323454Publication Date: 2017-04-06
The Enigma of Art: on the Provenance of Artistic Creation by
In this book, Gino Zaccaria offers a philosophical meditation on the issue of art in light of its originary sense. He shows how this sense can be fully understood provided that our thinking, on the one hand, returns to the ancient Greek world where it must heed the voice and hints of the goddess Athena, and, on the other hand, listens to "artist-thinkers" close to our current epoch, such as Cézanne, van Gogh and Boccioni. Indeed, the path of this meditation has as its guide the well-known sentence by the painter from Aix-en-Provence, which reads: "Je vous dois la vérité en peinture, et je vous la dirai !". What will finally appear in this way will not be an abstract or historical notion of art, but its enigma; that is to say, the promise of "another initiation" of art itself.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9789004448704Publication Date: 2021-04-30
Theory of the Art Object by
Meaning in the visual arts centers on how the physical work makes its content or presence visible. The art object is fundamental. Indeed, the different object forms of each visual medium allows our experience of space-time, and our relations to other people, to be aesthetically embodied in unique ways. Through these embodiments, visual art compensates for what is otherwise existentially lost, and becomes part of what makes life worth living. The present book shows this by discussing a range of visual art forms, namely pictorial representation, abstraction, sculpture and assemblage works, land art, architecture, photography, and varieties of digital art.
Call Number: OnlineISBN: 9780367209476Publication Date: 2019-08-07
