The World of Art, by Sandra A. Forty

In many ways, this book tries to have the best of multiple worlds.  The art contained in this book is mostly painted by dead European men, but the introduction to the art by the author laments the rarity of art by women or by non-Western artists, although the few pieces contained here by Japanese and Indian artists are immensely beautiful.  Likewise, the author starts the work in the High Middle Ages but a significant portion of the book consists of 20th century art of very mixed quality and type–sadly, although the introduction discusses the naive art of Grandmother Moses, the book contains none of her charming paintings.  The book is designed for those with an interest in art history [1], and also appears to encourage an interest in the value of art by encouraging tourism and further art reading.  The book appears to be somewhat ideal, apart from its massive size, to be a textbook for an art appreciation class where memorization of the paintings and their artists and other details would be sought after.

The contents of this book are immensely straightforward.  Opening with an essay on art history where the author acknowledges the lack of balance in the collection of paintings and drawings that follow–it should be noted at the outset that the book itself does not examine trends in sculpture and other visual arts, except that there are some posters and other examples of graphic art in the 20th century section towards the end of the book–the author then includes, on large pages at least 11 x 17 in size, a chronologically organized set of art that is either Western or contained in Western collections that range from about 1200AD to the middle of the 20th century.  The collections contain a great deal of art in various categories, but they are organized strictly by relative chronology, so that one can see a relatively late example of religious art from a Russian perspective before seeing an example of surrealistic art on the next page.  There are so many paintings that one can get a sense of the patterns of art and artists, whether one is looking at famous examples of art like Da Vinci’s Last Supper or Mona Lisa or the obscure but lovely look at a Punjab village or the self-portrait of a largely unknown but skilled woman painter, and there are a lot of patterns that one can see, not all of them praiseworthy.  Additionally, there is a fair amount of information included about the paintings, including its artist (or who it is attributed to), the title of the work, when it was painted, the birthplace and deathplace of the artist, and his (or her) life span, the type of painting (like oil on panel), as well as the location of the painting today and where the reproduction comes from.

There are some obvious takeaways from a book like this.  One is that among Western art collections, it is a lot more popular to paint the remains of an officer’s feast or extravagant still life than the dining of peasants, to paint castles than to paint hovels, to paint odalisques and exotic scenes than to feature the works of Eastern and Middle Eastern artists, a lot more popular to paint artistic female nudes than to promote and patronize the art of women.  None of these are necessarily all that surprising, nor is the fact that artists even now attain a certain amount of fame and credit by painting well known celebrities and elites.  There is information that many people would want to know that this book does not contain, including the names of the people who modeled for the paintings.  It is striking to see so many different interpretations of the four seasons, most of them with women as models, as well as a variety of naked or almost naked women and children for various works on the Madonna and child from a Catholic or Orthodox perspective.  Given the similarity of subject matter in many of the paintings–unhappy children, exotic or exciting landscapes, wealthy elites, and the like, it is striking to see how the same subjects can be conceived of in different ways by different artists at different times.

[1] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/07/01/the-number-seventy-two/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/book-review-the-return-of-the-prodigal-son/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/03/28/book-review-lit-by-the-sun/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/03/16/on-the-page-theres-a-detailed-drawing-and-on-the-drawing-is-the-name-i-took/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/03/17/petr-xpi-me-fecit/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/nostalgia-for-an-imagined-past/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/my-hands-are-small-i-know/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/thomas-kinkades-sentimental-journey/