Reference works such as biographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, directories, bibliographies, etc. provide useful background information. The Reference Collection is a good place to start your research.
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Reference Materials
The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms by Michael Clarke; Deborah ClarkeFrom Baroque to Postmodernism, batik to mezzotint, and canvas to porcelain, this new dictionary provides succinct and accessible explanations of over 1,800 terms used in the wide variety of visual media that makes up the art world. * Extensive coverage of periods and styles throughout art history* Includes many materials, techniques, technical and foreign terms* Also explains philosophical terms and methodologies
Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art by James Hall; Kenneth ClarkThe understanding and enjoyment of a work of art depends as much on the story it depicts as on the artist's execution of it. But what were once biblical or classical commonplaces are not so readily recognizable today. This book relates in a succinct and readable way the themes, sacred and secular, on which the repertoire of Western art is based. Combined here in a single volume are religious, classical, and historical themes, figures of moral allegory, and characters from romantic poetry that appeared throughout paintings and sculpture in Western art before and after the Renaissance. More than just a dictionary, this text places these subjects in their narrative, historical, or mythological context and uses extensive cross-referencing to enhance and clarify the meanings of these themes for the reader. The definitive work by which others are compared, this volume has become an indispensable handbook for students and general appreciators alike. This wholly redesigned second edition includes a new insert of images chosen by the author, as well as a new preface and index to highlight the ideas, beliefs, and social and religious customs that form the background of much of this subject matter.
ISBN: 0813343933
Publication Date: 2014-03-01
From Expressionism to Post-Modernism Styles and Movements 20TH Century by Jane Turner; Turner JaneThe Grove Dictionary of Art, the award-winning 34-volume set that was launched to critical acclaim in 1996, represents the knowledge of more than 6,800 of the world's leading scholars. It is now the preeminent reference resource for the visual arts. The new GroveART series makes this comprehensive and authoritative art scholarship accessible and affordable to all audiences for the first time. Complete with a multipage color plate section as well as extensive black and white images throughout, each volume in the series will focus on one particularly popular area or period of art history. Broad enough to appeal to the general reader, but thorough enough for the art historian, each book will reflect the depth and excellence of coverage that brought such acclaim to The Grove Dictionary of Art. This century has witnessed an explosion in the number of art movements and schools that have emerged and contemporary artists breaking traditional boundaries. In more than 350 essays, the most popular movements -- Surrealism, Expressionism, and Pop Art -- are discussed alongside recent experiments in new media like video art and environmental art.
ISBN: 0312229763
Publication Date: 2000-05-01
The Oxford Companion to Western Art by Hugh Brigstocke (Editor)This work replaces Harold Osborne's Oxford Companion to Art (1970), which has been continuously in print for thirty years. Though originally commissioned as a new edition of Osborne's book, it is effectively a completely new work, planned and written afresh for new generations of art lovers.Apart from a handful of classic articles by Harold Osborne mainly on aesthetics, and a few others which needed only minor change, the text is entirely new. Unlike Osborne, it focuses on Western art rather than the whole of world art, concentrating primarily on painting, sculpture, and the graphicarts, leaving architecture to be covered separately. With not only a tighter focus but also a greater extent than Osborne's, the new Companion offers far deeper coverage of the subject than previously; it includes many more artists and their works, and also pays proper attention to new topics ofinterest focused on patronage, taste, theory and criticism, materials and techniques, and the new art history. There are over 2600 entries, alphabetically arranged. Almost half of them cover artists, from classical times to the twentieth century. Other entries discuss art styles and movements, art forms (such as battle painting, landscape, caricature, or stained glass), specialist terms, and materials andtechniques in all media. There is strong emphasis on location as a focus for art: not only are there regional and cultural surveys, but also entries on specific places of importance such as Paris or Urbino; and, in addition, entries on museums and galleries are arranged under the their city headwordso that the reader can easily survey the major sites within a particular locality, such as New York, Boston, or Madrid. Patronage receives imaginative treatment: here, rather than focusing on a limited number of individual patrons, the Companion has entries on towns and cities as centres ofpatronage and collecting - such as Nuremberg, Dresden, or Prague. In addition, there is a novel series of entries on the critical fortunes of the art of the major European countries, covering, for example, patronage and collecting of Italian art in France, Spain, Britain, Germany and Central Europe,the USA, and in Italy itself. A further category of entry covers topics in the theory of art, such as iconography, perspective, and synaesthesia; and there is wide-ranging coverage too of art scholarship and criticism from Aristotle and Pausanius to Sartre, Panofsky, and Michel Foucault. All this issupplemented by entries on general topics as varied as reproduction, anatomy, guilds and confraternities, frames, and the conservation and restoration of paintings and sculpture. This is a work for everyone who loves art, whether actively engaged in the subject professionally or as one of the countless amateurs visting sites and cities, galleries, and exhibitions, churches, libraries, country houses, and palaces in pursuit of beauty and cultural enrichment.
ISBN: 0198662033
Publication Date: 2001-11-22
The Oxford Dictionary of Art by Ian Chilvers (Editor)Ideal for students, picture researchers, and enthusiasts of all kinds, this third edition of The Oxford Dictionary of Art reaffirms the unrivalled position held by this authoritative one-volume guide to the art of the western world. It provides a careful balance of fact and critical appraisalranging across painting, sculpture, drawing, and the applied arts from classical times to the present. Almost 3,500 entries provide the reader with instant information, written in succinct and readable prose, about styles, techniques, collections, artists, and historians. Includes a practicalreference section with a fully updated and expanded Chronology, and an Index of Galleries and Museums around the world. There is also a Classified Contents, enabling the reader to search for entries within a particular subject area or period.