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Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation.
E.H. Gombrich · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Hide books by the same authorArt in Theory 1900 - 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas
Charles Harrison, Paul Wood · 1,288 pages
The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry
Walter Pater · 238 pages
Walter Pater’s Studies in the History of the Renaissance was one of the most talked about books in nineteenth-century Britain, and it remains a work of unusual importance to anyone interested in art history or English literature. Pater’s luxurious and finely wrought style inspired generations of writers, and his unique blend of scholarship, philosophy, and personal bias made his view of the quinte
Van Gogh: The Life
Steven Naifeh, Gregory White Smith · 953 pages
After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History
Arthur C. Danto · 272 pages
Concerning the Spiritual in Art
Wassily Kandinsky · 92 pages
A pioneering work in the movement to free art from its traditional bonds to material reality, this book is one of the most important documents in the history of modern art. Written by the famous nonobjective painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), it explains Kandinsky's own theory of painting and crystallizes the ideas that were influencing many other modern artists of the period. Along with his o
The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers
T.J. Clark · 338 pages
Paris in the 1860s and 1870s was supposedly a centre of modern life. This book argues that the art of Manet and his contemporaries was an attempt to give form to that modernity.
History of Beauty
Umberto Eco, Girolamo De Michele · 438 pages
From the Publisher: What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving? So begins Umberto Eco's intriguing journey into the aesthetics of beauty, in which he explores the ever-changing concept of the beautiful from the ancient Greeks to today. While closely examining the development of the visual
Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation
Gilles Deleuze · 209 pages
The Rape of Europa: The Fate of Europe's Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War
Lynn H. Nicholas · 498 pages
A discussion on the theft and collection of great European art in World War 2.
The Power of Art
Simon Schama · 448 pages
Taking eight famous painters and their great masterpieces, this book takes you back to the intense moment in history when these works were conceived and born. In each case the artist is backed into a corner, and given a chance to confound his rivals, enemies and critics.
Rembrandt, 1606-1669: The Mystery of the Revealed Form
Michael Bockemuhl · 96 pages
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Walter Benjamin · 45 pages
"An attempt by literary critic Walter Benjamin to analyze the changed experience of art in modern society."--Page 4 of cover.
From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present
Jacques Barzun · 896 pages
"Highly regarded here and abroad for some thirty works of cultural history and criticism, master historian Jacques Barzun has now set down in one continuous narrative the sum of his discoveries and conclusions about the whole of Western culture since 1500.". "In this account, Barzun describes what Western Man wrought from the Renaissance and Reformation down to the present in the double light of
The Waning of the Middle Ages: A Study of the Forms of Life, Thought and Art in France and the Netherlands in the Dawn of the Renaissance
Johan Huizinga · 344 pages
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy
Jacob Burckhardt, Peter Murray · 462 pages
Jacob Burckhardt was born in 1818 in Basel, Switzerland. He studied history at the University of Berlin and taught art history and the Italian Renaissance in Berlin and Basel. His essay, as he called The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, was first published in 1860. Rich in its detailed account of the arts, fashions, manners, and thought of one of the most innovative eras in human history,
Ways of Seeing
John Berger · 166 pages
How do we see the world around us? The Penguin on Design series includes the works of creative thinkers whose writings on art, design and the media have changed our vision forever."Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak.""But there is also another sense in which seeing comes before words. It is seeing which establishes our place in the surrounding world; we e
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
Ross King · 378 pages
"In 1508, despite strong advice to the contrary, the powerful Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the newly restored Sistine Chapel in Rome. Four years earlier, at the age of twenty-nine, Michelangelo had unveiled his masterful statue of David in Florence; however, he had little experience as a painter, even less working in the delicate medium of fresco, and
Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye
Rudolf Arnheim · 485 pages
Since its first publication in 1954, this work has established itself as a unique classic. It applies the approaches and findings of modern psychology to the study of art: it describes the visual process that takes place when people create- or look at- works in the various arts, and explains how the eye organizes visual material according to definite psychological laws. Fresh in thought, clean in
Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century
Greil Marcus · 496 pages
Explores the avant-garde history of twentieth-century Europe through the lifestyle and music of the Sex Pistols.
A History of the World in 100 Objects
Neil MacGregor · 707 pages
Neil MacGregor's radio series 'A History of the World in 100 Objects' has been a unique event that has set a benchmark for public service broadcasting in the UK and across the world. This book will be the tie-in to that event, reproducing the scripts describing the objects that made us who we are.
The Goldfinch
Donna Tartt · 817 pages
"The Goldfinch is a rarity that comes along perhaps half a dozen times per decade, a smartly written literary novel that connects with the heart as well as the mind....Donna Tartt has delivered an extraordinary work of fiction."--Stephen King, The New York Times Book Review Composed with the skills of a master, The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present day America and a drama of enthra