The very title of this book will probably offend serious art lovers as well as the cover art that strains to imitate Magritte. But don't be fooled by the packaging in this case. This is a fine little volume that covers an enormous variety of paintings through time and is designed in a format that places one painting per page (though the page are not large) with an accompanying commentary on the painting, the artist, the historical content and some astute remarks by a staff of well informed writers.
Ancient paintings as well as contemporary paintings are in this collection of 'must sees' and actually each of the selections could well qualify for the designation of the title. What the book does not do is provide a travelogue to guide the reader to the locations of each of the works, but it does present a survey of great art, succinctly distilled in well chosen word descriptions, that proves t be a valuable introduction to the works considered by many to be the great moments in art history. This would be a fine book for young or new art lovers, a volume that would interest those who fear the magnitude of the realm of art history here made accessible - like cliff notes! A great idea for a gift - for other and for your own library. Grady Harp, September 07 1001 Paintings You Must See Before You Die
The concept behind this book is an intriguing one: If you had seen most of the best paintings in the world, which 1001 would you recommend that others see if at all possible? My initial reaction was that there probably aren't 1001 paintings that I would recommend to everyone else.
With that perspective in mind, I first read through the book to identify which paintings would be on my list. I came up with 72. Almost all of those were on my mental list when I started reading the book. I was also missing about 100 of my favorites, but few of the artists were omitted. So if I had been new to paintings and became familiar with the 65 artists who did the 72 paintings, I would have eventually uncovered almost all of the other 100. That experience confirmed my impression that this book would be of most value to those who have seen relatively few great paintings and want to get a sense of what they like.
The images were quite well done for such small reproductions. Most paintings are represented on one page (a few are two to a page) with the minimum size being about one inch by two inches. But the printing was done well enough that you get a decent idea of the painting. I have seen more than 600 of these works in person and found that the reproductions often looked better than the originals: So don't be too disappointed when you see the real thing. Naturally, others look at lot better in person: You cannot capture the Sistine Chapel's paintings very well in a small image, for example.
The nice surprise for me was to find that the book contains works from private collections, several of which were new to me. This made me feel like I was visiting a blockbuster traveling show, especially when the works were by some of my favorite artists.
One of the most impressive aspects of the book was its equal emphasis over 1400 to the present with some representation even earlier than that. As a result, you get a good cross-section of different styles among Western artists (other artists are underrepresented, as they are in major Western museums).
Those who want to travel to see these works will be pleased to see that their locations are noted. There is a missed opportunity to index the works by museum to make trip planning easier. But most good museums today have extensive online catalogs of images that you can scan to plan what you want to see in advance. Simply jot down museums you should visit, but haven't been to yet. Then go online to see which art there will appeal to you.
I would love to see someone take this same concept and apply it to each century of paintings, sculptures, and graphic art.
Take a good look!
An enormous, beautifully compiled collection of artwork whose title I couldn't agree with more. Filled with easily digested insights into some of the greatest artwork in history, this almost 1000-page book is great for people only mildly interested in art or for serious art-core types.
The pictures are lovely and there's just enough text to get you interested in someone new (or old) at every turn.
I bought this book based on the reviews here, I thought the book was pretty good.
My main problem was with the size of the images. Someone here said most images are one to a page, or two to a page... and that the smallest images are an inch by an inch.
I'd expected all the images to be a lot bigger. Many of the images, maybe even 25% - 50% weren't much bigger than an inch by an inch. This is a real problem if you are looking at the book as an artist and want to see how the brushstrokes were made a little bit etc. at least on some of them. But the images were too small for this, and no detail views were shown (except a very smalll number at the start of each section).
I found it really hard to look at all the small images and take in the painting properly too. Many were just too small for me.
I'd rather have had less white space and 30% bigger images, this could easily have been done without sacrificing much text or design quality. (The cover art was awful too!)
I also bought '1000 Masterpieces of European Painting: From 1300 to 1850' at the same time and this book was so much better at having larger images and showing details than this book (despite the book being far SMALLER and having far less pages than this one too!). It had a nicer feel too, the arrangement of the images and text was far less uniform than in this book and therefore much more interesting. It did have less white space but was actually far more elegant despite this.
The selection of images seemed very good though (despite the bad graphic design of the book) and it was well-made. It weights an absolute TON but then it would! - Art Education - Art Guide - 1001lists - Art History'
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