Table of Contents

Starter Kit.


Introduction.


17. Early Renaissance Art in Europe.
The Renaissance and Humanism. Art of the French Ducal Courts. Art of Flanders. The Spread of the Flemish Style. The Graphic Arts. Art of Italy. The Object Speaks: The Foundling Hospital.

18. Renaissance Art in Sixteenth-Century Europe.
Europe in the Sixteenth Century. The Classical Phase of the Renaissance in Italy. The Renaissance and Reformation in Germany. Late Renaissance Art in Italy. Renaissance Art in France. Renaissance Art in Spain. Renaissance Painting in the Netherlands. Renaissance Art in England. The Object Speaks: Feast in the House of Levi.

19. Baroque Art in Europe and North America.
The Baroque Period. Italy. France. Habsburg Germany and Austria. Habsburg Spain. Spanish Colonies in the Americas. The Southern Netherlands/Flanders. The Northern Netherlands/United Dutch Republic. England. English Colonies in North America. The Object Speaks: Brueghel and Rubens's Sight.

20. Art of India after 1100.
Late Medieval Period. Mughal Period. The Modern Period.

21. Chinese Art after 1280.
The Mongol Invasions. Yuan Dynasty. Ming Dynasty. Qing Dynasty. The Modern Period.

22. Japanese Art after 1392.
Muromachi Period. Momoyama Period. Edo Period. The Meiji and Modern Periods.

23. Art of the Americas after 1300.
Indigenous American Art. Mexico and South America. North America. Other Contemporary Native American Artists. The Object Speaks: Hamatsa Mask.

24. Art of Pacific Cultures.
The Peopling of the Pacific. Australia. Melanesia. Micronesia. Polynesia. Recent Art in Oceania.

25. Art of Africa in the Modern Era.
Traditional and Contemporary Africa. Children and the Continuity of Life. The Spirit World. Leadership. Death and Ancestors. Contemporary Art.

26. Eighteenth-Century Art in Europe and North America.
The Enlightenment and Its Revolutions. The Rococo Style in Europe. Art in Italy. Revivals and Romanticism in Britain. Art in France. Art in North America. The Object Speaks: Georgian Silver.

27. Nineteenth-Century Art in Europe and the United States.
Europe and the United States in the Nineteenth Century. Neoclassicism and Romanticism in France. Romanticism in Spain. Romantic Landscape Painting in Europe. Naturalistic, Romantic, and Neoclassical American Art. Revival Styles in Architecture Before 1850. Early Photography in Europe. New Materials and Technology in Architecture at Midcentury. French Academic Art and Architecture. French Naturalism and Realism and their Spread. Late-Nineteenth-Century Art in Britain. Impressionism. Post Impressionism. Art in the United States. The Object Speaks: Raft of the “Medusa.”

28. The Rise of Modernism in Europe and North America.
Europe and the United States in the Early Twentieth Century. Early Modernist Tendencies in Europe. Cubism in Europe. Early Modernist Tendencies in the United States. Early Modern Architecture. Modernism in Europe Between the Wars. Art and Architecture in the United States Between the Wars. Early Modern Art in Canada. The Object Speaks: Portrait of a German Officer.

29. The International Avant-Garde since 1945.
The World Since 1945. Postwar European Art. Abstract Expressionism. Alternatives to Abstract Expressionism. From Modernism to Postmodernism. Postmodernism. The Object Speaks: The Dinner Party.

Glossary.


Bibliography.


Index.


Credits.

About the Author

Marilyn Stokstad, teacher, art historian, and museum curator, has been a leader in her field for decades and has served as president of the College Art Association and the International Center of Medieval Art. In 2002, she was awarded the lifetime achievement award from the National Women's Caucus for Art. In 1997 she was awarded the Governor's Arts Award as Kansas Art Educator of the Year and an honorary degree of doctor of humane letters by Carleton College. She is Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor Emerita at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. She has also served in various leadership capacities at the University's Spencer Museum of Art and is Consultative Curator of Medieval Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

Reviews

A new eight-pound entry in the one-volume history-of-art battle of the titans, this title competes directly with Gardner's Art Through the Ages (1926; 10th ed., 1996), Janson's History of Art (1962; 5th ed., 1995), Hartt's Art: A History (1976; 4th ed. 1993), and Honour and Fleming's The Visual Arts: A History (1982; 4th ed., 1995). Each comes with hundreds of illustrations of wildly varying quality-Stokstad's are mostly color, mostly adequate-and each attempts to combine the factual density requirements of a survey course textbook with attractive writing and narrative. In addition, at least in the recent editions, each aims to be "inclusive," discussing women and minority artists to some degree. Distinguished art historian Stokstad (Univ. of Kansas) and her coauthors, mostly colleagues, have done a creditable job. Acknowledging straight off that students today lack a deep knowledge of cultural history, Stokstad aims to be "user-friendly," and her book comes replete with a computer-like "starter kit" of definitions, explanatory text boxes on techniques, and some very good explicatory line drawings, usually architectural. Of the five competitors, four are published by Abrams and all are priced within five dollars of one another. Gardner is much more column after column of text, with little relief. Hartt, a Renaissance scholar, and Honour and Fleming, specialists in the Baroque, write with personal voices; Stokstad, a medievalist, also has a pleasant style. This reviewer recommends that libraries stock Honour and Fleming for their excellent writing and clear art historical point of view and Stockstad's work, which is well written, achieves a good balance of narrative and facts, and is the most inclusive. One caveat: The review copy of Stokstad had broken from its casing before arrival.-Jack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Lib.

Destined to establish itself as a modern classic, this hugely informative, wholly enjoyable global history of art from prehistoric times to the present views art as a fundamental, inextricable vehicle for the human spirit. Although Western visual art and architecture receive the most attention, there is also extensive coverage of India, China, Japan, Africa, Islamic art and Pacific cultures. Few texts so wide-rangingly connect the artistic output of each period to the artists' lives, sources of funding and historical, social and political context. The 1625 stunning illustrations (761 in color) are unrivaled in their adventurous selection and quality by any book of this type. Time lines chart parallel developments across cultures and civilizations; inserts spotlight literary and intellectual trends and artists' techniques. Stokstad, art history professor at the University of Kansas, has produced both a college text and a layperson's guide that is more fun than H.W. Janson's standard History of Art, and more multicultural. (Feb.)