What are the best books on understanding Art (in the general sense, not just paintings)

john berger's ways of seeing and mary anne staniszewski's believing is seeing are both fine introductions.
krauss is good. any of the october group is good for modern and contemporary like yve-alain bois and hal foster. the october files series on individual artists is a good way to go for contemporary stuff.

Is this a good book?

Gonna go with the obvious and recommend you Gombrich if you are a total beginner.

Aesthetics is interesting and there's certainly overlap with history of art but they are very different disciplines at their core. Aesthetics is more concerned about the general questions behind art, and discussions of artworks are usually used to further or put into question some assumptions or theories. It's a different approach to art altogether, but a solid grounding in aesthetics can further your knowledge of art history and viceversa.

I posted this same exact thread yesterday and got like two replies before it 404'd.

Here, you can have a (You)

who are some patrician artists to check out? my familiarity is just like picasso and other people youd see going to major museums and not paying attention

what kind of art interests you?

mostly paintings that have an original aesthetic. i like el greco

Klimt, Schiele, Goya, Francis Bacon, Basquiat

Henri Matisse, Gustave Courbet, JMW Turner

manet, matisse, duchamp, klee, katz, richter, kiefer, neel

was at a schiele exhibition a week ago. only interesting if you're a pedo tbqh

A Very Short Introduction: Art Theory

>there are fewer critics than artists

what...

never looked at matisse like this - the blue nudes are dope

that series is so hit or miss, but normally a good intro

schiele is the kind of shit podesta brothers would collect. EU marxists like to praise schiele and call klimt overrated kitsch.

more please

How do I know that I do not get art when I believe I get art.

always assume you're wrong, but less wrong than others

thats what im thinking sort of

This painting always give me ominous feels.

It's really good.

you might like this

there's a scene in Fire Walk With Me involving a painting that it reminds me of

pseud spotted - better renew your donation soon so you can feel rpoud during the next episode of wait wait dont tell me

HUH?!

John Berger – Ways of Seeing.

Absolutely essential

full tv show too: youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk&list=PLlhSx0L1hpaGKfq1qXe1vWUhG1EgIN9Yf

is that a page in the book?

Lucio Fontana, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Giorgio Morandi, Jannis Kounellis, Alberto Giacometti, Isamu Noguchi, Joan Mitchell, Sol LeWitt, Richard Serra

that's the front cover, but the text comes from the first page of the first chapter of the book

Just watched the first episode of that program. Nearly everything he said was some pretty obvious shit.

The Art Spirit

It reads a bit like a self-help book but is much better than say the Inner Game books. It's written by two authors one of which is better than the other. Overall some decent advice if you're going to take art/sculpture/writing/other artistic pursuits seriously but if you're trying to understand aesthetic theory and art fundamentals probably not. Kenny Werner's Effortless Mastery and lectures are very good as well in the advice/mindset category, although his book is about Jazz piano.

What parts of it did you disagree with? I haven't watched it in years, but I remember episode 1 being fairly good while episode 2 started talking about muh feminism and nudes in paintings oppressing women or something.

And? I'd be happy to watch some 'deeper' content if you'd care to link it.

I agree some of the language and explanations are simple, though you have to bear in mind that this was prime time BBC television programming. Benjamin's idea of Reproduction had to be made accessible, so of course there's detail that's filtered. I'd recommend the other episodes too but maybe they're not 2deepenuf4u

No need to take offense, man. It was a pretty decent special and I guess the visuals helped facilitate understanding of the general idea but it's not something I can see being of use to anyone except art majors on Day 1 of class.
Nothing, see above

Watch the lecture series Civilisation with Sir Kenneth Clark, pretty comprehensive history of the development of Western art from the end of Rome to present. There is a book version, but then you miss Clark's soothing narration.
youtube.com/watch?v=w6qYjisp51M

...

Right Honourable not Sir apparently*

was just watching this today. such a great show - have you ever watched any of the new types of this show? have been thinking of it

I think the BBC has gone more pop-science and pop-history, rather than producing unapolagetically high-brow documentaries. There are few people that have the gravitas of Kenneth Clark. Roger Scruton might be the closest thing we have but he often comes off as being bitter and cranky, very unlike Clark's admonishment of "heroic materialism". Scruton's criticisms are very surface level in comparison. Maybe it's the modern distrust of authorities and experts on subjects, but this type of documentary making is pretty rare these days. Incidentally I found this old special from the CBC where Glenn Gould talks about Bach which is well worth a watch.
youtube.com/watch?v=crQ8YEUkUjg

youtube.com/watch?v=A1ax7SD8wk4&list=PLetzdzqx3dNWk9XCxNUJZCVDfElI3Bi_Y&index=10

>That comment section

Christ...

I really liked "The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present" by Eric Kandel.

A bunch of hipsters and pseuds with no discernable talent. I guess it does illustrate everything wrong with the art world.

Some of the scholarship is a little outdated (Skin of Our Teeth) and he also ignores the art of Spain. It is specifically about civilisation though so art isn't the main focus of the show as it includes philosophy and science as well.

Good artists, critical to understanding the transition from modern to post-modern

Hearing it and thinking it is obvious is different from recalling that information when it counts. That being said I've only seen Ways of Seeing once and Civilisation, for comparison, like three or four times.

Camille Paglia is insightful. Her book Glittering Images is great, as is her first book Sexual Personae.

Yeah, any documentary from 50 years ago is bound to be dated in some ways, but is overall a great introduction to Western art. In episode 1 he quotes Ruskin "Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts—the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art." and says he'll be focusing on the book of the art. The history and philosophy is a backdrop to put the art into context because artistic movements don't happen in a vacuum.

We were required to get this in first-year Art History but I'll never know how useful it actually it because we never really used it. Good for a survey course probably but totally inadequate otherwise, I feel. Wasn't even helpful for an introduction to classes on specific periods. I guess it's more of a comparative text.

I mean Gardner's. Art in Theory is very good.

We had to get Janson's history of art but don't remember if it was good or not.

Bumping twice in less than 20 minutes.

Summer is upon us.

what does it mean

surprised nobody said the story of art yet. its an easy but long read. it really gets you started.

to critique art, im not sure. but tysons critical theory today is also an accessible read for how we read and review literature. can usually be applied to other forms of art

Tolstoy wrote a book "What Is Art", which I assume would be a decent starting point.

All books on Art are Formalist babble with negative value.

Your post has negative value

"You’ll never “think up” an idea. We confuse Ideas and thoughts.

This job is not complex. Only the muddle of our minds is complex. The job is simple. If
the time spent before a canvas is unduly long compared to the results achieved, you’ll find
it’s spent digging self out of the way so that the picture can stand forth in all its loveliness.

An idea is not something you “cook up”. It comes to you when your consciousness is
open and receptive. It presents itself. If it is a true idea it has always been true. There is no
such thing as a creative artist. An artist merely expresses that which has always been."

robolus.com/H.Dunn-EveningClassroom.pdf

Are you jealous?

it looks fukn cool. See that blue shin? wanna take a bite mmmm gotta to touch it

cant say it better than this guy a few months ago
warosu.org/lit/thread/S9208885#p9209906
>the best way to truly study is to find a movement you're interested in and work from there. The Art History field is actually quite small, so many movements have their leading experts and seminal works. Once you find something you like, it's very easy to just follow that thread to the next territary movement and keep digging deeper.

>tfw was enjoying gombrichs story of art but got bored during the churches chapter so I dropped it like the peabrained pleb I am

literally all this guy did was paint naked kids and himself skinny as fuck. his 3 landscape paintings are fine but you'd have to have a mental disability to enjoy the rest.

Anders Zorn, Joaquin Sorolla, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam

Venus in Exile by Wendy Steiner

Odd Nerdrum "On Kitsch"
222d127b-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/monicamildredhidayatpdf/home/Odd-Nerdrum-Kitsch-More-than.pdf?attachauth=ANoY7cpyxTnXcBPOfF5lTxuqS82nQ2-JENb6NeSp0U78vVHK_HvF52IsU2Nb47ljsPO-AxHEVA6lZpwb3bsrYaokGGai2STg7fXxhL2gt_whaSYAHsTzuGkSfoZV3I802TR4RjHXNTJd885SKB4QDxDf1m7_pdJyY-1weWZmCv8m5a7bCbGuU9WRo_h9v01A8uSdqUhKtp76tOS1jmWNqPiUN-SkP9FumbpRQnC4piOkGM6cFLJigS_yFGkZY-oDS7MD3uI9jmW8&attredirects=0

Seems bunk

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.
Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,
In fearless youth we tempt the heights of arts,
While from the bounded level of our mind,
Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;
But, more advanced, behold with strange surprise
New distant scenes of endless science rise!
So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,
Mount o'er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,
Th' eternal snows appear already past,
And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:
But, those attained, we tremble to survey
The growing labours of the lengthened way,
Th' increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,
Hills peep o'er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

Hey, that's me. I post in most Art Threads, didn't know the archive worked that well. I won't repeat myself in that case beyond the recommendations I made there.

I keep my old thrift copy on my reference shelf. It's (intentionally) shallow, but a good way to brush up on the exact kind of Freshman Survey broadstrokes of Art History, movements one tends to forget years down the line.

>

I wish there was more Formalist babble, but most are muh Marx (and later muh Foucault) ivory tower theory wanks. Formalism was at its limits anyway, connoisseurship can't engage the broader questions [academia needs to sustain itself]

/comfy/ Rewatched this when I came across some of his papers regardless of >Rilke, not Baudelaire, not Proust the GOAT art historian writer.
Good writer though, enjoyable short stories, rather shit poetry.

See , Gombrich has been crushed, the only value he has these days is demonstrating Formalism in action. Agree with you on Aesthetics, see next:

I have Aesthetics from Classic Greece to Present by Monroe Beardsley. Really great, dives into the source material itself and is very explicit when it cuts the material short or forgoes a deeper study. Don't let that fool you, it's dense. I'm still wading through Saint Augustine myself. Good rec.

I'm a big fan of Berger. Not that he says anything particularly profound, nor does the show do a great job of communicating anything beyond that, but Berger is great because he reminds me why I got into art in the first place. He's really optimistic about art, and his writing itself is very unacademic, lyrical even. His essays particularly are really grounded in the personal experience of seeing a (>)beautiful work and the influence a work or a movement can have on individuals and ideas on a human level. He has critical work too, that has actual theoretical merit even, although most of these ideas are retroactively obvious now. After burying myself in academic theory for years, Berger is really refreshing and comforting. He never loses sight of the human element in work. I'd recommend the 'Moment of Cubism' for a good insight into his way of thinking. Solid theory work that is still grounded in real life. It's in his last book, Landscapes, but probably findable online too.

Odd Nerdrum is one of the greatest living figurative painters and also one of the most original. Not sure why you would reject his thoughts on art without reading it.

kitsch

(You) Forgot to rec a few publishers. October books, MIT Press's imprint consistently publishes good to amazing work in paperback, currently working through Johnathan Crary's Suspensions of Perception (which you can find in full online). Also: University of Chicago Press, Verso (Berger, by wary contemporary 'pop' theory), Cambridge University Press, Paul Holberton Publishing. By wary of museum imprints and catalogue books, at least see if you can read them in a library (try your look museum before your public variety) before you drop the $60+ on a textbook, reproduction quality is worth paying for, but vary wildly even from quality publishers.

Why would someone subject themselves to an entire book on Kitsch when the can just read the (blatantly flawed and biased as it is, even by his admission) Clement Greenberg article and subsequent responses? Seems like such a painfully banal subject to read in depth, though I study landscape art, I have nothing to talk about. Were you the user from the deskilling thread? Enjoyed your articulation of points, though I don't share your taste in this work.

do you know malraux "voices of silence"? is it marxist or wtf did this nigga want?

FUCK jeff koons

Thanks for the write up on Berger. I've only read Ways of Seeing, but I really enjoyed his writing style, as you say, the balance of theory is something he gets perfect (for me personally anyway). I've actually bought Landscapes but haven't got around to reading it. I'll make sure it's next on my list.

No problem, he's been a favorite of mine for years. I'd recommend getting his Selected Essays collection, has a 'best of' from virtually all of his other published work, some 600 pages worth. Finished Landscapes during a holiday trip before he passed, being his last work, his age, and comfort in it really came across, as did his optimism. Being a collection, has a few un (and re) published old works as well Was a very comfy book.

you literally can't think art without thinking form, kiddo

Read some Heidegger my dude

mfw

It was a long time since I read it, but I believe his premise is that attempting to bring back classicism/realism is going to be considered kitsch by the art establishment, and allowing yourself to be put into that category gives you freedom to explore topics that have themselves been put into the category of kitsch.

Yeah that was me in the last art thread, well spotted. Have a landscape.

>needing a book to understand art
You will gain understanding by becoming the artist, not the crtitic.

The poetics of space by bachelard
The art spirit by robert henry
Proust
Deleuzes books on cinema
I also found Paul Vrilios Vision machine to be quite enlightening
The new testament