Art of the Twentieth Century - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 3822885762 ISBN 13: 9783822885765

Publisher: Taschen America Llc, 1998

Synopsis

An undertaking as immensely ambitious as this one deserves our attention before we even open one of its stunningly illustrated and argued twin volumes. For what Ingo Walther and his international team have done is to make sense of this most explosive of artistic centuries. Who could possibly have forecast on New Year's Eve 1899 that, one hundred years later, painting and sculpture would be only options, not prerequisite disciplines for modern artists, constantly questioning both the technical and thematic definitions of their work? The infinite laboratory of experiment that the visual arts have become over the last decades highlights not only the inherent potential for human creativity and representation, but also shows the way individuals and groups have responded to the huge social, political and technological changes of this most turbulent of times. Ranging across the full spectrum of disciplines available, including photography and new media, and thematically chaptered to highlight relationships between works and movements, this readable and encyclopaedic masterwork does just what it says on the cover. Whether you want Surrealism or Land Art, Fluxus or Bauhaus, your art book purchases can stop once you buy this. Warning: it will not fit on your coffee table!

About this title

Review:

This exhaustive look at a long century of art making and art questioning is, understandably, more broad than it is deep. A massive, boxed, two-volume set, it's divided into sections on painting, sculpture, new media (performance art, video art, earth art, etc.), and photography, with a 150-page biographical appendix of all of the 780 artists whose works are illustrated in the main sections of the book. The original German text, written by a team of writers and art historians, has been fluidly translated by John William Gabriel. The authors are very much of their own time and place: there are more works from after World War II than before it, and many more German artists--including mediocre and derivative ones--make the cut than if the book had been written by, say, an English or a French team. In fact, the English seem slightly shortchanged here. William Tucker, still a vital influence, is represented by a 1967 minimal sculpture and a four-word mention, and painter Howard Hodgkin is omitted entirely. And while American sculptor-entrepreneur Jeff Koons is given more than his due, the thoughtful and significant Rachel Whiteread is not mentioned at all. But Art of the Twentieth Century is an unquestionably useful reference guide to a period that swings dramatically from the impressionists all the way to Nam June Paik.

About the Author:

Ingo F. Walther was born in Berlin and studied medieval studies, literature, and art history in Frankfurt am Main and Munich. He has published numerous books on the art of the Middle Ages and of the 19th and 20th centuries, including TASCHEN's Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, and Codices illustres.

About this edition

• Publisher: Taschen America Llc
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 3822885762
• ISBN 13: 9783822885765
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 840
• Editor: Walther Ingo F., Ruhrberg Karl, Schneckenburger Manfred, Fricke Christiane, Honnef Klaus