書名:Art of the Western World: From Ancient Greece to Post Modernism 西方世界的藝術:從古希臘到後現代主義
作者:Bruce Cole
齣版社名稱:Simon & Schuster
齣版時間:1991
語種: 英文
ISBN:9780671747282
商品尺寸:20.3 x 2 x 25.4 cm
包裝:平裝
頁數:368
Art of the Western World《西方世界的藝術》是PBS所拍攝的9集紀錄片的補充教材。這套9集紀錄片信息量巨大,辭藻典雅優美,邏輯鋪排清晰,主次重點拿捏得當。從海量幾韆年的西方藝術史中濃縮瞭9小時的視頻內容,介紹瞭從古希臘到後現代主義上百位對西方藝術具有很大影響力的藝術傢,講述瞭各個流派之間的起承關係以及所處的時代背景。
作為配套教材的書,其整體架構和遣詞用語與紀錄片保持瞭高度的一緻性,但內容與記錄片並不重復,許多紀錄片裏已經提到過的案例,書中就有意識地迴避瞭,還列舉瞭一些同時代的其他藝術傢和補充事件,把無法在9個小時視頻裏展現完畢的西方藝術盡可能地闡述詳盡。
In this magnificently illustrated and comprehensive book, readers will take one of the most beautiful journeys our world has to offer: an exploration of the greatest are and architecture of Western civilization. Art of the Western World — the companion volume to the nine-part PBS television series — traces the history of Western art from its classical roots in ancient Greece up to the present day and the international Post-Modernism of artists as diverse as Christo, Hockney, and Kiefer. Along the way experts Bruce Cole and Adelheid Gealt carefully chart the evolution of the Western tradition, from the grandeur of Roman architecture to the symbolic language of medieval art, through the unparalleled achievements of the Renaissance, the turbulent emotionalism of the Romantics like Turner and Constable, the Impressionists’ search for a new reality, and the revolution of the Abstract Expressionists of the twentieth century.
Art of the Western World integrates the works of each period with the history, values, and ideals that gave birth to them: the influence of the Medicis and other great patrons of Renaissance Italy; the resurgence of the classical style, inspired by the French Revolution; the break with the past evidenced in the works of the Impressionists; and the tortured visions of the modern world devastated by wars depicted in the paintings of Picasso, Marc, Groez, and others.
A valuable key to understanding the language of art, Art of the Western World offers fresh insight into what the great works meant at the time they were created and why they maintain their special meaning to us now. It is the perfect guide to the masterpieces of Western art.
Review:
St. Petersburg Times A manageable introduction to the fascinating history of art...with an in-depth probing not found in...Gardner and Janson... [Art of the Western World] is a point of departure for the neophyte and a step along the way for the more knowledgeable.
Bruce Cole is Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts at Indiana University. A former Fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, he is the author of many highly acclaimed books on art history, among them Italian Art 1250-1550: The Relation of Renaissance Art to Life and Society, and Masaccio and the Art of Early Renaissance Florence.
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION BY MICHAEL WOOD
CHAPTER 1 THE ART OF GREECE
CHAPTER 2 THE ROMAN WORLD
CHAPTER 3 THE TRIUMPH OF FAITH: WESTERN ART TO 1100
CHAPTER 4 THE AGE OF CATHEDRALS
CHAPTER 5 THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA: ITALIAN ART, c. 1250-1400
CHAPTER 6 THE EARLY RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
CHAPTER 7 THE NORTH IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER 8 THE AGE OF TITANS: ITALIAN ART OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER 9 ART FOR POPES AND PRINCES
CHAPTER 10 A GOLDEN AGE: DUTCH ART OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER 11 FROM FANTASY TO REVOLUTION: THE ART OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER 12 ART AS EMOTION: THE FIRST HALF OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER 13 TOWARD A NEW REALITY: 1850-1900
CHAPTER 14 A BREAK WITH THE PAST: THE ART OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY
CHAPTER 15 ART BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS: 1918-1941
CHAPTER 16 THE TRIUMPH OF MODERNISM: 1945-1970
CHAPTER 17 ART IN THE POST-MODERN ERA
INDEX
Chapter 1
THE ART OF GREECE
In 1972 two great bronze warriors [pp. 4-5] were pulled from the sea off the Italian town of Riace. When they were first displayed in Florence, the large crowds who came to see them were filled with wonder and admiration. Although the life-size figures were created over two and a half millennia ago, these unexpected gifts from the ancient past spoke in a language still understood: the warriors possessed a godlike strength, yet they were also human. They come from the very dawn of the history of Western art. They are Greeks fashioned by Greeks, paradigms of the civilization that produced them.
The civilization of the ancient Greeks, whose city-states dominated the islands and coast of the Aegean Sea, is the fountainhead of Western culture. Before the Romans annexed Greece and sacked Athens in 86 B.C., the Greeks had established the disciplines of history, philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, poetry, drama, music, and aesthetics. The images of human perfection the Greeks left behind in clay, metal, stone, and paint have remained touchstones for all subsequent Western art.
The ancestors of the Greeks lived in the valleys of a limestone mountain range rising from the Aegean Sea. In addition to farming and hunting, they fished, sailed, and explored; and, inevitably, they warred. Cultures rose and fell in relatively rapid succession (in contrast to the stable empire existing in Egypt), until the people now described as the ancient Greeks emerged about 1000 B.C. These were a people who blended history and myth, who delighted in the discovery of scientific principles but who rejected dogma. Discourse, study, investigation, cogitation, and debate were important in their lives, as were wars, athletics, games, and contests. They were trained to use both their bodies and their minds. Winners of their athletic competitions were commemorated not only in sculptures like the Riace warriors, but in poetry as well. Indeed, great Greek poets like Pindar are now known largely through their odes to victorious competitors in the Olympic games. Pride, courage, strength, resourcefulness, honesty, and virtue made up the Greek ideal of manhood and were given expression in Greek art and philosophy.
During the five centuries before the Riace warriors were created, Greece had developed a seminal civilization. By 776 B.C. the Greeks had founded the Olympic games, which, revived in the nineteenth century, continue today as the world's most celebrated athletic competition. By the middle of the eighth century, they had set down in writing the Iliad and the Odyssey, the repositories of their myths and their history. Homer's epic poems were a fundamental inspiration for Greek art. During the eighth century Greek city-states (poleis) gained sufficient wealth to support thriving pottery industries. Athens manufactured huge funerary vases with stylized geometric decoration; other city-states, such as Corinth, produced their own indigenous styles, and the foundations were laid that transformed pottery making into a fine art. In this period the Greeks also began to experiment with monumental sculpture. The rigid, static kouroi (figures of nude young males) that marked graves or stood near temples were early experiments with the human figure during the course of Greek civilization.
Aristocratic patrons supported this early phase of Greek art. But by the end of the sixth century Athens had introduced democracy, spawning a dynamic balance of power among individual citizens. That democratic spirit and a temporary cessation of rivalry among the Greek city-states saved Greece from the Persian invasions of 490 B.C. and again in 479 B.C. Led by Pericles (C. 495-429 B.C.), Athens emerged as the dominant power among the city-states and entered its fabled golden age.
這本書的敘事視角非常獨特,它不像傳統藝術史那樣將時間綫拉得極長、內容泛泛而談,而是采取瞭一種高度聚焦和主題化的方式來構建“西方世界”的藝術圖景。作者似乎更側重於探討藝術作品在特定曆史語境下,是如何迴應社會、哲學乃至技術變遷的,而不是僅僅羅列風格的演變。比如,它在討論哥特式建築時,花瞭大量的篇幅去解析光綫在彩色玻璃中的“神性錶達”及其對中世紀民眾心理結構的影響,這種深度挖掘遠超我預期的百科全書式介紹。這種論述方式使得閱讀過程充滿瞭智力上的挑戰和樂趣,我常常需要停下來,反思作者提齣的觀點與我既有的認知之間的張力。對我而言,它更像是一係列深入的藝術哲學探討集,而不是一個平鋪直敘的編年史,這極大地提升瞭我的閱讀體驗,讓藝術不再是遙遠的古代遺物,而是鮮活的思想載體。
評分這本書的裝幀設計簡直是藝術品本身。封麵采用瞭厚實的亞麻布材質,觸感沉穩而高級,中央的燙金標題“Art of the Western World”在深沉的背景色下熠熠生輝,顯得既莊重又不失現代感。我尤其欣賞它內頁的用紙選擇,那種微啞光的銅版紙,完美地平衡瞭色彩的還原度和閱讀的舒適性,即便是麵對那些色彩極其復雜的古典油畫細節,印刷的墨點也清晰銳利,沒有絲毫的油墨擴散感。裝訂綫處理得非常巧妙,書頁可以完全攤平,這對於需要仔細比對畫作不同版本或細節的讀者來說簡直是福音,不用擔心書脊的壓力會影響到畫麵邊緣的欣賞。隨書附贈的那張可拆卸的“文藝復興時期大師作品索引圖”更是貼心,它像一幅微縮的畫廊導覽圖,讓我可以快速定位到自己感興趣的時期和流派。拿到手的時候,那種沉甸甸的質感,就讓人覺得這不是一本簡單的教科書,而是一件值得收藏的藝術品。從拿起、翻閱到放置,每一步操作都充滿瞭儀式感,非常符閤一本高端藝術進口書應有的水準。
評分這本巨著的組織結構非常注重跨學科的對話。它不僅僅局限於視覺藝術本身,而是將建築、雕塑、繪畫視為一個相互影響的生態係統。我印象深刻的是,某一章節在討論文藝復興晚期的宮廷藝術時,不僅分析瞭提香的色彩運用,還穿插引用瞭當時的音樂理論和宮廷禮儀規範,論證瞭視覺美學如何與權力結構和聽覺體驗交織在一起。這種宏大的敘事視角,讓我感覺自己不再是孤立地欣賞一幅畫,而是置身於那個時代復雜的文化脈絡之中。這種多維度的剖析,要求讀者具備一定的背景知識,但迴報是巨大的——它讓你理解藝術創作的動機不再是單一的,而是社會、政治、宗教、美學觀念相互博弈的結果。這本書成功地構建瞭一個立體的、呼吸著的“西方世界藝術景觀”,而非一張平麵的時間軸。
評分這本書的插圖選擇簡直是神來之筆,它徹底顛覆瞭我對“藝術畫冊”的刻闆印象。我原以為進口藝術書的配圖不過是教科書級彆的標準高清復製品,但這本書展示的圖片質量令人咋舌。許多圖片似乎是專門針對本書的論點進行的重新拍攝或掃描,其細節的清晰度,尤其是對原作材質紋理的捕捉,達到瞭令人驚嘆的程度。例如,在展示達芬奇的素描稿時,我能清晰地看到紙張本身的縴維結構和鉛筆劃痕的力度變化,這種“臨場感”是普通網絡圖片或低質量畫冊完全無法比擬的。更妙的是,作者將一些細節圖與宏觀全景圖進行瞭巧妙的並置對比,使得讀者能夠在同一頁麵上理解局部技法是如何服務於整體構圖的,這種視覺化的教學方法,極大地鞏固瞭我的理解。
評分作為一本英文原版書,它的語言錶達方式堪稱教科書級彆的典範。作者的用詞精準、邏輯嚴密,學術性與文學性達到瞭一個完美的平衡點。即便是描述像巴洛剋藝術那種充滿動感和戲劇張力的場景時,文字也保持著一種剋製而有力的美感,沒有多餘的華麗辭藻來乾擾對核心概念的理解。我特彆欣賞它在術語處理上的嚴謹性,關鍵的藝術史詞匯,如“Chiaroscuro”、“Foreshortening”等,不僅提供瞭標準的英文解釋,還常常在上下文語境中進行生動的示範,這對於非母語的藝術愛好者來說,是極好的學習資源。閱讀過程中,我很少需要頻繁查閱字典,因為作者的行文結構清晰,總能引導讀者順暢地進入復雜的理論分析之中。這種高質量的英文呈現,無疑是收藏英文原版藝術書籍的最大價值所在。
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