The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists, Second Edition is an authoritative and up-to-date guide to Western art from Ancient Greece to the present day. It offers over two thousand entries on painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts, covering not only artists and their work, but also patrons and dealers, collectors and writers, materials and techniques, and museums and galleries. For this new edition much new material has been added on twentieth-century art, including subjects such as Neo-Expressionism and the Turner Prize.
Written in clear, lively prose, this invaluable reference maintains a careful balance between fact and appraisal. In its pages, we encounter artists ranging from Polyclitus of Argos to Leonardo da Vinci, from Grandma Moses to Mary Cassatt, from Max Beckmann to Andy Warhol. Here also are periods and movements, including the Classical period, the Renaissance, the Ancients, Impressionism, the Ash-can School, and Cubism, as well as techniques and styles such as encaustic painting, encarnado, lithography, cabinet painting, and blot drawing.
For this abridgement, Ian Chilvers has retained all of the essential features of the original while adding new entries and eliminating the more peripheral articles. By presenting the information in a pithier format, he is able to focus more sharply on Western and Western-inspired art. The dictionary also provides a very helpful cross-referencing system for names, art media, styles, and terms. Art enthusiasts of every kind will find this entirely reliable and highly readable volume indispensable.
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