History & Criticism

Incisive and absorbing, Paris in Ruins captures the shifting passions and politics of the art world, revealing how the siege and the chaos of the Commune had a profound impact on modern art, and how artistic genius can emerge from darkness and catastrophe.

Five women revolutionize the modern art world in postwar America in this "gratifying, generous, and lush" true story from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times)....

Art & Fear explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way....

Have your sense of art history overturned and your eyes opened to many artforms often ignored or dismissed. From the Cornish coast to Manhattan, Nigeria to Japan, this is the history of art as it's never been told before....

This audiobook narrated by best-selling author Mary Beard explores how images of Roman autocrats have influenced art, culture, and the representation of power....

Postmodernism has become the buzzword of contemporary society over the last decade. But how can it be defined? In this highly engaging introduction, the mysteries of this most elusive of concepts are unraveled, casting a critical light upon the way we live now....

We have all seen, whether live, in photographs or on postcards, some of Claude Monet's legendary water lily paintings....

Arriving as a young writer in an ancient Dutch town, Benjamin Moser found himself visiting—casually at first, and then more and more obsessively—the country's great museums....

In this Very Short Introduction audiobook, the renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores the concept of beauty, asking what makes an object beautiful and examining how we can compare differing judgments of beauty when it is evident all around us that our tastes vary so widely....

In this vivid and captivating journey through the colors of an artist’s palette, Victoria Finlay takes us on an enthralling adventure around the world and through the ages, illuminating how the colors we choose to value have determined the history of culture itself....

The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was forty-four years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained to produce a body of radical, abstract works the likes of which had never been seen before....

Michelangelo, God's Architect is the first book to tell the full story of Michelangelo's final two decades, when the peerless artist refashioned himself into the master architect of St. Peter’s Basilica and other major buildings....

Rembrandt Is in the Wind is an invitation to discover some of the world's most celebrated artists and works and how each of them illuminates something about God, people, and the purpose of life....

Poststructuralism changes the way we understand the relations between human beings, their culture, and the world. This Very Short Introduction traces the key arguments that have led poststructuralists to challenge traditional theories of language and culture....

A riveting story of how dueling ambitions and the power of prodigy made America the cultural center of the world—and Picasso the most famous artist alive—in the shadow of World War II....

A wild and unexpected journey through culture, science, philosophy, and religion to better understand the mercurial genius of William Blake....

The award-winning art historian and founder of the Vision & Justice project uncovers a pivotal era in the story of race in the United States when Americans came to ignore the truth about the false foundations of the nation’s racial regime.

Charlotte Mullins brings art to life through the stories of those who created it and, importantly, reframes who is included in the narrative to create a more diverse and exciting landscape of art....

Featuring an enlightening introduction by the book's translator, Michael T. H. Sadler, providing generational and cultural context for Kandinsky and his work, Concerning the Spiritual in Art gives testimony to the mind and creative expression of Kandinsky and other artists of his generation....

First published in 1973, this is a study of the force of photographic images, which are continually inserted between experience and reality....

Jerry Saltz is one of our most-watched writers about art and artists and a passionate champion of the importance of art in our shared cultural life. Since the 1990s he has been an indispensable cultural voice: Witty and provocative, he has attracted contemporary listeners to fine art....

A true historical “detective story” full of insight about how we look at art―and the artists and eras that produced it....

Hot Cold Heavy Light collects 100 writings that taken together form a group portrait of many of the world’s most significant and interesting artists. From Pablo Picasso to Cindy Sherman, Old Masters to contemporary masters, paintings to comix, and saints to charlatans....

A lively and deeply researched group biography of the figures who transformed the world of art in bohemian Paris in the first decade of the 20th century....

Craig Childs bears witness to rock art of the Colorado Plateau—bighorn sheep pecked behind boulders, tiny spirals in stone, human figures with upraised arms shifting with the desert light, each one a portal to the open mouth of time....