“The Art Book” (Phaidon)

I don’t think this is necessarily the type of book that’s meant to be read cover-to-cover. It’s kind of a coffee-table-style book (though my copy was a small paperback) and I think of those as books to flip through or dip into occasionally. However, perhaps due in large part to my completist tendencies, I really wanted to read it straight through, so that’s what I did (though admittedly I took my time with it—kind of like a book of short stories, the format is well-suited to picking it up and putting it down as time allows). Right down to the glossaries in the back!

The book has a one-page entry on 500 different artists, showing a representative work by each, with a few short paragraphs of facts about the artist’s life and style. It’s organized alphabetically by the artist’s name. It doesn’t include every artist I’ve ever beard of (no Henk Chabot, August Macke or Grandma Moses) but all the big ones are there (and lots I don’t remember hearing of before). 

Alphabetical order often resulted in an odd juxtaposition...

On the very next page, you would see this.

On one page, you would see this . . . 

I found myself wishing I could rearrange the book using a variety of different categories: by the date each work was created, by nationality of the artist, by artistic movement, etc. I don’t think I would have wanted to read an electronic version of this book... but it would have been convenient to have an electronic version I could restructure at will.  

Unfortunately I must admit I probably didn’t retain much of what I read here. It’s a broad (albeit shallow) wealth of art history which should have really enriched my knowledge of art, but I would probably fail a test based on this book. So I’ll just have to be glad I don’t have to take a test, and focus on the fact that I enjoyed reading it.