E-Book Overview
What do we mean when we call a work of art "beautiful"? How have artists responded to changing notions of the beautiful? Which works of art have been called beautiful, and why? Fundamental and intriguing questions to artists and art lovers, but ones that are all too often ignored in discussions of art today. Elizabeth Prettejohn argues that we simply cannot afford to ignore these questions. Charting over two hundred years of western art, she illuminates the vital relationship between our changing notions of beauty and specific works of art, from the works of Kauffman to Whistler, Ingres to Rosetti, Cezanne to Pollack. Beautifully illustrated with 100 photographs--60 in full color--Beauty and Art concludes with a challenging question for the future: Why should we care about beauty in the twenty-first century?
E-Book Content
Beauty and Art 1750–2000 Oxford History of Art Elizabeth Prettejohn is Professor of Modern Art at the University of Plymouth, and was formerly Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery. She is co-author of the exhibition catalogues Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sir Lawrence AlmaTadema, and Imagining Rome: British Artists and Rome in the Nineteenth Century; author of The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites, Interpreting Sargent, and Rossetti and His Circle; and editor of After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England and (with Tim Barringer) Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity. Oxford History of Art Titles in the Oxford History of Art series are up-to-date, fully illustrated introductions to a wide variety of subjects written by leading experts in their field. They will appear regularly, building into an interlocking and comprehensive series. In the list below, published titles appear in bold. WESTERN ART Archaic and Classical Greek Art Robin Osborne Classical Art From Greece to Rome Mary Beard & John Henderson Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph Jas Elsner Early Medieval Art Lawrence Nees Medieval Art Veronica Sekules Art in Renaissance Italy Evelyn Welch Northern European Art Susie Nash Early Modern Art Nigel Llewellyn Art in Europe 1700–1830 Matthew Craske Modern Art 1851–1929 Richard Brettell After Modern Art 1945–2000 David Hopkins Contemporary Art WESTERN ARCHITECTURE Greek Architecture David Small Roman Architecture Janet Delaine Early Medieval Architecture Roger Stalley Medieval Architecture Nicola Coldstream Renaissance Architecture Christy Anderson Baroque and Rococo Architecture Hilary Ballon European Architecture 1750–1890 Barry Bergdoll Modern Architecture Alan Colquhoun Contemporary Architecture Anthony Vidler Architecture in the United States Dell Upton WORLD ART Aegean Art and Architecture Donald Preziosi & Louise Hitchcock Early Art and Architecture of Africa Peter Garlake African Art John Picton Contemporary African Art Olu Oguibe African-American Art Sharon F. Patton Nineteenth-Century American Art Barbara Groseclose Twentieth-Century American Art Erika Doss Australian Art Andrew Sayers Byzantine Art Robin Cormack Art in China Craig Clunas East European Art Jeremy Howard Ancient Egyptian Art Marianne Eaton-Krauss Indian Art Partha Mitter Islamic Art Irene Bierman Japanese Art Karen Brock Melanesian Art Michael O’Hanlon Mesoamerican Art Cecelia Klein Native North American Art Janet Berlo & Ruth Phillips Polynesian and Micronesian Art Adrienne Kaeppler South-East Asian Art John Guy Latin American Art WESTERN DESIGN Twentieth-Century Design Jonathan Woodham Design in the USA Jeffrey L. Meikle Nineteenth-Century Design Gillian Naylor Fashion Christopher Breward PHOTOGRAPHY The Photograph Graham Clarke American Photography Miles Orvell Contemporary Photography WESTERN SCULPTURE Sculpture 1900–1945 Penelope Curtis Sculpture Since 1945 Andrew Causey THEMES AND GENRES Landscape and Western