Paper reprint of a 1987 work.

A clear and concise overview of the fundamentals shared by visual arts across the globe, enabling the reader to think carefully, inquisitively, and critically about art. The visual arts enrich our lives in so many ways, presenting beauty, emotion, and ideas—but sometimes looking at art is confusing and challenging. This new volume in the Art Essentials series, How to Understand Art, sets out to enhance the viewer’s experience by breaking down the elements of art to provide a firm basis for simple enjoyment as well as further understanding. With one hundred visual examples drawn from across the globe, the emphasis is on how to assess art objectively—a key skill for any art student, museum visitor, or cultural enthusiast. Art historian and museum lecturer Janetta Rebold Benton teaches the reader to reevaluate their experiences of looking at art by learning to move beyond “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like,” toward an understanding of “why I like it.” By looking at artists’ materials and techniques, such as drawing, painting, printing, photography, sculpture, and decorative art, Benton makes it possible to assess what can (and cannot) be done in certain media. With these tools at hand, it’s possible to break down any work of art. Further framing the lesson, there is a section devoted to six key artists that have had a particularly notable and innovative influence on the history of art. Perfectly aimed at students and the general reader, this indispensable guide encourages everyone to develop confidence in experiencing, analyzing, and appreciating art.

Lessons, demonstrations, definitions, and tips on what to expect in art school, what it means to make art, and how to think like an artist. What is the first thing to learn in art school? “Art can be anything.” The second thing? “Learn to draw.” With 101 Things to Learn in Art School, artist and teacher Kit White delivers and develops such lessons, striking an instructive balance between technical advice and sage concepts. These 101 maxims, meditations, and demonstrations offer both a toolkit of ideas for the art student and a set of guiding principles for the artist. Complementing each of the 101 succinct texts is an equally expressive drawing by the artist, often based on a historical or contemporary work of art, offering a visual correlative to the written thought. “Art can be anything” is illustrated by a drawing of Duchamp's famous urinal; a description of chiaroscuro art is illuminated by an image “after Caravaggio”; a lesson on time and media is accompanied by a view of a Jenny Holzer projection; advice about surviving a critique gains resonance from Piero della Francesca's arrow-pierced Saint Sebastian. 101 Things to Learn in Art School offers advice about the issues artists confront across all artistic media, but this is no simple handbook to making art. It is a guide to understanding art as a description of the world we live in, and it is a guide to using art as a medium for thought. And so this book belongs on the reading list of art students, art teachers, and artists, but it also belongs in the library of everyone who cares about art as a way of understanding life.

Help children think critically about art and learn an appreciation for the old masters. Kids will love this collection of thought provoking paintings!

Welcome to the School of Art! Here you will learn how to make great art with this fully-illustrated collection of fun and informative lessons. Follow the five professors as they work togetherto deliver 40 demonstrations - each one accompanied by a guided activity for you to try at home - to help you to understand the basics of art and design, including composition, color, line, shape, and perspective. - See more at: http://quartoknows.com/books/9781847807007/The-School-of-Art.html?direct=1#sthash.alslhwv7.dpuf

Choosing ten symbols from the natural world (the sun, the shell, the bird) and ten man-made (the window, the book, the mirror), Françoise Barbe-Gall illuminates our understanding of how these have been used and developed in art from the fifteenth to the twenty-first century, with sixty-eight wonderfully vivid examples. Painting has always made abundant use of forms and objects to convey abstract ideas: love, hope for eternal life, loyalty or betrayal. These recurring motifs, which were familiar to many in the past, have mostly become mysterious to the audiences of today. Today's art-lover will have to learn to look out for all the small things that can so easily seem like unimportant details, or simply decoration. But a flower, a reflection in a mirror or a bird in flight nearly always mean more than they first appear to. From Holbein's apple of knowledge to the black cat at the foot of Manet's Olympia, from Magritte's mysterious candles to Georgia O'Keeffe's flowers, this book shows how each work makes use of the language of symbols in an original and more meaningful way.

A colorful guided tour from an expert, enabling weavers, textile lovers, and art lovers to notice and appreciate what tapestries can do and how they do it. This guide from expert tapestry weaver and historian Sidore gives how-to strategies enabling weavers and nonweavers to notice and appreciate the meaning of these artworks. You'll discover much to enjoy in photos of more than 300 tapestries from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Sidore enables you to think about the weavings in ways you have never before considered as she groups pieces that talk with each other--and that also converse with the viewer. Enjoy learning basic elements of weaving to help you become increasingly sophisticated in understanding what you're seeing. Then, learn six ways in which tapestries can call attention to themselves as cloth. This eye-opening guide to seeing explains the great range of materials and visual themes, the use of trompe l'oeil, the importance of the direction in which the weaver weaves, and more. After this learning experience, you'll bring smarter eyes to your museum wandering, deeper enjoyment to your collection and purchases, and surprising new skills and creativity to your weaving of fibers . . . and of life.