Oxford Companion to Western Art [Anglais] [Relié]

The Oxford Companion to Western Art is an immensely impressive and exhaustive reference guide to Western art, from Abstract Art to Emile Zola. It contains over 2,600 entries, including detailed information on over 1,700 artists from the classical period to the late 20th century, as well as 49 special feature articles on topics such as Colour, Perspective, and Drawing, plus key movements such as Renaissance and Cubism. The editor, Hugh Brigstocke and his team of over a hundred internationally renowned art historians, have radically overhauled Harold Osborne's Oxford Companion to Art, first published in 1970. Brigstocke has focused specifically on Western art, covering painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts produced by "all cultures speaking a European language". Architecture and non-Western art are not included, which allows for greater scope on newer subjects. The Companion is aimed at those who would like to "look for biographical details about artists and to need contextual information on patronage, collecting, and changing aspects of taste". The entries are detailed but accessible, and supplemented by 48 pages of colour illustrations (although for a book of this scope more pictures would have been helpful). Particularly valuable are the more indefinable entries on major cities, museums, and movements, and the incorporation of new developments within art history, such as expanded entries on patronage, collecting, medieval illuminations, Baroque art, and more recent developments within modern art. Both its scholarship and presentation will ensure that The Oxford Companion to Western Art will be an indispensable reference book on Western art for many years to come. --Jerry Brotton

A partial successor to the 1970 Oxford Companion to Art, this title limits itself to European-language cultures, dropping architecture and non-Western subjects. The 2600 signed entries generally range in length from 100 to 1000-plus words (and are occasionally longer), and they include artist, historian, theorist, and patron biographies as well as entries on institutions, cities and museums, styles, movements, and art historical theory and methodology. Most entries have at least one bibliographical reference and are longer than those in The Oxford Dictionary of Art (LJ 9/15/97), which includes 3000 entries but otherwise appears comparable to this title in scope. Reflecting the methodological growth of art history and changes in topics of study since the first title was published, this book offers more coverage of the Baroque, manuscript illumination, and 19th- and 20th-century art. Established living artists are included. Editor Brigstocke, a Paul Mellon Research Fellow at the British School in Rome, included unchanged some of the technical and aesthetic essays by Harold Osborne, editor of the 1970 title, but this is essentially a new work. Most of the 100 contributors are British, which slightly colors the selections and some of the entries, and the plates are "tasters" not related to specific entries. As with any work of this scope, there are inevitable omissions and occasional errors of fact, but this title essentially accomplishes its goals and is recommended for all collections looking for an in-depth work on Western art. Jack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Libs.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Intended primarily as "a stimulating point of departure," this successor to Harold Osborne's Oxford Companion to Art (1970) features more than 2,600 entries ranging from a few sentences to a few pages on subjects including artists, art terms and techniques, movements and schools, museums, the arts of selected countries, and the art of different places as objects of patronage and collecting. The great majority of entries were newly commissioned to some 160 contributors, while a small number of articles from The Oxford Companion to Art have been retained.

Leaving coverage of architecture and non-Western art for other volumes, Brigstocke has focused on Western painting, sculpture, and graphic arts. Significant living artists "whose careers have already taken shape" are included. Many entries are accompanied by a short bibliography. Asterisks within each entry refer readers to separate articles, and cross-references are found between entries. Wherever possible, the present location of works of art is indicated. Several sections of color plates reflect the themes of "the human form and the face, as interpreted from antiquity to the present day." There is an index of artists and other people not given main entries but mentioned in other articles; unfortunately, there is no indexing to the articles on the arts of different countries.

Coverage is selective but balanced. Only three New York City museums (Frick, Metropolitan, and Museum of Modern Art) are given separate entries, but the article New York: Patronage and collecting gives nods to a few others as well as to many historically important galleries. The article on Mexican art, while acknowledging the importance of the muralist movement and mentioning many other twentieth-century Mexican artists, does not name the "Three Great" muralists Orozco, Rivera, or Siqueiros; each artist, however, has a main entry. A small number of errors were noted; the most serious was the entry for the Smithsonian Institution, whose heading reads Washington, Smithsonian Institute and whose founder is twice identified as "James Smithsonian" (should be "Smithson").

The Oxford Companion to Western Art is highly recommended for academic, public, and high-school libraries. Because The Oxford Companion to Art covers architecture and non-Western art, it should be retained. RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

This work replaces Harold Osborne's Oxford Companion to Art (1970), which has been continuously in print for thirty years. Though originally commissioned as a new edition of Osborne's book, it is effectively a completely new work, planned and written afresh for new generations of art lovers. Apart from a handful of classic articles by Harold Osborne mainly on aesthetics, and a few others which needed only minor change, the text is entirely new. Unlike Osborne, it focuses
on Western art rather than the whole of world art, concentrating primarily on painting, sculpture, and the graphic arts, leaving architecture to be covered separately. With not only a tighter focus but also a greater extent than Osborne's, the new Companion offers far deeper coverage of the subject than previously; it includes many more artists and their works, and also pays proper attention to new topics of interest focused on patronage, taste, theory and criticism, materials and
techniques, and the n
art history.

There are over 2600 entries, alphabetically arranged. Almost half of them cover artists, from classical times to the twentieth century. Other entries discuss art styles and movements, art forms (such as battle painting, landscape, caricature, or stained glass), specialist terms, and materials and techniques in all media. There is strong emphasis on location as a focus for art: not only are there regional and cultural surveys, but also entries on specific places of importance such as Paris or
Urbino; and, in addition, entries on museums and galleries are arranged under the their city headword so that the reader can easily survey the major sites within a particular locality, such as New York, Boston, or Madrid. Patronage receives imaginative treatment: here, rather than focusing on a limited number of individual patrons, the Companion has entries on towns and cities as centres of patronage and collecting - such as Nuremberg, Dresden, or Prague. In addition, there is a novel
series of
entries on the critical fortunes of the art of the major European countries, covering, for example, patronage and collecting of Italian art in France, Spain, Britain, Germany and Central Europe, the USA, and in Italy itself. A further category of entry covers topics in the theory of art, such as iconography, perspective, and synaesthesia; and there is wide-ranging coverage too of art scholarship and criticism from Aristotle and Pausanius to Sartre, Panofsky, and Michel Foucault. All this is
supplemented by entries on general topics as varied as reproduction, anatomy, guilds and confraternities, frames, and the conservation and restoration of paintings and sculpture.

This is a work for everyone who loves art, whether actively engaged in the subject professionally or as one of the countless amateurs visting sites and cities, galleries, and exhibitions, churches, libraries, country houses, and palaces in pursuit of beauty and cultural enrichment.