Great Paintings of the Western World

Great Paintings of the Western World opens with the Paleolithic cave paintings of Spain and France, rough images of animals, humans, and intriguing symbols that mark the birth of Western art and moves to the majestic paintings on the temples, tombs, and sarcophagi of ancient Egypt. Exquisite vases with pictorial renditions of the adventures of gods, goddesses, and heroes, all depicted in realistic, human form, preserve forever the humanist spirit of classical Greece, while the wall paintings, mosaics, and other works of art of the Roman Empire display an unmatched breadth, incorporating a wealth of styles from far-flung lands. Readers will discover the creations of such immortal artists as Michelangelo, Leonardo, Botticelli, and Titian, as well as the remarkable paintings of Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and other masters of the Northern Renaissance. The complex, often extravagant art of the Baroque and Rococo periods is represented in works by Caravaggio, Boucher, Rembrandt, and Vermeer, among others. The paintings of Neoclassicists like Jacques-Louis David mirror the renewed interest in the aesthetic and philosophical legacy of the Classical period, an influence apparent not only in the orderly composition of the works, but in the very subject matter. The romantic fascination with the interior landscape and in nature at its most primal shaped the works of artists from Goya and Delacroix on the continent to John Constable and John Turner in England, to Americans like Thomas Cole, Frederick Church, and Albert Bierstadt, who sought to capture the richness of an American landscape already disappearing in the wake of industrialization and westward expansion. The Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, rebelling against Romanticism toward the end of the century and beyond, focused on reality: Courbet shocked the public with paintings that competed with photographic images; Monet, Renoir, and Van Gogh brilliantly reproduced the actual effects of light on the artist's perceptions at different times of day and in different seasons; and Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, and others repudiated imaginative art (including historical subjects) and recorded without sentimentality the realities of contemporary life. Artistic experimentation soon erupted in a proliferation of creative inventiveness, and the twentieth century evolved as the age of "isms" - from Matisse's Fauvism to the Cubism of Braque and Picasso, to the surrealism of Dali and Magritte and, in America, the Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko. By mid-century, the very notion of "art" was called into question in the sly, cool works of Warhol, Lichtenstein, and other Pop artists represented here. As the century draws to a close, the stark realism of Lucien Freud and the Neo-Expressionism of Gerhard Richter, remind us that great art defies specific definition and remains an exciting, constantly changing expression of human feelings, thoughts, and beliefs.Gallup, Alison is the author of 'Great Paintings of the Western World', published 2006 under ISBN 9781572154490 and ISBN 1572154497.