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Book Description

In Art: A New History, Paul Johnson turns his great gifts as a world historian to a subject that has enthralled him all his life: the history of art. This narrative account, from the earliest cave paintings up to the present day, has new things to say about almost every period of art. Taking account of changing scholarship and shifting opinions, he draws our attention to a number of neglected artists and styles, especially in Scandinavia, Germany, Russia and the Americas.

Paul Johnson puts the creative originality of the individual at the heart of his story. He pays particular attention to key periods: the emergence of the artistic personality in the Renaissance, the new realism of the early seventeenth century, the discovery of landscape painting as a separate art form, and the rise of ideological art. He notes the division of 'fashion art' and fine art at the beginning of the twentieth century, and how it has now widened.

Though challenging and controversial, Paul Johnson is not primarily a revisionist. He is a passionate lover of beauty who finds creativity in many places. With 300 colour illustrations, this book is vivid, evocative and immensely readable, whether the author is describing the beauty of Egyptian low-relief carving or the medieval cathedrals of Europe, the watercolours of Thomas Girtin or the utility of Roman bridges ('the best bridges in history'), the genius of Andrew Wyeth or the tranquility of the Great Mosque at Damascus, the paintings of Ilya Repin or a carpet-page from the Lindisfarne Gospels. The warmth and enthusiasm of Paul Johnson's descriptions will send readers hurrying off to see these wonders for themselves.

From Publishers Weekly

Having produced in a fairly short span equally weighty histories of the Jewish diaspora, the modern world and America, as well as a number of smaller books and a stream of articles, near-septuagenarian Johnson, historian, journalist, conservative gadfly and Sunday painter, has produced a massive and contentious history of art. Johnson (Intellectuals) is a product not of the cloistered academy but of the rough-and-tumble world of British journalism (before his conversion to Toryism he edited the left weekly New Statesman). While his narrative is for the most part a conventional journey through the canon, his headlong pace, quirky views and pungent prose make it anything but dull. The quick, forceful judgments Johnson makes on the art and artists he encounters are always amusing and sometimes enlightening, particularly his attention to the undervalued "regional" realist traditions of the 19th century. But the tone of constant bluff provocation can become wearying, and the book's putative polemical mission-to help develop an appreciation of art that would help "society defend itself against cultural breakdown"-doesn't really make itself felt until the book's last and weakest section, a rather scanty section on modernism and postmodernism that is pure New Criterion-style cultural conservatism. All writers of single volume art histories must contend with the rightly ubiquitous and magisterial Janson and Gombrich, and despite its wealth of free-flowing ideas and 300 handsome reproductions, Johnson's book (which also lacks a bibliography and footnotes) simply cannot compete. But as a passionate amateur's personal survey, the first seven-eighths of Johnson's history bring a refreshing sense of bluntness to an often staid tradition.

From Booklist

Johnson, an eminent, versatile, and opinionated historian, is also a successful painter, and he now indulges his lifelong passion for art in a gorgeously illustrated and provocative interpretation of the evolution of Western art. Johnson believes that art is essential to humankind's well-being, and he begins his great trek by marveling over the sophistication of cave paintings and the continuity of vision over many generations required for the building of Stonehenge and Europe's magnificent medieval cathedrals. As he summarizes the worldview, aesthetics, and technologies of each culture he so fluently analyzes, from the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, to the Normans and on to individual European and American artists, he traces the artist's "struggle between the canonical and the innovatory," the swing between elaboration and simplicity, and the contrast and overlap of religious and secular, public and private art, discussing with great expertise painting, sculpture, architecture, gardening, and modern commercial art. A traditionalist, Johnson nonetheless loves resurrecting forgotten and overlooked individuals and movements and making provocative pronouncements, and however debatable select assertions may be, this volume is thrilling in its scope, fluency, and zest.

　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Donna Seaman

Book Dimension

length: (cm)25.9 　　　 　　　　　 　　　　　 width:(cm)19