Jesse Bryant Wilder is the founder, publisher, and editor of NEXUS, a series of interdisciplinary textbooks used in high schools around the country. He has written several textbooks on art and art history and was an art critic for The Plain Dealer and [...].

Introduction 1

About This Book 1

Foolish Assumptions 2

Icons Used in This Book 2

Beyond the Book 2

Where to Go from Here 3

Part 1: Getting Started with Art History 5

Chapter 1: Art Tour through the Ages 7

Connecting Art Divisions and Culture 8

It's Ancient History, So Why Dig It Up? 8

Mesopotamian period (3500 bc-500 bc) and Egyptian period (3100 bc-332 bc) 9

Ancient Greek period (c 850 bc-323 bc) and Hellenistic period (323 bc-32 bc) 9

Roman period (300 bc-ad 476) 9

Did the Art World Crash When Rome Fell, or Did It Just Switch Directions? 10

Byzantine period (ad 500-ad 1453) 10

Islamic period (seventh century+) 10

Medieval period (500-1400) 10

High Renaissance (1495-1520) and Mannerism (1530-1580) 10

Baroque period (1600-1750) and Rococo period (1715-1760s) 11

In the Machine Age, Where Did Art Get Its Power? 11

Neoclassicism (1765-1830) 11

Romanticism (late 1700s-early 1800s) 11

The Modern World and the Shattered Mirror 12

Responding to modern pressures 12

Conceptualizing the craft 13

Expressing mixed-up times 13

Chapter 2: Why People Make Art and What It All Means 15

Focusing on the Artist's Purpose 15

Recording religion, ritual, and mythology 15

Promoting politics and propaganda 16

When I say jump: Art made for patrons 16

Following a personal vision 17

Detecting Design 17

Perceiving pattern 17

Rolling with the rhythm 17

Weighing the balance 17

Looking for contrast 18

Examining emphasis 18

Decoding Meaning 19

The ABCs of visual narrative 19

Sorting symbols 19

Chapter 3: The Major Artistic Movements 21

Distinguishing an Art Period from a Movement 21

Tracking Major 19th-Century Art Movements 22

Realism (1840s-1880s) 22

Impressionism (1869-late 1880s) 22

Post-Impressionism (1886-1892) 22

Moving Off the Rails in the 20th Century 23

Fauvism and Expressionism 23

Cubism, Futurism, Dada, and Surrealism 24

Abstract Expressionism (1946-1950s) 25

Pop Art (1960s) 25

Conceptual art, performance art, and feminist art (late 1960s-1970s) 25

Postmodernism (1970-) 25

Part 2: From Caves to Colosseum: Ancient Art 27

Chapter 4: Magical Hunters and Psychedelic Cave Artists 29

Cool Cave Art or Paleolithic Painting: Why Keep It a Secret? 30

Hunting on a wall 31

Psychedelic shamans with paintbrushes 31

Flirting with Fertility Goddesses 32

Dominoes for Druids: Stonehenge, Menhirs, and Neolithic Architecture 33

Living in the New Stone Age: Çatalhöyük, Göbekli Tepe, and Skara Brae 33

Cracking the mystery of the megaliths and menhirs 34

Chapter 5: Fickle Gods, Warrior Art, and the Birth of Writing: Mesopotamian Art 37

Climbing toward the Clouds: Sumerian Architecture 38

Zigzagging to Heaven: Ziggurats 38

The Tower of Babel 39

The Eyes Have It: Scoping Out Sumerian Sculpture 39

Worshipping graven images 40

Stare-down with God: Statuettes from Abu Temple 40

Playing Puabi's Lyre 41

Unraveling the Standard of Ur 42

Stalking Stone Warriors: Akkadian Art 43

Stamped in Stone: Hammurabi's Code 43

Unlocking Assyrian Art 44

Babylon Has a Baby: New Babylon 45

Chapter 6: One Foot in the Tomb: Ancient Egyptian Art 47

Ancient Egypt 101 48

Segmenting the Egyptian periods 48

Thanking the Nile 49

The Art of a Unified Egypt 49

Depicting the unification 49

Noting art as history in the Palette of Narmer 50

The Egyptian Style: Proportion and Orientation 51

Excavating Old Kingdom Architecture 52

Early mastabas and step pyramids 52

Turning to stone 53

Making the architecture great 53

Spending life preparing for death 54

The In-Between Period and Middle Kingdom Realism 55

New Kingdom Art 56

Hatshepsut: A female phenom 56

Akhenaten and Egyptian family values 56

Raiding King Tut's tomb treasures 58

Admiring the world's most beautiful dead woman's tomb 59

Decoding Books of the Dead 59

Too-big-to-forget sculpture 61

Chapter 7: Greek Art, the Olympian Ego, and the Inventors of the Modern World 63

Mingling with the Minoans: Snake Goddesses, Minotaurs, and Bull Jumpers 64

Greek Sculpture: Stark Symmetry to a Delicate Balance 66

Kouros to Kritios Boy 66

Golden Age sculptors: Myron, Polykleitos, and Phidias 68

Fourth-century sculpture 70

Figuring Out Greek Vase Painting 71

Cool stick figures: The geometric style 71

Black-figure and red-figure techniques 72

Rummaging through Ruins: Greek Architecture 73

Greece without Borders: Hellenism 76

Sculpting passion and struggle 76

Honoring the classical in a new world 77

Chapter 8: Etruscan and Roman Art: It's All Greek to Me! 79

The Mysterious Etruscans 79

Temple to tomb: Greek influence 79

Smiles in stone: The eternally happy Etruscans 80

Infusing Art with Roman Influence 80

Linking the territory that was Rome 82

Art as mirror: Roman realism and

Republican sculptural portraits 82

Progressing on to propaganda 83

Shirking idealism for authenticity 84

Realism in painting 85

Roman mosaics 86

Revealing Roman Architecture: A Marriage of Style and Engineering 87

Temple of Portunus 87

Maison Carrée 88

Roman aqueducts 88

The Colosseum 88

The Pantheon 90

Part 3: Art after the Fall of Rome: ad 500-ad 1760 93

Chapter 9: The Graven Image: Early Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic Art 95

The Rise and Fall of Constantinople 95

Christianizing Rome 96

After the fall: Divisions and schisms 96

Early Christian Art in the West 96

Rejecting paganism 97

Drawing on Roman art and culture 97

Byzantine Art Meets Imperial Splendor 98

Justinian and Early Byzantine architecture 98

Amazing mosaics: Puzzle art 100

San Vitale: Justinian and Theodora mosaics 101

The mosaics of St Mark's Basilica, Venice, Italy (Middle Byzantine) 103

Icons and iconoclasm 103

Islamic Art: Architectural Pathways to God 106

The Mosque of Córdoba 107

The dazzling Alhambra 109

A temple of love: The Taj Mahal 110

Chapter 10: Mystics, Marauders, and Manuscripts: Medieval Art 113

Irish Light: Illuminated Manuscripts 114

A unique Christian mission 114

Browsing the Book of Kells, Lindisfarne Gospels, and other manuscripts 114

Drolleries and the fun style 116

Charlemagne: King of His Own Renaissance 117

Weaving and Unweaving the Battle of Hastings: The Bayeux Tapestry 117

Providing a battle blueprint 117

Portraying everyday life in medieval England and France 118

Peddling political propaganda 119

Making border crossings 119

Romanesque Architecture: Churches That Squat 120

St Sernin 120

Durham Cathedral 121

Romanesque Sculpture 122

Nightmares in stone: Romanesque relief 123

Roman sculpture revival 123

Relics and Reliquaries: Miraculous Leftovers 123

Gothic Grandeur: Churches That Soar 125

Building a church-and-state alliance 125

Bigger and brighter 125

Making something new from old parts 126

Finishing touches and voilà! 127

Expanding the Gothic dream 127

Stained-Glass Storytelling 127

Gothic Sculpture 128

Italian Gothic 129

Gothic Painting: Cimabue, Duccio, and Giotto 130

Cimabue 130

Duccio 132

Giotto 133

Tracking the Lady and the Unicorn: The Mystical Tapestries of Cluny 134

Themes of love and desire? 134

Themes with religious connotation? 135

The questions remain 136

Chapter 11: Born-Again Culture: The Early and High Renaissance 137

The Early Renaissance in Central Italy 138

The Great Door Contest: Brunelleschi versus Ghiberti - And the winner is! 138

The Duomo of Florence 139

Vanishing points and perspective 140

Sandro Botticelli: A garden-variety Venus 144

Donatello: Putting statues back on their feet 145

The High Renaissance 146

Reviving self-respect 146

Elevating humanity in art 147

Leonardo da Vinci: Renaissance man 147

Leonardo's techniques 147

Leonardo's greatest works 148

Michelangelo: The main man 150

Michelangelo's greatest works 152

Raphael: The prince of painters 153

Chapter 12: Venetian Renaissance, Late Gothic, and the Renaissance in the North 157

A Gondola Ride through the Venetian Renaissance 158

First stop, Bellini 158

A shortcut to Mantegna and Giorgione 160

Dürer's Venice vacations 161

Touring the 16th century with Titian 162

The Venice of Veronese 164

Tintoretto and Renaissance ego 165

La Tintoretta: Marietta Robusti 166

Palladio: The king of classicism 167

Late Gothic: Northern Naturalism 168

Jan van Eyck: The Late Gothic ace 168

Rogier van der Weyden: Front and center 169

Northern Exposure: The Renaissance in the Netherlands and Germany 172

Decoding Bosch 172

Deciphering the dark symbolism of Grünewald 174

Dining with Bruegel the Elder 175

Chapter 13: Art That'll...