183. Title & Author: The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich (967 pages) Genre: Nonfiction—Art History
Completed: 30 April 2011
Summary & Review:
Art historian E.H. Gombrich deftly weaves the disparate millennia of art into a single, cohesive narrative. He follows the advances, changes, and discoveries made by painters, sculptors, and architects from the caves of France to galleries of New York with a clear and concise hand. Accompanying Gombrich’s lucid text are over four hundred images, nearly all of which are in color.
The Story of Art is a legendary introductory art history text, and for good reason. Gombrich is able to distill countless artists, works, styles, and movements into a unified, digestible tale. Even without any sort of background into the history of art, the average reader could pick up this text and follow the artistic advancements from antiquity to post-modernism.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I often found myself wishing that Gombrich delved a little deeper into certain artists or periods. For the most part, Gombrich would touch on one piece per artist and only focus on a handful of artists for each period. When he got to some of my personal favorites, such as Caravaggio (and the whole Baroque period), his insightful analysis was much too short. I would have loved to read a full chapter of his views on Caravaggio. But, Gombrich was clear in the introduction that the purpose of this book was as only an introduction to the history of art and that he carefully selected artists and pieces to craft his narrative.
Perhaps my favorite aspect of this book was the format. The Story of Art has been published in seventeen editions, the last of which is this superb Pocket Edition. The nearly thousand page text is only the size of a paperback novel which allowed me to easily take it on vacation. I would love to read other art history texts more frequently, but there is no chance I am going to lug a huge text book on a plane trip.
(I also just finished listening to Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Mantel is obviously a talented writer, but I am fairly tired of the recent deluge of stories, movies, tv shows, etc., revolving around Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.)
Rating: 8.0
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