Amazon.co.uk
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
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
