BWW Reviews: Crash Courses in Artistic Greatness from ART IN TIME and THE 21ST-CENTURY ART BOOK

A publishing house like Phaidon is both the art student's and the art historian's best friend. Over the years, this London-based firm has brought its readers everything from the essential, widely-circulated Art Book (a textbook-rate $59.95) to the catalogue raisonné for Andy Warhol (a specialists-only $495 per volume) to monograph studies of Jackson Pollock, Jasper Johns, and Cindy Sherman (each one at a read-it-on-the-train $22.95). And in 2014, Phaidon expanded its roster of essential art historical resources with two new releases: Art in Time, with its period-by-period approach to the totality of art history, and The 21st-Century Art Book, with its artist-by-artist approach to our own artistic period. Neither should be taken as a be-all and end-all approach to its topic, but each is a gateway to level upon level of art historical knowledge--to the wealth of information housed in museums and archives and, yes, in the rest of Phaidon's well-crafted list.

At first, I had assumed that the massive and just about comprehensive Art in Time was designed to dethrone canonical introductions to the topic, such as Gardner's Art Through the Ages. Not quite: despite its ambitions, the Phaidon volume is probably too idiosyncratic for that. The book is arranged in reverse-chronological order, and is front-loaded with unwieldy movements and quasi-movements (Institutional Critique, New Topographies, Viennese Actionism) that art history novices would do well to nod to, but maybe not to address at any great length. After the 1950 barrier has been passed, Art in Time pursues its backward course at a steady, efficient measure, right until it hits "Northern Nomad Art" (circa 800 B.C.E.) and finishes entirely. The anthropologically-minded might object to this endpoint: Why not do more with imperial Egypt, or ancient China, or cave painting? Although the historical sweep of Art in Time may raise quibbles, the geographical breadth of this volume leaves little to be desired: with entries on Japanese Gutai in the 20th century, the Shanghai School in the 19th, and Indian Pahari Painting in the 17th, editors Diane Fortenberry and Tom Melick have created a book that is culturally extensive, not obligatorily and facilely "multi-cultural." These Asian movements are entries among other entries--placed on par with Abstract Expressionism, Symbolism, and Neo-Classicism as meaningful art.

The 21st-Century Art Book serves a more specialized purpose. Editors Lee Beard and Rebecca Morrill have gathered short profiles of almost 300 artists, each profile tied to a color reproduction of a single, defining work. There is no attempt at an over-arching explanation of periods and styles, yet there are connections to be made between the entries in painting, sculpture, installation, video art, and performance art that appear in this book's pages. At the bottom of each artist page, you will see three or four last names: follow these to other, comparable figures in The 21st-Century Art Book. Not a narrative, but a vast network. This structure yields something like an art nerd version of Six Degrees of Separation or Wikipedia Tag--quick, who can get from Robert Gober to Christopher Wool the fastest?--and may be best left to art devotees anyway. For newcomers, my advice would be to sit down, flip through, find a few artists who inspire real fascination, and find a way to educate yourself in their creations.

And once the world of contemporary art has truly opened itself to you, Phaidon will still be your guide. In the back of The 21st-Century Art Book is a calendar of international events in the visual arts. Though helpful, this calendar isn't the only part of the book that will motivate you to get off your couch and into the nearest museum: some of the sculptures and installations that Beard and Morrill have chosen are simply spectacular. Among the ones that I would pay good money see are Adel Abdessemed's oversized hanging skeleton and Subodh Gupta's mushroom cloud of cooking utensils. I'm still trying to find a downloadable version of Cameron Jamie's Kranky Klaus, in which Austrian villagers "are visited at Christmas not only by Santa Claus but also by the Krampus, a gang of hairy, quadruple-horned monsters that drag naughty citizens from their homes and beat them up in the snow."

Art in Time is more likely to motivate you to journey through an entire museum, taking in era after era and seeing how they line up, interlock, and diverge. It is also a book that can help to hone and refine art historical knowledge. You could be an art history major (as I once was) who has temporarily blanked out on what exactly Baroque was; you could be an art critic (as I am now) who wants to double-check exactly when Picasso's Three Musicians appeared. The answers, and the reasons to learn ever more about art, are right here.

To post a comment, you must register and login.