The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists - Softcover

Murray, Linda; Murray, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140513000 ISBN 13: 9780140513004

Publisher: Penguin, 1997

Synopsis

This magnificant, bestselling reference book finally leaves its old look to join the modern Penguin subject dictionary series. Why exactly did Van Gogh cut off his ear? Was Warhol an original or just a copyist? The answers to all this and more are found in The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists, the essential guide to over 700 years of creative endeavour. Each entry features extensive cross-referencing and listings of galleries where the artist’s work can be seen.

About this title

Review:

'A vast amount of information intelligently presented, carefully detailed, abreast of current thought and scholarship and easy to read' -- The Times Literary Supplement

'Excellent ... indispensable and delightful' -- Financial Times

From the Back Cover:

Some Sample Entries:

'Post-Impressionism is a rather vague term applied to the movement which developed in reaction against both Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism and had as its chief aim either a return to a more formal conception of art or a new stress on the importance of the subject. The most important figures covered by the term are van Gogh, Gaugin and Cezanne. It was given currency in England by the exhibition arranged by Roger Fry in the winter of 1910-11, called 'Manet and the Post-Impressionists', which caused much heart-burning in London art circles and led to the formation of the London Group. Le post impressionisme has now come into use in French as the equivalent term'.

And:

'Blot drawing was the name given by Alexander Cozens to the practice of evolving a composition from teh forms suggested by allowing a few blobs of ink or colour to fall at random on a sheet of paper, if necessary folding the paper to create further blots. The method seems to have been known to Leonardo da Vinci, who advocated the study of stains on a wall, or the shapes in the fire, as a stimulus to the creative imagination. Cozen's advocacy of the method as a means of teaching his numerous pupils led to his being dubbed 'Blotmaster to the Town': at the end of his life he published his system as A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape (c.1785). It was reprinted in 1952'.

And:

'Stabile. Sculpture that keeps still. The opposite of mobile'.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0140513000
• ISBN 13: 9780140513004
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 608