Research and Course Guides: Art and Design: Art and Art History

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Not sure where to start and need some ideas for research? Start with the Topics in Art & Art History page for a good foundation. The sources on this page will give you a general look at various topics, then the books and journals pages will provide tips for finding more specific sources. The web resources page provides links to various online organizations and image libraries.

Featured eBooks

Art and Politics by Claudia Mesch
ISBN: 9781848851108
Publication Date: 2009-10-15
Art of the Century: Renaissance Art by Victoria Charles
ISBN: 9781780427928
Publication Date: 2012-01-05
Digital Art History by Anna Bentkowska-Kafel; Trish Cashen; Hazel Gardiner
ISBN: 9781841509105
Interpreting Art by Sam Rose Art interpretation in practice, not theory. How do people make sense of works of art? And how do they write to make others see the same way? There are many guides to looking at art, histories of art history and art criticism, and accounts of various theories and methods, but this book offers something very unlike the normal search for difference and division: it examines the general and largely unspoken norms shared by interpreters of many kinds.   Interpreting Art highlights the norms, premises, and patterns that tend to guide interpretation along the way. Why, for example, is the concept of artistic intention at once so reviled and so hard to let go of? What is involved when an interpretation appeals to an artwork's reception? How can context be used by some to keep things under control and by others to make the interpretation of art seem limitless? And how is it that artworks only seem to grow in complexity over time?   This volume reveals subtle features of art writing central to the often unnoticed interpretative practices through which we understand works of art. In doing so, the book also sheds light on possible alternatives, pointing to how writers on art might choose to operate differently in the future.
ISBN: 1800081790
Publication Date: 2022-08-05
Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the Gift in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art by Michael Zell This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a "love of art," not materialistic gain. In the merchant republic's vibrant market for art, networks of gift relations and the anti-economic rhetoric of the gift mingled with the growing dimension of commerce, revealing a unique chapter in the interconnected history of gift giving and art making.
ISBN: 9789048550647
Publication Date: 2021-08-09

General Art Print Books in Reference

These books can be found, by the call number indicated, in our Reference collection located on the 4th floor.

Biographical encyclopedia of artists by Sir Lawrence Gowing
Call Number: N40 .B535 2005
ISBN: 9780816058037
Alphabetically-arranged entries provide information on the life of notable artists, characteristics of their works, significance of their work, career milestones, and locations where their work is displayed.
The Dictionary of Art by Jane Turner (Editor)
Call Number: N31 .D5
ISBN: 0195170687
Boasting well over 6,000 contributors from 12 countries, the Dictionary serves as a unique guide to all the visual arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, photography, drawing, printmaking, as well as the decorative arts.
Encyclopedia of World Art by Massino Pallottino (Introduction by); David Eggenberger (Editor); Stefania Malpighi (Translator); Joseph Simone (Translator); Giulio C. Argan (Preface by)
Call Number: N31 .E4833
ISBN: 0910081018
Subject matter consists of representational arts in the broadest sense, architecture, sculpture, painting, and other man-made objects with no limits as to time, place, or cultural environment.
Facts on File encyclopedia of art by Sir Lawrence Gowing
Call Number: N31 .F33 2005
ISBN: 9780816057979
Entries cover the history of art, from the earliest cave paintings to works of contemporary art.
The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art by Joan Marter (Editor)
Call Number: N6505 .G76
ISBN: 9780195335798
Comprehensive coverage of American art from Pre-Columbian sources to the colonial period to the 21st century. In addition to entries on individual artists, articles on major events, movements, and exhibitions in American art are included.