The Art Atlas (Hardcover)

An invaluable guide to world art from prehistory to the present, complete with over 600 maps and illustrations and a searchable CD. The Art Atlas is the first work to present the art of the entire world from ancient to modern times through extensive use of specially commissioned maps. Covering painting, sculpture, and architecture as well as other arts and artifacts, the volume provides an entirely new vision of the history of the world’s art by showing how physical and political geography has shaped its developments. Over 350 pages in scope, Atlas compares countries separated by thousands of miles and many centuries, demonstrating how the art of each is affected by opportunities and constraints dictated by location or culture. Here, for the first time, readers can appreciate the art of prehistoric Oceania and the Nile Valley of the Pharaohs alongside that of nineteenth-century Russia and the twentieth-century United States. In addition to showing where and when great artists lived and worked, Atlas explains how major styles developed and the ways in which art has been influenced by religion, trade, travel, war, and other historical factors. The volume also provides the first comprehensive picture of the impact of the natural world on the development of art, charting the sources of fibers for weaving, pigments for coloring, wood for carving, paper for printing, and stone for use in sculpture and architecture. With its combination of enormous breadth and constant clarity of focus, abundant illustrations and a user-friendly, searchable CD, Art Atlas provides exceptional insight into what unites art and what makes it so varied. Organized into seven chronological periods and including contributions from 68 internationally renowned art historians, The Art Atlas is an original, comprehensive and up-to-date reference work that will be a benchmark for many years to come.

About the Author

John Onians is Professor of Visual Arts at the School of World Art Studies and Museology at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age: The Greek World View, 350-50 BC (1979), Bearers of Meaning: The Classical Orders in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1988) and editor of Sight and Insight: Essays on Art and Culture in Honour of E. H. Gombrich at 85 (1994). He was also the founding editor of the prestigious journal Art History.