Art History For Dummies

Part I: Mankind in the Looking Glass: Art History 101.

Chapter 1: Art Tour through the Ages.

Chapter 2: Why People Make Art and What It All Means.

Chapter 3: The Major Artistic Periods and Movements.

Part II: From Caves to Colosseum: Ancient Art.

Chapter 4: Magical Hunters and Psychedelic Cave Artists.

Chapter 5: Fickle Gods, Warrior Art, and the Birth of Writing: Mesopotamian Art.

Chapter 6: One Foot in the Tomb: Ancient Egyptian Art.

Chapter 7: Greek Art, the Olympian Ego, and the Inventors of the Modern World.

Chapter 8: Etruscan and Roman Art: It’s All Greek to Me!

Part III: Art after the Fall of Rome: a.d. 500–a.d. 1760.

Chapter 9: The Graven Image: Early Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic Art.

Chapter 10: Mystics, Marauders, and Manuscripts: Medieval Art.

Chapter 11: Born-Again Culture: The Early and High Renaissance.

Chapter 12: Venetian Renaissance, Late Gothic, and the Renaissance in the North.

Chapter 13: Art That’ll Stretch Your Neck: Mannerism.

Chapter 14: When the Renaissance Went Baroque.

Chapter 15: Going Loco with Rococo.

Part IV: The Industrial Revolution and Artistic Devolution: 1760–1900.

Chapter 16: All Roads Lead Back to Rome and Greece: Neoclassical Art.

Chapter 17: Romanticism: Reaching Within and Acting Out.

Chapter 18: What You See Is What You Get: Realism.

Chapter 19: First Impressions: Impressionism.

Chapter 20: Making Their Own Impression: The Post-Impressionists.

Part V: Twentieth-Century Art and Beyond.

Chapter 21: From Fauvism to Expressionism.

Chapter 22: Cubist Puzzles and Finding the Fast Lane with the Futurists.

Chapter 23: What You See Is What You Don’t Get: From Nonobjective Art to Abstract Expressionism.

Chapter 24: Anything-Goes Art: Fab Fifties and Psychedelic Sixties.

Chapter 25: Photography: From a Science to an Art.

Chapter 26: The New World: Postmodern Art.

Part VI: The Part of Tens.

Chapter 27: Ten Must-See Art Museums.

Chapter 28: Ten Great Books by Ten Great Artists.

Chapter 29: Ten Brushstrokes That Shook the World.

Appendix: Online Resources.

Index.