The Arts in Spain (The World of Art)

Rating:
Summary: Spanish art in its social context
Review: John Moffitt's "The Arts in Spain" beckons to us across all those mystifyingly dull art history books hardly worth taking off the shelf. Extremely well-written and accessible to the general reader, it recognizes that great art was created in a social and historical context and explains that context. This approach not only allows us to understand the arts more fully in their own right, but also to use them in studying Spanish history.

Moffitt starts with Spain's fascinating pre-historic art and moves up through the Roman, Islamic, Romanesque, Gothic, and Golden Age periods straight through to the 20th century. Like most studies, he races through the 18th and 19th centuries, but the quality of his remarks makes up for his brevity. As the title indicates, he briefly discusses architecture, sculpture, and the decorative arts as well as painting. This approach puts painting in a broad aesthetic context as well as an historical one.

Additionally, the illustrations are excellent and mostly in color.

I already knew something about Spanish art when I picked up this book, but I felt I learned a lot. If you know absolutely nothing about Spanish art and haven't had much luck with art history books in the past, this is definitely the place to begin.

Rating:
Summary: Spanish art in its social context
Review: John Moffitt's "The Arts in Spain" beckons to us across all those mystifyingly dull art history books hardly worth taking off the shelf. Extremely well-written and accessible to the general reader, it recognizes that great art was created in a social and historical context and explains that context. This approach not only allows us to understand the arts more fully in their own right, but also to use them in studying Spanish history.

Moffitt starts with Spain's fascinating pre-historic art and moves up through the Roman, Islamic, Romanesque, Gothic, and Golden Age periods straight through to the 20th century. Like most studies, he races through the 18th and 19th centuries, but the quality of his remarks makes up for his brevity. As the title indicates, he briefly discusses architecture, sculpture, and the decorative arts as well as painting. This approach puts painting in a broad aesthetic context as well as an historical one.

Additionally, the illustrations are excellent and mostly in color.

I already knew something about Spanish art when I picked up this book, but I felt I learned a lot. If you know absolutely nothing about Spanish art and haven't had much luck with art history books in the past, this is definitely the place to begin.