The Twentieth Century Art Book

The 20th Century Art Book (Phaidon Press Limited, London 1999) explores the significant artists, works of art, and art movements of the twentieth century, all in a compact 5x6x1 inch format. You may wonder why I'm reading about art in a blog about gardening in the San Francisco Bay Area, but to me it makes perfect sense! It starts with color, and quickly expands to more!

The bulk of the book is an alphabetical presentation of international artists each with a representative piece of a work, a description of the work, demographic information about the artist and the work, and cross references to other artists who may have influenced the artist or been working in the same artistic school. Works of art range from sculpture and paintings, to installations and happenings, to media. Artists range from Acconci and Hockney, to Mondrian and Pollock, to Rodin and Vasarely, to Zorio. Some of the artists were known to me, but most were not.

The back matter provides a glossary of terms for talking about art (abstract, body art, found object, kinetic, modernism, prints, realism, watercolor, and so forth). It also provides a glossary of artistic movements, with references to artists, such as Art Nouveau, Bauhaus, Cubism, Dada, Expressionism, Op Art, Pop Art, Surrealism. After reading about each artistic movement, I spent time rereading the pages for each cited artist, and found it added to my overall understanding.

I was interested to learn that much of 20th century art was about breaking away from representing the world around us, and finding ways to represent the world through abstraction or reduction. French Impressionism, a painting style that started in the 1860s, used light and color to create "an impression" of everyday objects and scenes. The movement laid the ground work for the many styles of abstraction that followed. In abstraction, the idea or emotion of the object is conveyed, rather than a physical representation.

I recommend The 20th Century Art Book for anyone interested in art or gardens. Gardeners can be inspired by Josef Albers, Gunther Forg and others for using color to convey emotion; Isamu Noguchi, Henry Moore and others for creating sculpture with which to ponder and interact; and Andy Goldsworthy and Robert Smithson for employing Land Art concepts both temporary and long lasting.