...isms: Understanding Art Turtleback – Illustrated, 13 Nov. 2004

This book is a lovely little gem. It is basically as illustrated book explaining all the isms of art, such as romanticism, classicism, etc.Quality: The cover is lovely and sturdy, the paper quality is great, the art is gorgeous, in fact the entire book exudes class. You can tell alot of care went into creating the bookContent: The book starts with a useful guide on how to use the book. Each era (renaissance, baroque & rococo, 19th century, modernism, post-modernism) is color coded which makes it easy to navigate the book.For each era and art style, a short description and given with an explanation of what the particular 'ism' means. There is a wealth of beautiful art used to demonstrate the difference between each style and many other suggestions are given for hours of enjoyment.What I love about this book is that although I'm very ignorant when it comes to art, I never found this book hard to follow. And although the information given in the book are simple and easy to digest, I finished it feeling that I have a pretty good grasp on the different styles and trend. In fact, this book is now my favorite companion when I visit art museums.

This book is excellent - I bought 3 copies to have in the art department at school and since then have included it in the requirement for 6th form guide . It is clear , helpful and makes the complicated understanding of the development in art movements clear to see . Time lines and lots of images .If you are a student of art this is a must have . Take it from me 20 years as a head of art, will make your A Level studies so much easier .

I needed something easy to read to give me a quick intro to some of the isms I had to learn about for an art module I was doing at uni. It served this purpose perfectly. I still refer to it from time to time.

A very easy to read and navigate book, that gives a basic and introductory overview of significant art movements in art history. The book has a good number of paintings, but typical of a book of this size and theme, it can’t really show too many photos of works. Typically it will show 1 or 2 paintings of each art movement, key artists for that art moments, what other art movements would have inspired this group of artists and a brief sum up of ejat the artists of this movement we’re trying to portray or achieve.The book lays out each art movement in chcronological order.For someone studying art at GCSE, A level or just someone with a keen interest in a broad art history insight I would say this book is a great starting place but certainly not a reliable source for any study that’s requiring more research.Saying that, it is a really useful book to have the art movements right at your finger tips for quick reference without having to flick through a ginormous and heavy art history book!

As someone who is new to the World of Art, this is an excellent little book which is clear and well organised.Each "Isms" starts with an introduction, followed by a list of key artists of the movement, key descriptive words of the Style, a more detailed definition, key works and less well known works.At the back of this book there is a Glossary of Terms, a Chronology of Isms and a list of which style of art can be seen in popular Art Galleries/Museums.

This book is the perfect beginners guide to understanding art terminology and the links between artistic movements. It works best as a quick reference for particular movements rather a book to be read cover to cover. The book contains useful background information, accompanied by images of the most iconic and definitive pieces for each movement. This is all backed up by little contextual snip-its, lists of influential artists and links to the related art movements. This book is strictly 'art' movements however the contextual background information and lists of related practitioners does give greater insight in history of creative arts.

Great little book, which is easy to understand and has a few images as examples on each ism. I would recommend this to anyone just starting out. l bought it for uni and its not to big and heavy, just the size of a normal novel but with fewer pages.

The structure of this book makes it a perfekt companion if you are learning about the different -ims of art.You get a clear general overview of the relevant -ism, a list of which artists to study and which -isms you S-holdet not relate the -ism to, and much more. I bought it because I was following an Open University course on art history at a Danish university. After each lecture I would read the relevant entries in Stephen Little’s book and it has helped me grasp the points from the university course much better. A perfect handbook.