The 20th Century Art Book: Mini Edition - Phaidon Press

A dinky little fella, this one (162mmx122mmx25mm) and it'll look good tucked in the shelf. 500 artists are featured on 500 pages with a well chosen piece of art to give you an introductory feel to each artist and short but informative blurb about them. Small and cheap it may be (£6.95 or less) but there has been no skimping on the printing quality for such a weeny 'bumper edition' style book. And if you're new to art appreciation this could quite safely be used almost as a bluffers guide to 20th century art - bung in a bit of very recent contemporary art swotting up and use this as a bedrock of knowingness. The greats that we've all heard of are here, ...  Read the complete review

I picked up this book from an art gallery as an alternative to The Art Book, which is biased more towards fine art before the 20th century, as I prefer modern art. It contains a great variety of artists and mediums (painting, sculpture, video, performance) in a handy smaller version. *Design and layout* The book has an attractive front cover which does what it says on the tin, and has the same cover on the back. Inside there is first a 1-page introduction to the book, followed by 499 pages of artworks by popular 20th century artists. The pages are organised alphabetically by the artists' surname - making favourites like Dali, Kandinsky and Monet easier to ...  Read the complete review