I’m an art historian, author, and the former curator of modern and contemporary art at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina—so art is my thing! I’m the host of the independent podcast ArtCurious, which I started in 2016 and which was named one of the best podcasts by O, The Oprah Magazine and PC Magazine, among other outlets. I’m also the author of a book called ArtCurious, which was lauded in Publisher’s Weekly, BookPage, and Booklist. I’ve got advanced degrees in art history and love to share all my enthusiasm for art whenever I can (also: travel!).
It is a great question, right? For your curious child (or anyone that especially likes a giggle), this is the perfect “art history, explained” reader. I’m a big fan of this one. The book is structured around twenty-two questions, and some are straightforward, like the title question, while others ("Why is everything so flat in Egyptian art?" or "Are stick men art?") might make grown-ups think differently, too. Whether you're a longtime art lover or just setting foot into a museum for the first time, I guarantee that this book will teach you something new.
Artists ask questions when they make art - and viewers ask questions when they look at art. This gently provocative book provides an engaging way for young people to start asking and answering questions for themselves. Why is art full of naked people? is structured around 22 questions, each one tackled over two spreads. The opening spread explores the question and answer, inviting the reader to study a full-bleed image of an important artwork. The second spread shows a selection of work on the theme from across history, showing how art can run with an idea to hugely different ends.…
I’m an art historian, author, and the former curator of modern and contemporary art at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina—so art is my thing! I’m the host of the independent podcast ArtCurious, which I started in 2016 and which was named one of the best podcasts by O, The Oprah Magazine and PC Magazine, among other outlets. I’m also the author of a book called ArtCurious, which was lauded in Publisher’s Weekly, BookPage, and Booklist. I’ve got advanced degrees in art history and love to share all my enthusiasm for art whenever I can (also: travel!).
This book is my top recommendation for any art newbie that comes to me asking for book ideas. Where should I start if I want to learn about art history? Start right here! The Annotated Mona Lisa is easy to read, and educational yet entertaining, and it'll help you discover everything from what cave paintings actually mean, to the difference between Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism (hint: it's right there in the name), and even how contemporary artists make work out of miscellaneous objects. Great for preteens on up.
An illustrated tutorial of prehistoric to contemporary world art, from cave paintings to video art installations to digital and Internet media in an easy-to-understand format.
This heavily illustrated crash course in art history is revised and updated from the second edition published in 2007, including a new chapter about recent artists and movements. Featuring succinct page-length essays, instructive sidebars, and more than 300 photographs, The Annotated Mona Lisa: A Crash Course in Art History from Prehistoric to the Present takes art education out of the realm of dreary textbooks, demystifies jargon and theory, and makes the history of art movements…
I am the youngest child in my family, which means I grew up with the sense that I had to catch up. Everyone else knew things that I didn’t know. This made me explore the world and try to understand it by reading books. I studied literature at university because I felt that it held some secrets of the universe, and then I became a journalist because I wanted to practice writing. But I also wanted a legitimate reason for probing, researching, and searching for answers. I love these books because they have deepened my sense of the past while making me see that it is still with us.
Honestly, I love anything that was written by John Berger. And though many of us turn to his Ways of Seeing to better understand art, I found this collection of essays about art to be even more expansive, even more thought-provoking.
Berger always wrote from a certain political perspective, but he was never dogmatic. He was not an ideologue. Above all, this book (and all his books) offer little glimpses of the unexplainable effect of art, of the way that the artist must wrestle with the art and that nothing is ever definitive. Whenever I feel like the world is in a bad place, I go back to Berger to understand the ways in which meaning and seeking meaning through art make living worthwhile.
John Berger writes: 'The pocket in question is a small pocket of resistance. A pocket is formed when two or more people come together in agreement. The resistance is against the inhumanity of the new world economic order. The people coming together are the reader, me and those the essays are about - Rembrandt, Palaeolithic cave painters, a Romanian peasant, ancient Egyptians, an expert in the loneliness of certain hotel bedrooms, dogs at dusk, a man in a radio station. And unexpectedly, our exchanges strengthen each of us in our conviction that what is happening to the world today is…
I grew up on Southern California beaches—Manhattan Beach, Venice Beach, Ocean Beach, La Jolla—but first experienced Baja as an adult. It was like a different world. Returning repeatedly over the next decade, I came to know the stunning shorelines and quiet bays of the peninsula’s midriff as intimately as my home state’s beaches. Swimming and diving Baja’s clear blue waters and hiking its dusty trails and palm-studded mountains, I have admired the many moods of this unique desert peninsula. A writer and editor, I have read extensively from the vast selection of books about Baja, both new and classic works.
You cannot judge a book by its cover, especially this one.
I know it looks like a coffee table book—and it is a gorgeous book full of incredible photos of the cave painting sites and much more, all by the author—but it is so much more than that.
First off, it is an adventure story, and it quickly becomes a story of exploration and discovery. I found myself as gripped by it as by the plot of any mystery tale, and I am so grateful that the author taught me about, and inspired me to learn even more about, Baja’s amazing and mysterious cave paintings.
A full-color account of the great murals of a forgotten people. Depicts the author's discovery and documentation of a world-class archaeological region in remote central Baja.
Coming from a family of dog lovers, I have lived a lifetime of loving dogs and reading (and writing) books about dogs. My childhood animal books were “dog-eared” for sure, but when I began to read dog books like those on my list, my relationship with dogs became deeper and richer beyond how a dog looks or acts; these books opened a door on our mutual history and how our lives fit together. As our oldest animal partner, dogs choose to travel this shared path with us. A gift to us, it is now our responsibility to honor them.
I found this book to be a deeply humane exploration of our human-dog relationship from prehistory to the present. It presents the essential ways that dogs changed us and acknowledges the ever-lurking, awful temptation to exploit or harm our oldest friend.
Hobgood-Ostler weaves together canine-human archaeology, history, and literature to show us how we would not have flourished without our dogs, from the earliest days of our partnership to our current lives in which dogs have become actual family members, offering companionship, support, and love.
Canines and humans have depended upon one another for tens of thousands of years. Humans took the initial steps of domesticating canines, but somewhere through the millennia, dogs began dramatically to affect the future of their masters. In A Dog's History of the World, Laura Hobgood-Oster chronicles the canine-human story. From the earliest cave paintings depicting the primitive canine-human relationship to the modern model of dogs as family members, Hobgood-Oster reveals how the relationship has been marked by both love and exploitation.Canines have aided and been heir to humankind's ever-increasing thirst for scientific advancements, empire building, and personal satisfaction. They…
When I was little, I knew I would work with books in some way, and I did, for many years working for one of the major children’s book publishers. But it wasn’t rewarding in the way I had hoped. Some kids know they want to be a teacher when they grow up. I definitely did not, yet I became one. I love finding ways to make learning fun. In my teaching days I found ways to get the most reluctant students to find something they could enjoy about learning. And now as an author, I find myself doing the same, and as a parent, seeking out books like the ones I recommend here that teach without teaching.
The first thing I love about this book is the very unusual use of 2nd person: “You live in a cave with your parents.” The child in this story loves exploring and using his imagination. Everyone else is busy with the job of surviving. The child sees shapes in the clouds and wonders why no one else can see what he sees. One night, without thinking, he takes a stick and draws on the cave walls. Now everyone can see what he sees, and it is the first-ever drawing. Everyone is amazed by it, thinks it is magic, and it is! The ability to use our imaginations to create art is magic, and it is what the author has done in this book, inspired by the real first drawing.
In 1994, the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc was discovered, filled with the oldest known drawings in existence at that time, made 30,000 years ago. In that same cave, prehistoric footprints were discovered: those of an 8-year-old child and a wolf. From these astonishing facts, THE FIRST DRAWING was born.
In this beautiful picture book, Caldecott Medal-winning author/illustrator Mordicai Gerstein imagines one possible way drawing was invented. The young boy that stars in this story has such a vivid imagination that he sees images everywhere - clouds, stones and smoke look like animals to him. His parents, however, don't share his enthusiasm…
What does the breathtakingly beautiful art depicted on the walls of caves such as Lascaux, Chauvet and Altamira, tell us about the nature of the ancestral mind? How did these images spring, seemingly from nowhere into the human story?
The Mind in the Cave puts forward the most plausible explanation yet proposed for the origins of image-making and art. This is a masterful piece of detective work, casting light on the darkest mysteries of our earliest ancestors and on the nature of our own consciousness and experience.
I became intrigued by Upper Paleolithic societies when I studied prehistory at the University of Bordeaux. Over time, I became more and more involved in trying to understand why some Upper Paleolithic societies produced such great art – both painted and carved. After years of studying hunter-gatherer cultures, I concluded that the Upper Paleolithic groups producing fine art were not simple egalitarian groups, but were almost certainly more complex types of hunter-gatherers like the ethnographic groups in California and the Northwest Coast with striking economic and social inequalities – and great art. I decided to put all these ideas into an adventure novel for young readers: The Eyes of the Leopard.
This is actually an edited book of papers dealing with the social organization among prehistoric and ethnographic hunter-gatherers. It is one of the few publications that discusses issues like inequality from a variety of different viewpoints, including diametrically opposed views about Upper Paleolithic societies – whether they were egalitarian or non-egalitarian. Another important aspect of this volume is the inclusion of ethnographic hunter-gatherers to generate insights into how prehistoric hunter-gatherers could have organized themselves. Some unique features include the examination of dogs as indicators of inequalities and the nature of the cave paintings as indicators of inequalities. Mobility, population densities, surpluses, and many other factors all create a heady brew of debate and intriguing ideas. This book is highly recommended, even if a bit technical.
Ancient mythical animals are all around us in words and images. Following the transformations of such animals through literature and art across millennia has been my passion since the early ’80s. It was then, after years of writing and teaching, that I became intrigued by a winged and fishtailed lion figure on an antique oil lamp hanging in my study. That hybrid creature led me to the eagle-lion griffin and my first published book, The Book of Gryphons. I have followed a host of mythical beasts ever since. My most recent book, The Phoenix: An Unnatural Biography of a Mythical Beast, was published in a 2021 Chinese translation.
I love this lavishly produced 2013 book. It overarches my other recommended “best books for following mythical beasts through time.” Titles of early chapters—“What is an Imaginary Animal?” “Every Real Animal is Imaginary,” and “Every Imaginary Animal is Real”—encompass the book’s interplay between nature’s animals, imaginary ones, and human beings.
Open Imaginary Animals anywhere to get a glimpse of its variety and scope. Boria Sax’s interdisciplinary, learned, and conversational text sweeps across folklore, legends, myths, and natural history of worldwide cultures from antiquity to today. Accompanying art, much in color, spans a Lascaux cave painting and a photograph of a human-looking robot; throughout are fantastic creatures in paintings, early natural history engravings, and other pictorial forms.
As Dr. Sax writes, “Imaginary creatures can be overwhelming in their multiplicity.”
Tales throughout the world generally place fabulous beasts in marginal locations - deserts, deep woods, remote islands, glaciers, ocean depths, mountain peaks, caves, swamps, heavenly bodies and alternate universes. Legends tell us that imaginary animals belong to a primordial time, before we had encompassed the world with names, categories and scientific knowledge. This book traces the history of imaginary animals from Palaeolithic art to the Harry Potter stories, and beyond. It shows how imagined creatures help us psychologically, giving form to our subconscious fears as 'monsters', as well as embodying our hopes as 'wonders'. Nevertheless, their greatest service may be…
While using the city of Albi in southern France as a base for visiting some cave art locations I became fascinated with the history of the early Christians of the region and the brutal Cathar Crusade which happened there. I was also surprised to learn this was the home of Toulouse Lautrec and other later artists. As an archaeologist studying cave art, I became caught up in the long and important history of this one small area. The idea for a story intertwining different religious movements and art over thousands of years quickly emerged. I couldn’t resist this unique opportunity to reveal a piece of the past from a perspective I hadn't considered before.
In taking on any project dealing with the origins of art or religion in any time and place I have found Pfeiffer’s book to be an excellent and easily readable starting point.
As an experienced journalist and writer, his ability to take on difficult subjects in the human origins story in a way the average reader can comprehend and enjoy keeps his work relevant, despite the passing years.
Following his own path through some of the art caves of southern France many years later, I found a reread of this book and the still relevant questions it asks and attempts to answer a virtual guidebook to my own understanding of this rapidly changing subject. Profusely illustrated and supported with color photos, this book challenges the reader to begin elevating both the abilities and complexity of our stone age ancestors in ways we may not have considered or even thought possible.…
An analysis of the origins of the prehistoric cave paintings and sculptures of Europe examines the link between art, creativity, religion and ritual, and group solidarity
