Revisiting "Name that Style"

So I had mentioned this book last week as part of my Top Ten, and I said I'd post more about it when I got it. I received it in the mail last Thursday, and took twenty minutes to look it over.

Final consensus? I could launch a few lesson plans off this book. But that's about it. It's cute, it's concise, provides accurate and descriptive information, but it is as not as expansive as I like.

Let's talk about the things I like. For starters, the pictures.

The caption reads, "destroyed in 1945, formerly in the Dresden State Art Collection Gallery," now, think about the kinds of discussions you can have about that relating to WW2. Just sayin'.

I want art books that have good quality pictures. Everything is printed high-quality on nice paper. You can't look at art in black and white, or as tiny little pictures (I compressed this scan for your convenience). Kids need to see the painting for what it is. And I hate art history books that have tiny, black and white pictures. That actually impairs my ability to study the material. I'm serious.

With every artwork presented in the book, we're given a page that explains the style of the work, like so: 

Large print for your convenience; you're welcome. Presenting "who-what-where-when-why" information in a concise manner is very effective for easily defining the topic, in this case, Realism. I also think that the way things are framed lends to the ability for discovery. In the first paragraph, the author (Bob Raczka) explains, "artists typically painted scenes from the Bible, heroes from classical mythology, and portraits for the rich." Yeah, that's correct. But why? This can lead to discussions to the purpose of Baroque art in Rome, or the French Academy's perceptions of what the purpose of high art was meant to achieve. We can discuss how Realism also influenced literature, especially in post Civil War America, and how artists like Thomas Eakins and Winslow Homer began to depict real people in real life scenarios. Presenting other artists examples gives students a chance to research more art. I also like the words chosen to describe each work. "Gritty" is a good word to describe Courbet's The Stone Breakers, because the style as well as the subject manner is very real conveys hardship.

I'm not surprised if this painting was destroyed if it was in Nazi Germany; Hitler hated all art that contained some modern sentiment. And in 1849, Courbet's work marks the beginning of a modern age.

My only problem with this book is that it's rather limited. There's no mention of Dada, or Pop art. All works after Late Antiquity to Late Renaissance are lumped into "Naturalism" which I suppose is a style... but I've always seen naturalism as an alternative to Abstraction or non-representation. It's too broad. I would have liked to see a page on medieval art (which had its own style), or Baroque art (which had its own agenda in presenting Biblical narratives).