Art in History

A dazzling survey of painting, sculpture and architecture from the paleolithic cave paintings of Lascaux to contemporary earthworks, this lavishly illustrated text provides a historical and contextual view of art in its social and political milieu. We see, for example, how a flourishing urban mercantile economy undergirded the realism of Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, and appreciate the apocalyptic visions of Wassily Kandinsky and Max Beckmann in the context of WW I and its aftermath. Silver, an art history professor at Northwestern University, focuses on Western art but includes numerous insets tracing parallel developments in Africa, Asia, Central America and the Soviet Union. Also admirable is his substantial coverage of women artists, from the 17th-century Florentine painter Artemisia Gentileschi to photorealist Audrey Flack. Full of shrewd independent judgments, crammed with profiles of artists plus 600 plates (213 in color), this chronicle illuminates how art functions in and for its culture. (Dec.)