Art Books

THIS exhibition has been arranged with a desire to meet the convenience of those who are interested in manifestations of the arts of different countries over which Islam held sway at one time or other in the past. An effort has been made to show under one roof representative examples of works produced at different epochs and stages of the civilizations referred to, so that they may be seen, and perhaps... more...

INTRODUCTION Whatever its outward expression, human thought remains essentially unchanged and, throughout all of its manifestations, is fundamentally the same. Varying phases are but accidents and underneath the divers wrappings of historic periods or different civilizations, the heart as well as the mind of man has been moved by the same desires. Art possesses a unity like that of nature. It is... more...

Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts "The influence of sculpture is far reaching. The mind that loves this art and understands its language will more and more insist on a certain order and decorum in visual life. It opens an avenue for the expression of aesthetic enjoyment somewhere between poetry and music and akin to drama. - Arthur Hoeber The Fountain of Energy A. Stirling Calder,... more...

A Fourteenth Century Legend Friar Bacon, reading one day of the many conquests of England, bethought himself how he might keep it hereafter from the like conquests and so make himself famous to all posterity. This (after great study) he found could be no way so well done as one; which was to make a head of brass, and if he could make this head to speak (and hear it when it spoke) then might he be able... more...

CHAPTER I Venetian painting in its prime differs altogether in character from that of every other part of Italy. The Venetian is the most marked and recognisable of all the schools; its singularity is such that a novice in art can easily, in a miscellaneous collection, sort out the works belonging to it, and added to this unique character is the position it occupies in the domain of art. Venice alone... more...

PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1887. The following lectures were the most important piece of my literary work done with unabated power, best motive, and happiest concurrence of circumstance. They were written and delivered while my mother yet lived, and had vividest sympathy in all I was attempting;—while also my friends put unbroken trust in me, and the course of study I had followed seemed to fit me for... more...

I THE AESTHETIC HYPOTHESIS It is improbable that more nonsense has been written about aesthetics than about anything else: the literature of the subject is not large enough for that. It is certain, however, that about no subject with which I am acquainted has so little been said that is at all to the purpose. The explanation is discoverable. He who would elaborate a plausible theory of aesthetics must... more...

CHAPTER I The Duomo I: Its Construction The City of the Miracle—The Marble Companions—Twilight andImmensity—Arnolfo di Cambio—Dante's seat—Ruskin's "Shepherd"—Giottothe various—Giotto's fun—The indomitable Brunelleschi—Makers ofFlorence—The present façade. All visitors to Florence make first for the Duomo. Let us do the same. The real name of the Duomo is the... more...

CHAPTER I. . § 1.—Situation and Boundaries of Chaldæa and Assyria. The primitive civilization of Chaldæa, like that of Egypt, was cradled in the lower districts of a great alluvial basin, in which the soil was stolen from the sea by long continued deposits of river mud. In the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, as in that of the Nile, it was in the great plains near the ocean that the inhabitants... more...

ARTIST AND PUBLIC In the history of art, as in the history of politics and in the history of economics, our modern epoch is marked off from all preceding epochs by one great event, the French Revolution. Fragonard, who survived that Revolution to lose himself in a new and strange world, is the last at the old masters; David, some sixteen years his junior, is the first of the moderns. Now if we look for... more...