501 Great Artists

Like the title not-so-subetley suggest, this giant book at 640 pages introduces the readers to 501 artist that left the greatest impression in mankind, stretching out from Fan Kuan (from pre-1500) to Shirana Shahbazi in 1974. Each artist, including painters, sculptors, mixed media artists, photographers, and installation artists, is introduced in a smiliar fashion with:

• Name
• Birth & Death
• Artistic Style
• Masterworks
• Education
• Few other "fun facts"
• A few photographs of the artwork (most of the time)

all in concise, to-the-point, well written paragraphs.

Some of my personal favorite artists from the book were Leonardo Da Vinci, Edvard Munch, El Greco, Jan Vermeer, Theodore Gericault, Adolph Menzel, Edgar Degas, Van Gohn, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, John Singer Sargent, Wassily Kandisnsky, Picasso, Giacomo Balla, Egon Schiele, Stanely Spencer, George Grosz, Rene Magritte, Arshile Gorky, Dorothea Tanning, Jackson Pollock, Leonora Carrington, Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Shirana Shahbzi.

Yeah. It's a pretty long list. But can you really blame me with 501 great artists to choose from? ^__^

Personally, I don't think this would've made a good reference book because of how difficult it is to pinpoint a single artist. It's not suitable to read for fun either, since the standarized format can get pretty boring at 600something pages. However, I think the book is one of those that you should keep on your bookshelf so you can simply flip to a random page at anytime to read about the artist. Though it kinda got a bit thick at time, I enjoyed this art guide to the world's 501 great artists.