Best general art book?

You buy art books by weight and price. The heaviest and most expensive are the ones to purchase.

Janson’s “History of Art” (two volumes).

I vote for Janson’s too.

A good place to start might be your library.

Ah my major in Art History is finally paying off!!!
Anything by: Marilyn Stokstad is good, like her Art History a View of the West
but if you want a book with a fresh perspective I would say Art a New History by Paul Johnson. The Shock of the New is REALLY good too! That’s better for later art though!

I second IBER! I am taking art history and we use Stockstad, and it’s my professor’s number one choice (over Janson, is what I’ve heard, but I’ve never used it).

I was made to read Janson’s in high school 2,000,000 years ago and I think it’s pretty dry.

How about, just go to the library and wallow in all the beautiful pictures in the fifteen-dollar-a-pounders that Gail’s talking about. Don’t constrict yourself to the very white-European-male version that everyone who ever learned it then had to shuck off. Find the cultures and images that make your mind explode and read what you can find about them. Be eclectic in your reading; try not to read the “right” books.

I’m feeling very protective because of the phrase “general art book”. There’s no such thing as art-in-general; all art is extremely specific to its times, materials, makers’ psyches. Try to question the idea that there’s such a thing as “art history”. There isn’t;
there’s time, and art has happened within it. Art has life, but it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have a timeline or a logic. Stay independent. Pay attention to what pulls you.
Distrust texts. Instead, make your own sketches of the works you like. This is what will teach you to see.

@susanc I think you make a good point, but there is such thing as Art History, it combines the times that formed the artists and their work. Maybe it’s Art Theory that you are against, which is an attempt to define what exactly art is. Art does have life, I believe in suprematism.

Victorian Painting (Paperback)
by Lionel Lambourne

link

Lots of large color photographs and interesting text. Easy read. One of my favorites.

@IBER9D, no, it’s the pre-multiculturalist Eurocentric version of Art History I have
doubts about. Which would include Janson.
I’m not against art theory either, I just think it’s a dumpy little branch on the great tough roiling oak of human creativity.
I also think pallen123 has enough juice, judging from the Q,
to make up her/his own mind. That ^ was just me on a grandstand.

I believe the new edition of Janson is less Western-centric, but agree there’s nothing like browsing the shelves of a good art collection and tasting a variety of artists and periods.

I would also highly recommend some of the popular video series on art which should be available at your library. Two from some years ago are Kenneth Clark’s Civilization and Sister Wendy’s series (she’s a hoot.) A good recent one was Simon Schama’s The Power of Art which has a companion book of the same name. That series might be a very good place to start.

In terms of surveys of particular periods as you specify in your question, there are some good overviews published by Penguin and Thames and Hudson. There is also a nice recent group of books written by a woman (Patricia something) called Impressionists at Home, Impressionists by the Sea, etc., that are lovely and very accessible.

I’m on semester break right now and not at my library, but if you still need help, ask again later in the month.

@susanc I guess I got a little defensive since it’s my major. And it also helped that I wrote my response at some ungodly time, and I read your entry wrong, my eyes went straight to there is no Art History. Regardless now reading it being rested, it all makes perfect sense, pallen123 just needs to be open and not hold himself to the constraints of white-european-men-syndrome, that so many art history books tend to have.