All About Art: Books for Color Our World

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Updated May 28, 2025
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America's art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum.
Paper Book
The Smithsonian Museum of American Art houses the world's premier collection of American art in one of the country's most beautiful buildings, the old Patent Office Building. This book illustrates paintings, sculpture, photography, and folk art, and is useful for the entire family.
Art : the definitive visual guide
Paper Book
The definitive visual guide to over 2,500 paintings and sculptures from around the world, from prehistory to the 21st century. Accessible, engaging, and thoroughly comprehensive, Art shows you how to look at -- and understand -- works of art, before guiding you chronologically through the...
The art of jazz : a visual history
Shipton, Alyn
Paper Book
A perfect gift for the musicians and artists in your life! The Art of Jazz explores how the expressionism and spontaneity of jazz spilled onto its album art, posters, and promotional photography, and even inspired standalone works of fine art. Everyone knows...
Black art : a cultural history
Powell, Richard J.
Paper Book
This groundbreaking book explores the visual representations of black culture throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. From blues to rap, from the paintings of Henry Ossawa Tanner to the video pieces of Keith Piper and Steve McQueen, it draws on the work of hundreds of artists,...
Contemporary African art
Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield
Paper Book
A revised edition of thisseminal title, surveyingthe diverse, ever-evolvingfield of contemporaryAfrican art from the1950s to today, illustratedin color throughout. Contemporary African art has grown out of the diverse histories and cultural heritage of the African continent and its...
The history of African art
Blier, Suzanne Preston
Paper Book
A concise, accessible, and up- to-date overview of the arts of Africa from prehistoric times to the present day. This indispensable introductory guide explores the art of the African continent from its early origins over 150,000 years ago to the contemporary, set in the context of...
How Banksy saved art history
Grovier, Kelly
Paper Book
A Spectator Book of the Year 'Grovier's book reframes [Banksy's] works in a new light. Inextricably linked to Da Vinci, Monet and Van Gogh, Banksy not only makes art but reinvigorates it' Daily Mail A new take on the history of art - from...
The island of extraordinary captives : a painter, a poet, an heiress, and a spy in a World War II British internment camp
Parkin, Simon
Paper Book
The "riveting...truly shocking" (The New York Times Book Review) story of a Jewish orphan who fled Nazi Germany for London, only to be arrested and sent to a British internment camp for suspected foreign agents on the Isle of Man, alongside a renowned group of refugee musicians,...

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