The follow-up to the seminal Ways of Seeing, one of the most influential books on art

This work discusses the art of Gustave Courbet in the years directly after the 1848 revolution, showing how complex Courbet's intuition of the social and political issues of the time really was, and how appropriate were the pictures he painted for the Salon of 1851.

The 16th revised and updated edition of this introduction to art, from the earliest cave paintings to experimental art. New artists have been incorporated such as Corot, Kollwitz and Nolde, and six fold-outs present large-scale works such as Van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece.

Examines questions about historians and their work: Why do we study history? How do we construct our knowledge of the past? What are the limitations of historical evidence? This book features chapter opening summaries, marginal glosses for difficult terms and concepts, boxed sections for key events and people, and illustrative material throughout.

Shows how, with the eclipse of abstract expressionism, art has deviated irrevocably from the narrative course that Vasari helped define for it in the Renaissance. This book shows that it wasn't until the invention of Pop art that the historical understanding of the means and ends of art was nullified.

James Elkins offers a road map through the field of visual studies, describing its major concerns and its principal theoretical sources.