A highly ambitious and lucid history of ideas from the very earliest times to the present day.

This is a pocket-sized A-Z guide to 500 great painters and sculptors from medieval to modern times. Each artist is represented by a full-page colour plate of typical work, accompanied by information on each image and its creator. Artists, styles and subject matter are cross referenced.

MC Escher is not a surrealist drawing us into his dream world, but an achitect of perfectly impossible worlds who presents the structurally unthinkable as though it were a law of nature. The resulting dimensional and perspectival illusions bring us into confromtation with the limitations of our sensory perception.

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.

First published in 1998, this collection of essays contains some of Gould's best writing on a variety of subjects ranging from Leonardo da Vinci and Martin Luther to fossils and the history of science, including fascinating oddities from the natural world and the printed word.

Painter, sculptor, writer, and filmmaker, Salvador Dali (1904-1989) was one of the century's greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics. This monograph presents the infamous Surrealist in full color and in his own words. It features his provocative imagery, from the soft watches to the notorious burning giraffe.