So, I’m totally geeking out on art books lately. While taking an unexpected stroll through my overly-priced campus bookstore, I stumbled upon a tiny, beautiful little paperback volume called The Story of Art by E. H. Gombrich (Amazon). Intrigued, I picked it up, and it looks amazing and right up my alley. Apparently, this little volume (which is actually pretty dense and not so little subject-wise) is extremely popular and has been reprinted in sixteen different editions! It’s an introduction to art history written simply and elegantly for the newcomer to the art historical scene — so there’s no pretensions or big words or intimidating scholarship. So awesome! Naturally, I had to buy this book, and I cannot tell a lie, I am putting off my piles of homework to start flipping through it.

Now I’m looking through the beautifully designed Phaidon website; they’re famous publishers of art books and everything is just meticulously beautiful. I have a few books in their Western Art series — Art and Ideas — from various classes (mostly 19th century), so you know they’re good books since a professor’s assigning them! But they’re just so beautiful to look at in and of themselves that I kind of want to buy the entire collection just to see how pretty they’d all look on lined up in a row on my bookshelf…

In doing some research this morning for my Vermeer seminar, I stumbled across this book in the depths of my college’s art library, read the first two pages, and am very close to ordering it on Amazon.com. In Vermeer’s Wager: Speculations on Art History, Theory, and Art Museums, Gaskell studies the art world through lens of a single Vermeer painting, Woman Standing at a Virginal. Right up my alley! In fact, even the first paragraph of the introduction is a tantalizingly amazing premise for a class: “A prominent scholar who is a specialist in seventeenth-century Dutch art and who teaches at a university, but has privileged access to works of art, told me the following story. At the first meeting of each new seminar he brings a seventeenth-century Dutch painting into the room and introduces it to the seminar participants. He informs them that they will be spending the entire semester studying that one painting… The professor and his students [have] the advantage of being able to spend their weeks in intimate contact with an actual painting.” Ahh! What university is it, please, Mr. Gaskell? And the course number, while you’re at it? Anyway, I’ll write a review of his book later as I get into it, but for now, back to the books…

Today I was at Border’s (not my usual bookstore — I prefer Barnes & Noble with their reader’s discount!) for a book signing and discovered this book while waiting in line. It covers all the basic masterpieces by chronology, with beautiful reproductions, and has what looks to be really good summaries of each work. I think it’s also written by art historians. But in addition to having all the prerequisite masterpieces, they also had a bunch of paintings that I’d never seen before, but definitely want to read about. So, this book is definitely going on my birthday list, since it rings in at a kind of hefty $34. Click the link to buy it from Amazon.com if you’re as intrigued as I am. If I do get it for my birthday, I’ll be sure to put up a review.