Venus Tour (An Overview of Western Art History)

Author: Chen Wangheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-04-01
Features: It is a book of dynamism. Beautiful images, beautiful texts, and beautiful sentiments will make you pause: Venus with full breasts and hips – Botticelli, The Enchanting Birth – Botticelli, Tea by the Window – Vermeer, but with melancholy – Watteau, “Stone”-shaping Heroes – Rodin, when sorrow turns into happiness – Gauguin, adult fairy tales – Joan Miró, he is the natural protagonist of this book. Not to be overlooked are Goethe, Taine, Hegel, Winckelmann, these masters who wander in the realm of art offer viewers the same feast of delicacies with words and thoughts. It is a book of solace. Wang Xiaobo said, “What is the passage of time?” “It’s like a person who is possessed lying at the bottom of a river, watching the flowing water, sparkling light, falling leaves, floating logs, empty glass bottles, one after another flowing past.” Touching the Eternal, Early-Ripening Aristocrat, Smiling from the Other Shore, Ode to Gorgeous Joy, Drunkenness of Honey, Embrace and Farewell, The Never-Ending Curtain. These are the rich chapters of the history of beauty that come along the axis of time; are those talented geniuses in the clouds? No, they also have the joys and sorrows of the human world – there is aesthetics history outside the art history, and life tea outside the academic history. A book of solace, it is for this purpose.