The Dictionary of Art.

Related Features

The Dictionary of Art is based on solid scholarship. Grove, the American reference publishing division of the U.K’s Macmillan, established a precedent for excellence with its New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (1980). The Dictionary of Art s editor, Jane Shoaf Turner, has been on the editorial staff of the journal Apollo was assistant curator of drawings and prints at the Pierpont Morgan Library, and was a cataloger in the department of Western art in the Ashmolean Museum. The advisory board included Byzantinist Oleg Grabar, Renaissance art historian Andre Chastel, and Gothic sculpture scholar Willibauld Sauerlander. Area advisers prepared outlines for longer chapters and identified potential contributors. Contributors were selected on the basis of their positions “in the forefront of research in his or her field.” A list of contributors’ names, but not affiliations or article titles, is published in an appendix. Contributors include Mary Ellen Miller of Yale University; Jeremy Sabloff, director of the University Museum of the University of Pennsylvania; and Prairie School scholar Paul Sprague.

In addition to painters, printmakers, sculptors, and architects, biographies treat photographers, furniture makers, designers, metalsmiths, jewelers, conceptual artists, collectors, critics, patrons of the arts, and teachers. Selection was based on “scholarly and editorial judgement.” The Board discovered few serious errors of omission. Samples indicate that the dictionary includes approximately 85 percent of the artists in Contemporary Artists (Gale, 1996) and Matthew Baigell’s Dictionary of American Art (Harper and Row, 1979) and about 60 percent of those included in North American Women Artists of the Twentieth Century by Jules and Nancy Heller (Garland, 1995). Among those omitted are Howardena Pindell, Grace Medicine Flower, and environmental artists Alan Sonfist and Helen and Newton Harrison. Biographies for the best-known artists are up to 30 pages in length (e.g., Michelangelo); those for contemporary artists are shorter. More twentieth-century artists are included than artists from any previous period.

Biographies typically include nationality, place and date of birth and death, occupation, and a statement of the artist’s significance. Longer articles include sections on life and work, working methods and technique, character and personality, critical reception, and posthumous reputation. Individual artists cannot be identified by medium unless they are mentioned in the articles on those topics. Although there is an article about silversmith Paul Revere, he is not listed under silver in the index nor is there any classified listing of artists that would help the reader identify him.

The Dictionary of Art is intended to “take an entirely different approach from that of existing art reference works” in its coverage of architecture, photography, the decorative arts, and non-Western and traditional cultures. The only visual art form excluded from the dictionary is the history of filmmaking. The dictionary includes approximately 500 articles on styles, schools, groups, and movements and 800 articles on forms, themes, and subject matter. Also included are articles on building types (ballcourtsmosques , materials and techniques (jadebone , ancient or archaeological sites (TikalStonehenge , individual museums, and collection and conservation issues. Topical articles range in length from a few lines (turpentine to 100 or more pages for survey articles (RomanesquePrehistoric Europe .

Surveys of ancient and modern civilizations, countries, regions, and other broad topics provide excellent, authoritative overviews for nonspecialists or for art historians or artists who wish to update their knowledge of certain fields. Most long articles begin with a detailed table of contents. For example, the 137-page article Romanesque is divided into sections on architecture, sculpture, painting, mosaics, metalwork, enamels, ivories, stained glass, and textiles. Each of these sections is further subdivided, sometimes several times. The section on metalwork is divided by region, then into gold and silver and base metals then by type of metal, before providing sections on specific types of metalwork (“bells,” “candelabra” ). In some cases, subsections are written by different authors. A few articles are surprisingly short, such as Renaissance (eight pages) and Prairie School (less than half a page).

Discussion of specific pieces of art includes the date and references to present or last known locations. For items in private collections, citations to published reproductions, catalogues raisonnes, sales catalogs, or print catalog numbers are given. This information is valuable for those attempting to secure copyright permission and for researchers who would like to gain access to a specific piece.

The Dictionary of Art’ coverage of non-Western and traditional cultures, female artists, and art forms other than the traditional “fine arts” make the set as representative of the turn of the twentieth century as the Encyclopedia of World Art was of the middle of the century. The dictionary includes articles on “nearly every modern country recognized by the United Nations,” ranging from hundreds of pages for China, England, and Italy, to one page or less for Burundi, Burkina Faso, and Monaco. Broader articles cover such regions as Africa, pre-Columbian South America, and the Indian subcontinent. There are also entries for cities and towns; they typically review the city’s prehistory, history, development, architecture, museums, and artistic traditions.

Articles consistently represent the most recent scholarship in the field. For example, the article Dating Methods includes discussion of uranium-series, thermoluminescence, and fission-track dating. The articles sampled by the Board were clear and readable, providing concise and lucid discussions of complex topics such as Postmodernism and Neo-Platonism British terminology (jumper rather than sweater and spelling (jewellery rather than jewelry are used throughout the set.

Most volumes contain inserts of between 4 and 16 colorplates, focusing on artwork that is most effectively reproduced in color. For example, the four plates in volume 30 depict tapestries, tempera, textiles, tile, and upholstery. The excellence of the color reproductions is exemplified by 4 plates illustrating Carpets and Landscape Painting illustrated by Albert Bierstadt’s Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Emile Nolde’s rich Tropical Sun Many of the black-and-white illustrations are all-too-familiar stock photos from major archives, such as those from Alinari for Renaissance subjects. Considerably more interesting are reproductions of less familiar pieces such as a brass cannon in the form of a crocodile from Brunei. Approximately 1,000 line drawings and maps for countries and cultures were made especially for the set. Examples of artists’ works are usually placed with survey or topical articles rather than with biographies. For example, a photograph by Civil War photographer Timothy O’Sullivan is placed with the article Photography rather than with his biography. The extensive cross-referencing system includes references to illustrations.

All but the shortest articles include bibliographies of English and foreign-language books, catalogs, articles, audiovisual media, and unpublished sources. Longer bibliographies are divided into early sources, monographs, collections of essays, and specialist studies. Bibliographies are up to date, including many sources from the 1990s such as The Corpus of Rembrandt Paintings (1993) and biographies of Mary Cassatt (1994) and Tina Modotti (1993).

The 670,000-entry index reflects the dictionary’s scope and depth and facilitates quick identification of the most relevant material. Asterisks indicate the main article on a subject, italics indicate an illustration, and Roman numerals indicate a colorplate. Topics have many subheadings for regions and cultures, making the index an excellent tool for cross-cultural research. Additional entries are listed for materials, techniques, or uses. Masks includes entries for 142 historical and regional traditions, 52 materials (feathers, dung, nuts), and 10 techniques (death masks, gilding). Dress includes 231 entries, many with references to illustrations. Costume historians and designers will appreciate the illustrations of dress of specific regions and periods (Ainu, Anglo-Saxon) and materials (bark cloth, gold leaf). An appendix, “Guide to Non-Western Dynasties and Peoples,” lists cultural or tribal names by country or continent so that the reader can identify, for example, names of American Indian tribes or ethnic groups in the Russian Federation in order to look them up in the index. Other appendixes include abbreviations for periodicals and collections cited in the articles and a list of art reference sources.

Grove calls this epic work the “largest international collaboration in the history of art publishing.” Its interdisciplinary, context-based approach also makes it one of the most important publishing efforts for related disciplines such as anthropology, archaeology, ethnology, theater, and the history of culture. The Dictionary of Art is highly recommended to any public or academic library with the funds to purchase it.