Leonardo, Frida and the Others: The History of Art, 800 Years - 100 Artists
“Jouneaux has taken an excellent shot at taming the wild art history beast.”
Art history is a beast. There are so many paintings, sculptures, buildings, techniques, and tools to look at, not to mention the infinite contexts of the artists’ socio-cultural backgrounds and technical training they may have experienced. It’s taken hundreds of years, thousands of museums, and on-going dedicated commitment to sort and categorize the global art history body of knowledge. It can be downright overwhelming to know where to even begin to appreciate art.
Camille Jouneaux was one of those curious minds who tried to piece together the odds and ends of her varied and vast art exposure into a thread of understanding. Focusing on 100 paintings, Jouneaux ambitiously links together 800 years of art history. She pulls the past into the present moment of our current artistic expressions and offers a building block framework upon which one can continue to explore.
As with most art history collections, Leonardo, Frida and the Others only scratches the surface of this incredible discipline. It invites inquiry into a multitude of rabbit holes, which can lead anywhere in the world. Art history is not only the history of the Western world, it is international. And Jouneaux assembles into the mix of Western mastery a sampling of themes and works happening in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Indigenous peoples. She gives space to accomplished female artists as well, expanding the impact that not-white-not-European-not-males had on art.
The story of art is not just the history of what one culture or another thinks of as a pretty or a nice decoration. Subject matter in art history goes far beyond what simply looks pleasing to the eye. Art history is also a history of influences. Every painter has responded to something, was influenced by someone, and in turn, has been influential for someone else. Early in the 1200s the purpose of art was to illustrate a story, namely a bible story, a battle victory, or a mythological moral. Artists were contracted to illustrate the main points of stories. Painting since then ebbed and flowed between themes of politics, ethics, psychology, spirituality, national identity, economics, home life, royalty, poverty, light, motion, color, technology, pornography, life and death, etc. Art history is also a history of ideas in all of these areas.
Some of these ideas were given a title or an -ism: Romanticism, Classicism, Impressionism. Others were referred to by location: Paris School, Venetian School, Dutch Golden Age. And still others were more broadly categorized by historical points of reference: Renaissance, Enlightenment. Leonardo, Frida and the Others assembles bits and pieces of influences and ideas into an easy to follow chronology. It’s not a neat and tidy job, ideas and influences were not necessarily linear, but the timelines and descriptive segments take a valiant stab at the monumental task of keeping track of it all.
Jouneaux incorporates graphics, illustrated by Jean André, to enhance the understanding of art fundamentals or extrapolate on interesting, pertinent trivia. We learn more about what it took to become a painter for the Palace of Versailles in the 17th Century. We learn about the classification system of genres that ranks pictorial content from still life to history painting explaining why the complexity increased with the rankings. In another graphic we become familiar with the role sculptures played in painting. Other André illustrations pepper the chapters and help break up the steady stream of full color illustrations that represent the bulk of information in the book.
Understandably, some of the greats are missing and there are gaps in the story. The biggest void being between Giotto and Jan Van Eyck where nothing is referenced for over 100 years. Adding two artists here such as Paolo Uccello or Andrea Mantegna would have been appropriate. Although definitely renowned, Francis Bacon and Yayoi Kusama felt like odd choices for Expressionism and Pop Art categories. Leonora Carrington and Lee Krasner might have been fun to include. More information about the “unclassifiable” artists category would also have been welcome. Again, it’s understandable since Jouneaux’s curation process must have been agonizing.
As an introductory exposure to a gargantuan topic, Leonardo, Frida and the Others presents a very approachable encyclopedia of art in as comprehensive a manner as could be without making a multi-volume publication. Jouneaux has taken an excellent shot at taming the wild art history beast. This is definitely a book that can be enjoyed by all ages and will enhance the appreciation of art and the magnitude of wonder it brings to the world.