Reddit reviews Gardner's Art Through the Ages

Gardner's Art Through The Ages

To start out I suggest checking out: smarthistory.khanacademy.org. There's some good stuff on there. A solid textbook to start with is Gardner's Art Through the Ages.

Sure! SmartHistory is an amazing resource (http://smarthistory.org/)--we suggest it to our undergrads constantly, and many of us still use it ourselves when teaching outside out speciality . . . There's also Art History Teaching Resources, which is designed for teachers, but can be really helpful with quick overviews of periods and styles, and often has reading recommendations for beginners (http://arthistoryteachingresources.org/).

If you've got money to spend, I also strongly recommend The Great Courses (http://www.thegreatcourses.com/category/fine-arts/art-history.html?CFM=mega_menu)--they're dvds of courses by actual professors and experts in the field, and do an incredibly thorough job teaching specific material over a series of lectures. You can pick what courses you're interested in as well, and some of the lecturers are really amazing. They're not cheap, but they do go on sale a lot.

You could also pick up some textbooks, which do a great job introducing the whole history of art. We use [Gardener's Art Through the Ages] (https://www.amazon.com/Gardners-Through-Ages-Richard-Tansev/dp/0155011413), [Janson's History of Art] (https://www.amazon.com/Jansons-History-Art-Western-Tradition/dp/020568517X), and [Stockstad and Cothren's Art History] (https://www.amazon.com/Art-History-5th-Marilyn-Stokstad/dp/0205873472/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=C66Q35JR4CV6SYGG8PBK). Like all textbooks, they're on the pricey side, but new editions come out all the time, and you can find old editions for pretty cheap, and since art history doesn't change much, it really doesn't matter it it's out of date! A lot of them also come in "a la carte" editions, so if you're only interested in ancient art or the Renaissance say, you don't need to get a 900 page book that goes up through the 21st century.