Research Guides: Art: Researching the Visual Arts: Finding Books

Esearch - Books & Ebooks

Searching for Books

You can find relevant books by entering keywords into the search bar. Enter the name of a specific style of art or, if you are looking for artwork related to a certain topic, you could enter (for example):

Art AND Capitalism

Art AND Children

Art AND Medicine

Art AND Religion

If you enjoy browsing the shelves for print books, some of the library's books about art are on these shelves on the 3rd Floor of the library:

N Visual arts

NB Sculpture

NC Drawing/Illustration

ND Painting

NK Decorative Arts

TR Photography

Selected Titles -- Electronic & Print

This is just a small sample of books relevant to art available at EMU. The library has many more titles. Please do not hesitate to ask a librarian for assistance.

Surrealism at Play by S. Laxton
Publication Date: 2019
Describes how, in embracing chance as the means to produce unforeseeable ends, Surrealists shifted emphasis from final product to process, challenging the disciplinary structures of industrial modernism. Play became a primary method through which surrealism refashioned artistic practice, everyday experience, and the nature of subjectivity.
The Design of Race by P. Fine
Publication Date: 2021
Traces the development of a mass visual culture in the U.S., focusing on how new visual technologies played a part in embedding racialized ideas about African Americans, and how whiteness was privileged within modernist ideals of visual form. Fine considers this process through typography, lithography, and photography, and also film, television, fine art and digital design.
Western Art and the Wider World by P. Wood
Publication Date: 2013
Explores the evolving relationship between the Western canon of art and the art and culture of the Islamic world, the Far East, Australasia, Africa and the Americas.
Entitled: Discriminating Tastes and the Expansion of the Arts by J. Lena
Publication Date: 2019
An in-depth look at how democratic values have widened the American arts scene. Yet, even as art lovers have acquired an appreciation for more diverse culture, they carefully select and curate works that reflect their cosmopolitan, elite, and moral tastes.
Modernism by M. Levenson
Publication Date: 2011
Illuminates individual achievements and locates them within the intersecting histories of experiment -- Symbolism to Surrealism, Naturalism to Expressionism, Futurism to Dadaism.
Beauty and Art, 1750-2000 by E. Prettejohn
Publication Date: 2005
Illuminates the relationship between our changing notions of beauty and specific works of art.
Grove Art Guide to Photography by T. Sheehan
Call Number: TR15 .G76 2016, 3rd Level
Publication Date: 2017
Provides an overview of photography's history, from the early 19th century to the present. Includes documentary, street, vernacular and fashion photography.
History of Design: Decorative Arts and Material Culture, 1400-2000 by P. Kirkham
Call Number: NK600 .H57 2013, 3rd Level
Publication Date: 2013
Presents hundreds of objects in their contemporary contexts, demonstrating the extent to which the applied arts have enriched customs, ceremony and daily life worldwide over the past six hundred years.
Edgar Degas: Sculptures by J. Czestochowski
Call Number: NB553.D4 A4 2002, 3rd Level
Publication Date: 2003
Presents contemporary color images of the sculptures and historic photographs taken 50 years ago. Includes exhibition, sales and auction records, among other primary sources.
Art: Authenticity, Restoration, Forgery by D. Scott
Publication Date: 2016
Presents an account of authenticity in the visual arts from the Paleolithic to the postmodern. Discusses case studies where conceptual, aesthetic, and material authenticity can be incorporated into an informative discourse about art from the ancient to the contemporary, illuminating concerns relating to restoration and art forgery.
The Oxford Handbook of the Baroque by J. Lyons
Presents the Baroque as a broad cultural phenomenon that arose in response to the enormous changes emerging from the sixteenth century: the division between Catholics and Protestants, the formation of nation-states and the growth of absolutist monarchies, the colonization of lands outside Europe and the mutual impact of European and non-European cultures. By exploring the Baroque in relation to these larger upheavals, Lyons reveals a fresh image of the Baroque as a response to an epoch of crisis.
Ceramic, Art and Civilisation by P. Greenhalgh
Tells the story of ceramics as a story of human civilisation, from the Ancient Greeks to the present day. Ceramics have had a presence in virtually every country and historical period, and have worked as a commodity servicing every social class.