Aegean Art and Architecture (Oxford History of Art)

Excellent book on Minoan, Cycladic and Mycaenean Art and Architecture. Well illustrated, but some photos had some dimmed resolution.Delivery was extra efficient: it takes only 4 days by DHL, but I paid normal service (ussually takes 5-8 weeks).

Excellent overview of ancient aegean cultures. Well written and scholarly but accessible to anyone with an interest in the topic.

In a book about Art and Architecture one would expect good illustrations and discussions, which this book do not always provide. For instance, the majority of all architectural plans come without scale, so it is not possible to discern the size of the structures described. This is a major flaw but not the only one, because some of the plans and sections are not well illustrated and are difficult to understand, frequently lacking indications (see, for instance, figures 33, 58, 116, and Map 4 (the arrows pointing trade routes cannot be easily distinguished and you end up not getting the map right, but maybe, in this case the blame is mine because I suffer from a degree of color blindness). Also, as is the nature of Minoan and Mycenaean remains, we are left mostly with the base of buildings and wonder how the buildings were in fact. This is not the authors' fault, of course, but on pages 96 and 123 there are two frescoes which depict whole buildings. The authors' fault was to miss the opportunity of discussing the significance of these illustrations of Minoan buildings in terms of their outlook. Also, except when dealing with pictures of smalls objects such as vases and pendants, the otherwise fascinating illustrations of frescoes are usually of bad quality and worse still, very small. The authors point to details of these frescoes which cannot be properly seen in the figures they provide. Additionally, some of the text is baffling. Figure 58, already mentioned, and the text it refers to, are about the Minoans, in the Second Palace Period, using construction proportions as in the Fibonacci series. The figure is hard to understand, but worse, you do not see their hypothesis demonstrated in the palace plans they provide, and the significance of such proportional construction is not discussed. The most bothersome feature of the book, however, are not the above mentioned problems, but its discourse. All the time we are reminded of how biased and dated the explanations of many previous students of the period were, and how one should have a very distinct approach to the subject. Unfortunately their explanations are obscure by the use of sentences that are filled with many words but as little meaning as possible (as you begin reading you are greeted by a very irritating chapter 1). Some of their unbiased explanations are incredibly useless. For instance, when discussing that Minoan constructions could have done without defensive walls, they basically argue that being full of corridors and doors, one could easily baffle hostile intruders by closing a door and isolating sections of the house in this manner. I imagine a person could do it, if this person would not have any regard towards the rest of the family or household who could be elsewhere. The book is certainly somewhat disappointing.

I am a mid-thirties MFA student creating a short film based on the life at the palace of Knossos. I own many books on and related to the topic and have been researching for a few years now. This book arrived yesterday and I am already a third of the way through it. Very well written, organized quite well. A nice amount of illustrations showing the design and layout of various ancient sites. This helps a visual person like myself fully understand the descriptions.If you are interested in ancient life in the Aegean world I would recommend this book.

For those interested in the art as well as the history of the ancient world, especially the Aegean, this book is full amazing photos, detailed descriptions, and excellent history of a time and place long ago vanished and yet so alive in our collective memories. I urged every armchair historian or academic to add this book to their collection.

Although this study contains some interesting discussions of architectural sites, I found the book irritating. Its joint authors are far too wary of risking any speculation about Minoan culture--especially religious culture--as they are dominated by their New Historical bias against all generalizations regarding meaning. Speculations by other writers on the subject are hedged with 'supposedly,' 'said to represent,' and their terms placed in scare quotes. So we are left mainly with physical descriptions. For a more wide-ranging interpretation of the cultural significance of these sites and artifacts I recommend Rodney Castleden's 'Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete.' At least he is not hobbled by post-modernist theory and its refusal to discuss possible meaning. A more recent reading of Minoan iconography is N. Marinatos' 'Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess,' which makes a fascinating comparison between Minoan images of rituals and contemporary near eastern analogues.

I used this for a World History Art class. It wasn't an onerous read. I probably wouldn't read it for fun, but I feel I learned a lot from it.

Funny frickin cover.

よくまとめられたエーゲ海美術の書籍大変参考になります。写真もよく撮れています。

Good resource for information on Minoan sites etc. One of the very few reasonably priced books on the subject.A great overview of the main sites and some less well known too.But unfortunately burdened with ideological baggage which makes the author afraid to make ANY positive assertion, which quickly grows tiresome. Too much space occupied by lessons in how the reader should approachart history, when it could have been used to convey something a bit more interesting.Images are hit and miss - some are great but others look like printouts from my old inkjet printer!

I bought this as a general readers overview of early hellenic art, and when I first looked through the book, I thought it was exactly what I wanted. However when I started to read, I found that while I understood each word and each sentence, somehow I needed to reread everything two or three times to get any meaning out of it - everything seems overwritten and in an attempt to precise, the author manages to loose the meaning.I was intending to buy Dr Preziosi's History of Arts History, but I haven't the energy to fight the language!

Kindle version of this book (Amazon download for PC) does not have colour pictures, which is deceptive as the cover page is in colour - even when one downloads it. If one can print the cover in colour then why not the rest? Given that this is essentially a 'picture' book this is a great disappointment and one feels rather cheated - you would be better off buying the physical version instead.

As some reviewers have noted, the introduction to this book is very theoretical. However, the rest of the book is excellent and the choice/quality of images outstanding. Well worth investing in!