Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

An undertaking as immensely ambitious as this one deserves our attention before we even open one of its stunningly illustrated and argued twin volumes. For what Ingo Walther and his international team have done is to make sense of this most explosive of artistic centuries. Who could possibly have forecast on New Year's Eve 1899 that, one hundred years later, painting and sculpture would be only options, not prerequisite disciplines for modern artists, constantly questioning both the technical and thematic definitions of their work? The infinite laboratory of experiment that the visual arts have become over the last decades highlights not only the inherent potential for human creativity and representation, but also shows the way individuals and groups have responded to the huge social, political and technological changes of this most turbulent of times. Ranging across the full spectrum of disciplines available, including photography and new media, and thematically chaptered to highlight relationships between works and movements, this readable and encyclopaedic masterwork does just what it says on the cover. Whether you want Surrealism or Land Art, Fluxus or Bauhaus, your art book purchases can stop once you buy this. Warning: it will not fit on your coffee table!

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

As the next millennium approaches, we can expect innumerable surveys of the previous century's achievements in all sorts of subjects. But we can hardly imagine a better look back at the explosion of creativity in the visual arts than this sprawling, two-volume set. Rather than force a single narrative of movements and countermovements, Ruhrberg and his German colleagues concentrate on individual artists, providing just enough surprises to entertain, enlighten, and provoke readers of all levels. (LJ 12/98) (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.