What made the Romans laugh? Was ancient Rome a carnival, filled with practical jokes and hearty chuckles? How did Romans make sense of laughter? What role did it play in the world of the law courts, the imperial palace, or the spectacles of the arena? This book explores one of the most intriguing, but also trickiest, of historical subjects.

A kaleidoscopic journey tracing the methods and means of visual communication from the cave paintings of the earliest humans to the ?photograph' of a black hole in deep space.

Since the beginning of our time as humans, we have never stopped making images and inventing channels for visual communication. From the cave dweller creating paintings on a wall at the dawn of civilized time to Instagram influencers today, technology may keep changing, but our need to reach one another, to m...

David Hockney reflects upon life and art as he journeys through lockdown in rural Normandy.

A succinct but thorough introduction to abstract art since 1900, revised and updated.

A concise account of the history of fashion and costume from prehistoric times through to today.

The Greek myths are so much part of our culture that we tend to forget how they entered it in the first place. Visual sources – vase paintings, engraved gems and sculpture in bronze and stone – often pre-date references to the myths in literature, or offer alternative, unfamiliar tellings. In some cases visual art provides our only evidence, as there is no surviving account in ancient Greek literature of such important stories as the Fall of Troy, or Theseus and the Minotaur.

T. H. Carpen...

A new, significantly revised edition of Julian Bell’s 1999 book, taking a fresh, focused look at the situation of painting in contemporary culture.

The Books That Shaped Art History provides an invaluable roadmap of the field by reassessing the impact of the most important texts of art history published during the 20th century. Each of the sixteen incisive chapters, focusing on a single book, is written by a leading art historian, curator or one of the promising scholars of today. In bringing these cross-generational contributions together, the book presents a varied and invaluable overview of the history of art, told through its most en...