The Horse, From Cave Paintings To Modern Art

March 9, 2011

By Jean-Louis Gouraud, Michel Woronoff, Henri-Paul Francfort, and others.
Hardcover
$150.00
ISBN: 978-0-7892-1018-0
This large, lavish volume is a coffee table book worth buying a coffee table for! From the caves at Lascaux to the European racetracks of Degas to the American West of Frederic Remington, the horse has never ceased to inspire our imaginations. Once omnipresent - on the battlefield, in agricultural work, and in transport - horses have little by little disappeared from our immediate environment, but they remain fixtures throughout our museums, atop pedestals in our town squares, in personal collections, and in the landscapes of memory.
Transcending genres, places, and eras, specialists on the history of the horse and its representation in art create an ideal panorama on the subject, taking readers through the rich legacy of The Horse: From Cave Paintings to Modern Art. With these scholars you'll cross the principal continents from east to west and from prehistory to the present day, examining an ever-surprising gallery of images that illustrate how dearly horses have been prized by all human societies fortunate enough to encounter them.
The artistic styles represented in this book offer something for every taste. There are cave paintings and sculptures, medieval illuminated manuscripts and photographs, depictions of battle, and scenes of leisure. Uccello, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velásquez, Géricault, Stubbs, David, and Picasso, Frederic Remington, even Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec are among the 137 artists featured in this indepth study. As the more than 300 images in The Horse diversely illustrate, the horse is as beautiful an animal as it has been useful - indeed, central - to the development of human society.
The thirteen authors who contributed to this volume are all experts in their art historical fields. Joe Fargis who wrote the book’s Foreword, is one of the most successful riders ever to represent the U.S. Equestrian team in international competition. During the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Fargis won the show jumping individual gold medal and the team gold medal. He is only the second U.S. athlete to win an individual gold medal in show jumping. He was also a member of the silver medal show jumping team during the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul and won a team gold medal at the 1975 Pan American Games in Mexico City.
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