The Year One : Art of the Ancient World East and West

by: Milleker, E.J.

Price: 35,00 EURO

(in stock)

 Two thousand years ago, the great civilizations of the world were unaware or only dimly conscious of each other. The Year One is the attractively produced catalog of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York that brings together art objects created in different parts of the world at the beginning of the first millennium, from Rome to India to China to the Americas. This interesting concept proves too vast for a single exhibition drawn from the collections of a single museum, even the Met's. The essays on the art of different cultures are informative but necessarily too short for their large subjects, though the main introductory essay paints a fascinating picture of a world being drawn together by conquest and trade. The problem is one of choice: narrowing down which cultures should be represented, and by which art works. Beautiful though each one is, the 150 items selected cannot do the job; they have insufficient context and give the impression of being chosen at random. Dividing the objects thematically might have been more successful than geographically--the spectacular Roman landscape frescoes may be a revelation to the reader, but the opportunity to compare contemporary Egyptian or Han Chinese landscapes is not taken. The photography and description of each object is excellent, however, and there is great beauty in this book. Though The Year One fails in its overall purpose, the individual artworks it presents are strong enough aesthetically to stand on their own. --John Stevenson

After an introduction on the interconnections of the ancient world, four sections cover the world geographically: the Mediterranean and Roman Empire, West and Central Asia, Asia, and the Americas. Each section begins with a map and follows with color plates of 150 works, each accompanied by explanatory text. Celts excelled in intricate metalwork; Egyptians melded Greco-Roman and Egyptian styles; peoples east of the Mediterranean produced a wide range of sculpture, ceramics, and precious metal objects; and in what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northern India, Buddhist art was incorporated with Greco-Roman influences. In East Asia, China's empire under the Han Dynasty created artifacts in every medium, and seminomads in northern China fabricated metalwork often to adorn horses. In cultures of the Pacific in South and Mesoamerica, objects were made from stone, ceramic, and gold

Contents:
The year one : empires and trade routes across the ancient world
The Mediterranean world : The Roman Empire
Map
Rome
Gaul, Britain, and Pannonia
Roman Egypt
West and Central Asia
Map
South Arabia
The Nabataeans
Palmyra
The Parthian Empire
Asia
Map
South Asia : India, Pakistan, Afghanistan
East Asia : China, Korea, Japan
Southeast Asia : Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia
The Americas
Map

Catalog of an exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from Oct. 3, 2000 through Jan. 14, 2001
Maps on lining paper

Subjects:
Art
Art New York (État) New York Expositions
Art New York (State) New York Exhibitions
Art antique Expositions
Art, Ancient
Art, Ancient Exhibitions
Catalogues d'exposition
Exhibition catalogs
Exhibition catalogues
History
Kunstvoorwerpen
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) Exhibitions
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) Expositions
New York (State) New York
Oudheid
Routes commerciales Histoire
Trade routes
Trade routes History
exhibition catalogs

xii, 220 pages : color illustrations, color maps ; 29 cm

The Year One : Art of the Ancient World East and West

by: Milleker, E.J.

• ISBN-13: 9780300085143 / 978-0-300-08514-3
• ISBN-03: 0300085141 / 0-300-08514-1
• Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2000

Price: 35,00 EURO

(in stock)