This handsome work comprehensively summarizes the art, culture, and history of the Armenian people in pictorial and textual terms. Depicting the origin and evolution of Armenian civilization from the 6th century B.C. to the 18th century, it explains the unique qualities of the art as well as the foreign influences absorbed and transformed by the Armenians, whose best works were architecture, sculpture, illuminated manuscripts, and crafts. The book is chronologically arranged, with genealogy tables, glossary, chronology, plans, and diagrams following the illustrated essays; 960 illustrations (many in color) are interspersed throughout. The text, translated from the French Les arts armeniens (1987), is at times tortuous and contradictory, but the facts are solid and well organized. Recommended for ethnic, art history, or cultural collections.-- Robin Kaplan, The Information Group, Los Angeles Copyright 1989 Cahners Business Information.
Armenia, which embraced Christianity in the fourth century, has a multitude of early Christian buildings to rival Italy's in number and diversity. Successively invaded by waves of Byzantine, Turkish, Mongol, Arab, Ottoman and Persian conquerors, Armenia absorbed these disparate cultural influences while producing an autonomous art of striking individuality. Enriched with 959 plates (173 in color), this magnificent album surveys paintings, sculpture, architecture and crafts unusual for their audacious imagination, freshness of color, rich ornamentation and wealth of surprising effects. Cathedrals, painted manuscripts, ceramics, religious objects, mosaics and khatchkars (outdoor votive or commemorative stones) are among the treasures discussed by art historians Thierry and Donabedian. The panorama includes art of the Armenian disapora, from Crimea to Poland, Syria and Palestine. (Nov.) Copyright 1989 Cahners Business Information.
