I know very little about art...

BurmaKitty's alterego did this website for two years:
http://www.sanfranciscoartmagazine.com

and she obviously knows NOTHING about art or history that you find in the libraries and bookstores.

I'll try to give you more and more specific answers if you'd like to give a clue as to what you are gravitating towards and particularly interested in, but the spread from Greek statues to Renaissance painting to Japanese prints to conceptual installations is rather large.

And if you don't know where to start, read these two first and I think you will see that art may not always be about what you think it thinks it's about.

STANNOUS FLOURIDE
http://www.sanfranciscoartmagazine.com/2001/june/stanflouride/stanflouride.html

ELLIOT LESSING
http://www.sanfranciscoartmagazine.com/2001/september/elliot/elliot.html

KEITH BOWDWEE
http://www.sanfranciscoartmagazine.com/2001/june/boadwee/boadwee.html

Ok, neither I nor the BurmaKitty wrote that one...it's actually a painter/artist reviewing a photographer.

Whatever you study in art, please don't forget to have fun with it ok. It's art, not economics...

oh, or is it???

for photography here's a good website:

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/

If you just want a context and basic art historical literacy (by which I mean the Western canon of art as it taught to American undergraduates in art survey courses) the canonistic art history texts are:

Art: A History of Painting, Sculpture and Architectures by Frederick Hartt, and

History of Art by HW Jansen.

Of the two, I prefer Hartt.

These books are surveys of the received academic histories of art, from the Venus of Willendorf and cave paintings at Altamira to, I think, Rauschenberg and Schnabel, who were the most recent accepted canonistic artists at the time I did my degrees. Jansen is in the sixth edition, now, so I don't know who got in there since.

Academic art books, as I'm sure you have noticed, are extremely expensive because of the photos. I don't happen to think you need to own many of them. It's so much better to look at the art if you can. Going on some docent tours of the great museums of the world (I forget, are you in London?) will show you how much there is to know about the historical context of any given set of works (and will show you what civilizations deemed worthy of raping and pillaging from others over the centuries). But you can read about what's considered the famous artists and works of art and books like those provide a useful starting point for understanding historical references, which is so much a part of art, art criticism and art histories these days. I've noticed that some of the great musuems like the Metropolitana nd the Louvre have pretty good websites, too. You can see what they consider important in tehir collections.

Once you familiarize yourself with a basic framework of just what it is that people are talking about when they to refer to particular periods, artists or styles, other levels of art writing, like criticism and social histories may make a little more sense. Personally, I have an academic interest in the social history of art but when I go to galleries or museums I just look at stuff I like. I don't necessarily feel that my experience is diminished by ignorance, but if I like something, I often read up on it. I know almost nothing about contemporary art besides what people recommend.

It's art, not economics...

Ho, ho ho.

If you are interested in the modern economics of art and the sociology of the art-buying world, you can go to an art auction preview and/or an art auction itself. Christie's and Southeby's have regular auctions of "Important Impressionist Paintings" and many, many other categories of art. Not only will it be a rare opportunity to see art works that will spend most of the rest of the time in people's private collections but you can see the kind of people that buy art and how an auction works.

This is the Art Hist. 101 Antiquity to 1800 book at my old school. Very dense, pretty color pictures, and a 100.000 purchase.

oh my, I have several copies of this text book...they cost me from two to eight bucks each. If you live in a college town, you can probably find a two dollar copy at a book store nearby...just don't go to the college bookstore, they will be selling the current or near current copy. you probably wouldn't need that.

honor and fleming are better, but still so old they might as well die.

I like and use:
Gardner's Art Through the Ages, 10th edition
Hall, Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art
Stokstad, Marilyn. Art History
Living with Art Rita Gilbert
these are survey texts, and not w/o their problems.

their names already sound like some old vaudeville act.

we had them at art school...as textbooks. I think they're good up till the 20th century. From then on it's better to have a more specialised a book if you're really interested.

Taschen is good.

the ONLY book anyone should be recommending is Roger Shattuck's "The Banquet Years"

probably my fave book evah!

Personally, I like Arnold Hauser, A Social History of Art series, but it doesn't have many pictures.

http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/books/art/all/reviews/1/02911.htm

What it lacks in depth it makes up for in width and wisdom of selection.

I should declare an interest: I had dinner with Bernard Taschen once, and got commissioned to write some texts for one of his books!

is dirty, I can't see clearly, the

last picture it

looks cool...is it thai? I'm flicking through Art at Turn Of Millenium at the moment. http://www.artmag.com/galeries/est/prazdela/vallance.jpg it helps with the curtains
closed maybe...mwah