Art School in a Book – a future artist's guide to contemporary art

This is a friendly introduction to (mostly) contemporary art, presenting it as inspiration for making your own. Actor Olivia Colman’s funny introduction sets the tone and the writers maintain a personal and quirky feel throughout, although their intent is serious. Our authors are also given colourful, visual life as the book’s ‘guides’ by the illustrations of Rose Blake, as she has done in other books, such as David Hockney and Martin Gayford’s A History of Pictures for Children.

Russell Tovey, best known as an actor, has built a reputation a champion of contemporary art through the podcast ‘Talk Art’ which he makes with co-author and gallerist Robert Diament. The aim of these podcasts is to make art accessible to all, not just an elite few, and this is very much the intent of this book. Each double page spread features an individual work of art, along with some text explaining it, its style or more general information about the artist and sometimes the art movement they are connected with. This is then concluded by a series of questions that invites the reader to think about their own reaction to the art and how they might create their own work based on it.

The text is entertaining and the closing questions should encourage artistic creativity. I did find, at times, that the information was a little inconsistent, with varied language levels and some confusing definitions of terms. In some places I would have liked more exploration of the particular work featured, in others more context. There are no contents, glossary or index. However, none of these are serious issues for a reader looking to find out more about art – this is a book to browse and make your own visual discoveries.

Tovey and Diament have made a wonderful selection of art, mixing up work from some really famous names, such as Henri Matisse and Tracey Emin, with lesser known but nonetheless amazing artists, such as Cassi Namoda and Lee Ufan. The images are reproduced large and complimented by Rose Blake’s illustrations. While the interpretation of ‘contemporary’ is very broad (stretching back into the 19^th century and, in the case of Arcimboldo, beyond), it is very refreshing to find an art book with so many works by living artists in it and with such a variety of styles. It is a book that should indeed excite and inspire future artists.