Art: Introduction

This guide has been created in order to assist students in their investigation and research in the field of art.  It is not meant to be all inclusive, but rather a selection of topics, issues, researchers and thinkers, books, online resources and social media to pique interest in art and act as a road map as to where further resources can be found.

We often hear that art is meant to be very important; but we're seldom told exactly why. Founder of The School of Life Alain de Botton believes art can help us with our most intimate and ordinary dilemmas: Why is my work not more satisfying? Why do other people seem to have a more glamorous life? How can I improve my relationships? Why is politics so depressing? In this secular sunday sermon he introduces a new method of interpreting art: art as a form of therapy, providing powerful solutions to many of life's dilemmas. www.alaindebotton.com

Art, as any other academic discipline, uses terms and abbreviations in a specific way. This link will take you to ArtLex. You'll find definitions for more than 3,600 terms used in discussing art / visual culture, along with thousands of supporting images, pronunciation notes, great quotations and cross-references.

Boolean Searches

Use AND to find all your search terms
migrant AND labour AND remittances

Use OR to find any of your search terms
migration OR remittances

Search for exact phrases using quotations " " (this is important to prevent confusion with "economic development".)
“development economics”

Use truncation (*) to find different word endings and plurals
econom* finds economist, economic, economics, economy, economical…

Use the Wildcard (?) to find variations in spelling
labo?r finds labor and labour

Use brackets ( )  for complex search statements
“development economics” AND (migration OR remittances)