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Getting good at 20th-century vis art

Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2017 8:40 pm
by nsb2
I recently graduated high school, and over the past year, I've become a pretty good vis arts player (usually getting ACF regs tossups within the first half of the question at NASAT practices).

I generally do well with tossups on pre-20th century artists, or later famous artists (e.g. Picasso, Dali, Duchamp, Miro, etc.) However, I've had trouble with clues about less well known 20th-century artists, particularly clues like "One artist from this country painted [insert painting description here]." These sorts of clues came up at PACE, and I've noticed that they also tend to come up a lot on harder college sets.

How would one go about studying these artists, and would there be any books/websites/etc. you could recommend? Thanks.

Re: Getting good at 20th-century vis art

Posted: Sun Jun 18, 2017 8:53 pm
by vinteuil
The Oxford History of Art is uniformly very good, especially for more recent stuff, although it's a little light on artist/work proper nouns for quizbowl. There is also Rosalind Krauss and co.'s Art Since 1900, which is...difficult and...opinionated.

EDIT: The Pelican History of Art, which is much more quizbowl-friendly in terms of focus, is also starting to come out with more up-to-date and comprehensive volumes on chunks of 20th century art (France until 1940 and Central Europe until 1920).

EDIT EDIT: There are also a number of good pertinent volumes in the World of Art series.