This original and inspiring book offers a clear and wide-ranging introduction to the arts of painting and sculpture, to the principal artistic print media and to the visual arts of modernism and postmodernism. Covering the entire history of art, from Paleolithic cave painting to contemporary art, it provides foundational guidance to the basic character and techniques of the different art forms, to the various genres of painting in the western tradition, and to the techniques of sculpture as they have been practiced over several millenia and across a wide range of cultures.