50 paintings you should know

by Kristina Lowis and Tamsin Pickeral

I grabbed this book because the host of my trivia night knows a lot of art history, so it sometimes comes up in the questions. I didn't read the whole thing, mostly scanned for names (of painters and of paintings) and tried to get a sense of the chronology. I was surprised not to find some paintings I'd expected, but I suppose it's pretty damn difficult paring the list down to 50, and not every famous painting could be included. Plus, some famous art is rather crap, and I imagine the authors included/exclued some less famous works that happen to be better exemplars of a style or movement or whatever. Final verdict: interesting but kind of dull for me.