Book Description

Across the globe there are scores of beautiful and unusual works of art that are largely unseen or fail to receive the critical acclaim they deserve. Why? The Best Art You've Never Seen restores to view 100 wonderful treasures of world art. Ranging from Peru to Papua New Guinea, it uncovers neglected wonders in offbeat corners of the world or locked away in the store rooms of the world's great museums. Some are hidden accidentally: by a rock-fall, a shift in a trade route, or through the drift of history. Others are hidden deliberately, buried as loot or destroyed by hate - like the fabulous Mount Kailash Temple in India. Many are hidden by changes of taste, marginalized because they don't fit into established ideas of art - works by artists such as Norman Rockwell, Nek Chand, and Niki de St Phalle. Other great works, like the the dazzling Très Riches Heures manuscript and the Mona Lisa, are being virtually hidden by the demands of conservation. And there are penty of treasures still waiting to be revealed - the Q'in Emperor's tomb or Leonardo's lost fresco The Battle of Anghiari. Author and former museum director Julian Spalding takes you into a world of beautiful and arresting artifacts and reveals their amazing stories. He sets forth a surprising and unfamiliar alternative canon of works that offers a fresh and controversial take on the world of art.