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Worldwide by the Numbers
Worldwide's World Cup: The Rise and Fall of the National Schools
One of the basic search options offered through the Advanced Search page of the Worldwide Books website is a pull-down menu that allows users to identify museum publications and standard art books focused on art produced in a single country, or by artists of a particular nationality. Most such titles have just one country entered in the country field of their records, but any given record can contain up to two countries in that field; titles that document a significant amount of work by artists from three or more countries are generally indexed only under such broad global or regional categories as International, Europe or Asia.
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Use the "Country" pull-down menu to find books on art
produced in a single country or by artists of a particular nationality.
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More than 80% of the approximately 65,000 museum publications in our database (which make up about half of the titles we have listed altogether) are indexed by country. While more than 150 countries are listed in the "Country" pull-down menu on our Advanced Search page, the top five countries in terms of representation appear in the records of more than half of the museum publications in the database. The United States ranks first with 14,361 titles, followed by France (6,162), Italy (6,038), Germany (5,974) and Great Britain (4,462). The next two countries on the list, the Netherlands (1,686) and Spain (1,570) lag far behind the group at the top.
That these raw numbers indicate a predominance in the Worldwide Books database of catalogues on American and Western European art is not surprising, given that much of our acquisitions activity involves museums and distributors in those countries, where, as one might expect, curators often mount shows that feature the work of their historical and contemporary compatriots. But when a country search is combined with a chronological search on our Advanced Search form, interesting patterns relating to the ascendancy and decline of the national schools begin to emerge.
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Following is a summary of the changing proportions of catalogues treating the output of the major art-producing countries from the medieval period to the present. Although their positions in the "pecking order" shift over time, the top five countries comprise an enduring hierarchy throughout the ages, dominating most of the seven periods under consideration.
Note: Worldwide does not generally index traditional art from non-Western regions by period. Japan ranks first among the non-Western countries (and tenth overall) with 1,247 museum publications in the database, but only 358 of those titles focus on work in Western styles, the vast majority of them indexed as post-1945 art.
300 A.D.-1400
Spanning more than a millennium and encompassing such diverse styles as Byzantine art, Romanesque art and Gothic art, the medieval period is currently indexed in 790 publications in the Worldwide database of museum publications, representing 1.2% of the total. Of these, 68% are indexed by country. Italy leads the way with 26.5% of the total, followed by France (14%) Germany (10.4%) and Great Britain (5.9%).
1400-1600
The 2,883 museum-publication records in the database that contain the code for the Renaissance period make up 4.4% of that publication category, with 81% of those containing at least one country code as well. Led by such towering figures as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, Italian artists dominated the period, with significant representation in no less than 48% of the total. Germany is a distant second with 10.8%, followed by the Early Netherlandish art of the Low Countries (comprised chiefly of the Netherlands and present-day Belgium), which together account for 9.8%. France (7.3%) and Spain (2.7%) round out the top five for the period.
1600-1800
Dominated in Europe by the Baroque, Rococo and Neoclassical styles, the 17th and 18th centuries account for 8% of the museum publications that we have listed, a total of 5,232 titles. Once again, Italy ranks first in the 200-year period, with 23.3% of the catalogues focused on that period, but France is a relatively close second with 15.7%. The Dutch Golden Age of the 1600s lands the Netherlands in third place with 13.4%, followed by Great Britain with 11.4% and Flanders/Belgium with 5.3%. Germany and the United States (making its art-historical debut during the Colonial period) are in a dead heat for 6th place with 4.7% each.
1800-1900
The 19th century is indexed for 7,765 catalogues in the database, or 11.9% of the total. Fully 91% of those are indexed by country, with the great innovators of the age of Impressionism, the French, accounting for 28.2% of the total. The United States is a strong second at 22.3%, followed by Great Britain at 13.2%, Germany at 6.7% and the once-dominant Italy at just 5.2%.
1900-1945
Although the European avant-gardes of the early 20th century are generally considered to have given rise to the most important art movements of the period, it is the United States that dominates the period in the Worldwide database, with significant representation in 23.1% of the 12,818 catalogues indexed by that period (which make up 19.7% of the total). The Germany of Die Brucke is second at 14.3%, followed closely by France at 14.2%. Italy of the Futurist period makes a slight recovery after a dismal 19th century, with 7.2%, while Great Britain slips to fifth place at 5.1%.
Post-1945
With nearly 34,000 titles and counting, the postwar period is indexed in more than half of the museum publications in the database (52.1%), with 83.1% of those titles indexed by country. While the international art scene has become increasingly globalized in recent decades, American art continues to dominate in the Worldwide database, with 30.6% of the total. Germany is a distant second at 10.1%, followed by Great Britain at 7.0%, Italy at 6.5% and France at 5.4%. Rounding out the top ten for the period are Canada, Spain, Switzerland, Austria and the Netherlands.
Overall, the numbers appear to highlight the major nationally based art-historical movements in Western art, from the so-called Italian "primitive" school of the medieval period and the High Renaissance in Italy to the emergence of Modernism in 19th-century France and the ascendancy of American art in the early postwar period. The strikingly high percentages of titles on American art from the 19th century onward appear to give a somewhat skewed view of the relative art-historical importance of the United States over the past two centuries, and may be explained by the fact that Worldwide Books is located in the good ol' U.S.A., with its hundreds of actively publishing art museums and galleries.
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