"The Madman’s Gallery" presents a selection of bizarre, curious, macabre, grotesque, surreal, and psychedelic artworks with essays offering insight into the background of each painting or sculpture, including information on influences and what is known about what motivated these atypical acts of creativity. Not all of the artworks are the product of mental illness – though some are and when something is known about the artist’s mental state it’s mentioned. They are all just, in some way, preternaturally creative or unconventional.

I was pleased that the book exposed me to a new selection of art. There were only a few pieces with which (as a neophyte) I was familiar. These included: Van Eyck’s “The Arnolfini Portrait,” Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” Fuseli’s “The Nightmare,” Gentileschi’s “Judith Slaying Holofernes,” the Olmec heads, and Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory.” There were other well-known paintings that were referenced because they were influenced by or had something in common with the artwork under discussion.

The book disabused me of the notion that the latter half of the twentieth century art was the golden age of freakish art (though that era is well represented with discussions of Dada, Surrealism, performance art, etc.) It’s interesting to learn how much wild and weird art was being producing in previous centuries, given how little of it made it through the filter of history to a general audience.

There are many recurring themes throughout the book: death, blasphemy, fertility, demons, etc. But the latter portion of the book features some new sources of bizarre art, including hoaxes, forgeries, and AI art.

If you’re interested in art history, and particularly the weird side of the subject, I’d highly recommend you read this book.

Remarkably Engaging..... Lot's of times books like this consist of casually collected oddities, superficial text, jokey references, and amateurish commentary. Not so here. This is a carefully curated collection of interesting art, and it is organized in a fashion that tells a clear and coherent story about outsider, or just odd, art and the many ways it may manifest itself. The narrative is thoughtful and authoritative while still congenial and inviting. Illustrations, which are abundant, are accompanied by helpful and informative text. This book is both entertaining and thought provoking, which was quite enough for me to enjoy it.

Fascinating subject matter and a truly fascinating book. Who wouldn't be intrigued by this amazing book.

I love Brook-Hitching’s books and this is no exception! Will definitely be purchasing a copy upon release and probably gifting several more copies.

This is such a fun and interesting book (I certainly didn't learn that the brown color in Liberty Leading the people was ground up mummies in school). I would recommend it for both the lay person and art enthusiast alike. I loved the re-examination of well known works (e.g. The Garden of Earthly Delights) and also some things that I had never seen. This would make a great gift and be a great conversation starter as a coffee table piece.

I agree that Brooke-Hitching is a bit of a madman, but in the best sense of the word. He is informative in an easy, witty way that that makes art history approachable and entertaining. He might start a section with something like—“It’s a question we’ve all asked ourselves at one time or another: if I was to have my head lopped off and baked in an oven, what vegetable should I temporarily replace it with?” Or he might choose a humorous setup such as the one for Ilya Repin’s <i>Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV”</i>, which he says is the biggest insult in art history. He informs us that “historically, artists haven’t exactly shied away from hurling insults” and follows that statement with a few examples. My personal favorite is that Dalí said Pollock’s style is “the indigestion that goes with fish soup.”

For the benefit of our education in pigment sourcing before the era of Liquitex and Golden, we are treated to lessons about the early manner in which purple, mauve, and brown were crafted. The particular brown used in the artwork under discussion, Martin Drolling’s <i>Interior of a Kitchen</i>, is called Egyptian brown. To assure us that there were persons who shared twenty-first-century sensibilities, Brooke-Hitching offers a charming anecdote. It seems Rudyard Kipling was present when artist Edward Burne-Jones came running down the stairs with a tube of “Mummy Brown” in his hand. The artist exclaimed that the paint was “made of dead Pharaohs” and said he must bury it accordingly. I will admit, I get it.

Here’s something with which many of us will sympathize. King George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte, was viewing a naval scene on a panorama created by Robert Barker. As she gazed at an expanse of ocean, she became seasick and “decorously” vomited into a handkerchief. She’s lucky to have been born before 3D movies became a thing. Not everyone has a lace hanky on standby for such eventualities.

There is much more to this book than creepy pigment bases and seasick queens. Brooke-Hitching will take us from prehistory to AI, covering the best known movements and artists. We will see Dali’s <i>The Persistence of Memory</i> and learn that Arcimboldo was a triumph of abstract art in the sixteenth century, three hundred years before Kandinsky was born. Brooke-Hitching describes the physical struggles of both Joan Miró and Frida Kahlo and says that René Magritte’s <i>The Lovers</i>, my personal surrealist painting, was symbolic of the surrealists’s fascination with what is hidden beneath the surface.

This is a book about beauty and the limitless creativity of artists throughout the ages. We couldn’t have hoped for a better tour guide on this journey and more beautiful graphics to accompany his lessons.

Many thanks to Chronicle Books and NetGalley for allowing me to read this ARC.

This art history book is fascinating. Rather than focus on a movement or an artist, the book takes readers through history looking at some of the bizarre, grotesque, and mysterious. The book covers everything from ancient fertility statues to depictions of saints to performance art to forgeries. The book follows a rough chronological order (at least in terms of the main piece of focus) with several similar pieces rounding out each section. The write-ups are well written and researched. I read the ones I was interested in and skimmed others. This book is a wonderful that art doesn't have to fit the mold in order to be important.

I received The Madman's Gallery through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is a circus sideshow in the form of an art history/coffee table book...which I would recommend you NOT keep on your coffee table unless you wish to provide quite a shock to any visitors who might venture to open it.

Three stars instead of two strictly for the amount of research and information. Frankly, I didn't even finish the book. I couldn't.

Art history presented in a new way is the best description I can give for this book. It's at times tragic, funny, and inspiring. I'm not sure if it belongs with history books, art books, travel books, or maybe all three.

Pros: As someone who wishes she had studied art history rather than going to law school, I love books about art history. I have found that many such books tend to focus on the same pieces of art and the same artists. I loved that this book introduced me to new art and artists and that it features art from around the world and from different eras. Two of my favorite details in this book are the informative and fun footnotes and captions.

Cons: The digital arc I read had a lot of formatting problems—missing pages, repeated pages, out of order pages, and blank pages. I assume the final printed copy will not have these problems, but it made for a frustrating reading experience because I really liked what I was able to read and would have liked to have read the entire contents of this fascinating book.

Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for this ARC! This book was deeply fascinating and filled with interesting and often little-known art. Starting from around 30,000 BC(E), all the way to the modern day this book provides a great background on the art that is outside of the mainstream and does a wonderful job of discussing the background and history of each concept/object in this book. I found this book a wonderfully entertaining and informative read and I recommend this to any art lovers or history buffs out there.

I loved the author’s Madman’s Library, a compilation of some of the most unusual, bizarre and sometime downright weird books ever published. This tine he’s back with a similar outline, but with art instead of literature. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes eye watering, but always guaranteed to make you take a second glance and wonder…..”What on earth?”

I really enjoyed this book, it was great to get the history of weird art, each of the art that was talked about was uniquely beautiful in a way and I found it interesting. It does a great job in telling the history of each concept. I could tell that the author had the passion for the subject and it worked well. I was never bored when reading this and look forward to read more from Edward Brooke-Hitching.