In Art across the Ages, Professor Ori Z. Soltes has crafted a course in Western visual art that serves as both a mind-broadening survey and an essential introduction. It is designed to give anyone interested in Western art a firm familiarity with its basics, acquainting you with major artists and styles in various media and providing a broad foundation for deeper exploration. By giving you a ready grasp of the substance and significance of a vast range of artists and their work, along with a solid knowledge of how those artists and their work fit within art's continuum, this course will add immeasurably to your next visit to a museum or exhibition or simply enhance your pleasure in the art you encounter in your life.
Unlocking the Mystery of Numbers, Letters, and Visual Art: This unique slide-illustrated discussion considers how -- from symbols in visual art to the intensity of mysticism -- numbers, across the millennia and across the planet, have been perceived and used as key: to understanding both how our world works, and to connect to the world beyond our own that every religious tradition considers the source of our existence. Words and images--the first made up of letters understood to have numerical values; the second, whether abstract or figurative, often marked by numerological symbolism (from triangles to squares to the five doorways into a cathedral) -- have served as unique human-contrived instruments for coming to know why we are here and how we might assure a positive existence, whether in the here and now or in some hereafter.