Restless, protean, fluid, evanescent – despite being hugely challenging to represent visually, water has gained a peculiar significance in the art of the twentieth century. This may be due to the fact that it allows for a range of metaphorical meanings, many of which are particularly appropriate to the modern age. Not only a subject of contemporary art, but also a material increasingly used in art-making, water’s double presence can be detected as much in the marine-themed watercolours of Turner as in the more recent works of performance and installation art in which it is directly employed as a medium.

Water and Art probes the ways in which water has gained an unprecedented prominence in modern Western art, as well as seeking to illuminate its depiction in earlier periods. David Clarke employs a cross-cultural approach, finding parallels within Chinese art, which draws on a cultural tradition in which water has a marked presence as both subject and medium.

Featuring a wealth of images by artists from East and West including Leonardo da Vinci, Bernini, Turner, Gericault, Klee, Matisse, Monet, Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Fu Baoshi, Shi Tao, Wei Zixi and Fang Rending, Water and Art helps to promote a new and less culturally narrow approach to the understanding of art. Fast-paced, accessible, and comprehensive, it will appeal to the specialist and the general reader alike, offering fresh perspectives on familiar artists as well as an introduction to others who are much less recognised in the literature of art history.