Those who wish to obtain detailed information on individual artists and their works will not find what they are looking for in this book, which tries as much as possible to avoid encyclopedic information. On the other hand, we hope that those who are not content with merely collecting information but wish to "understand" the work of art will find some clues along this path.

Today, we are accustomed to seeing works of art in museums, which have become a heap of such objects. However, these were not made to be displayed in museums. If we want to enter the world of art, we must try to see works of art not as "museum pieces," but as "concrete" entities with their own unique lives that intertwine with ours, and to understand them from this perspective.

In what environment does the artist find himself, what traditions have shaped this environment, what possibilities does he encounter? What is the artist's situation and his behavior in response to it? The artist's behavior is reflected in his works. What kind of behavior do these works reflect? Is the artist stuck in a frozen tradition, content with what he finds, developing what he finds, or using all the possibilities within him to change his environment and forge a new path?

In this book, keeping these and similar questions in mind, we have tried to view and present the history of art within a process of formation that connects yesterday to today and tomorrow, and to understand and evaluate what has happened as possibilities realized within this process of formation.