Skull Sourcebook: Over 500 Skulls in Art & Culture

This sourcebook's heavy bond pages feel substantial, and the color images pop. The sheer variety of representations is apropos of the human skull's universality, its significance recognized across all cultures. Five hundred skull iterations represent artistic actualization, each transformed and given particular expression by individuals and their traditions. Seven sections structure this resource, ranging from an iconic representation (skulls as ideas) to skulls as signifiers of rebellion as well as the use of skulls in fine and applied art. The moderate amount of textual analysis, which makes use of no specialized language, is approachable and easily comprehensible. The selection of imagery builds, as each iteration of artistic creativity seems to surpass the last. The presentation of skull imagery over deep analysis flattens out explanations of other cultures' use of the skull, as is the case with the Aztec sculptures found in the skulls in history section. The obligatory inclusion of imagery of macabre ossuary walls built of skulls feels like less of an attempt to inform and more of a bid to titilate.