Throughout his long career, New Zealand painter Dick Frizzell has often gone way out on a limb to see where it would take him. From his early Pop art-influenced approach to his experiments with landscape and the contested area of appropriation, he’s always been brave. Now, he takes on the history of art, starting right back at cave art to discover the key threads of Western art that sit in his DNA as a painter in the twenty-first century.

The approach is essential Frizzell: bring everyone along for the ride. It’s a fun romp, but despite the humour, it sits on a bedrock of serious scholarship and reverence for the painters of the past. And there’s one thing that makes this book different from any other: all the reproductions of significant paintings, from Rubens and Tintoretto to Cezanne and Lichtenstein, are by Frizzell himself, heroically painted over a twelve-month period.

Me, According to the History of Art is the art history education you’ve been missing. Painting tips included.