The Art of Looking
The Art of Looking

Author: Lance Esplund

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2018-11-27

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 0465094678

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A veteran art critic helps us make sense of modern and contemporary art The landscape of contemporary art has changed dramatically during the last hundred years: from Malevich's 1915 painting of a single black square and Duchamp's 1917 signed porcelain urinal to Jackson Pollock's midcentury "drip" paintings; Chris Burden's "Shoot" (1971), in which the artist was voluntarily shot in the arm with a rifle; Urs Fischer's "You" (2007), a giant hole dug in the floor of a New York gallery; and the conceptual and performance art of today's Ai Weiwei and Marina Abramovic. The shifts have left the art-viewing public (understandably) perplexed. In The Art of Looking, renowned art critic Lance Esplund demonstrates that works of modern and contemporary art are not as indecipherable as they might seem. With patience, insight, and wit, Esplund guides us through the last century of art and empowers us to approach and appreciate it with new eyes. Eager to democratize genres that can feel inaccessible, Esplund encourages viewers to trust their own taste, guts, and common sense. The Art of Looking will open the eyes of viewers who think that recent art is obtuse, nonsensical, and irrelevant, as well as the eyes of those who believe that the art of the past has nothing to say to our present.

The Art of Looking at Art
The Art of Looking at Art

Author: Gene Wisniewski

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-10-04

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1538133733

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A readable guide to the art of looking at art. There’s an art to viewing art. A sizable portion of the population regards art with varying degrees of reverence, bewilderment, suspicion, contempt, and intimidation. Most people aren’t sure what to do when standing before a work of art, besides gaze at it for what they hope is an acceptable amount of time, and even those who visit galleries and museums regularly aren’t always as well versed as they wish they could be. This book will help remedy that situation and answer many of the most frequently asked questions pertaining to the matter of art in general: When was the first art made? Who decides which art is “for the ages”? What is art’s purpose? How do paintings get to be worth tens of millions of dollars? Where do artists get their ideas? And perhaps the most pressing question of all, have human cadavers ever been used as art materials? (Yup.) The Art of Looking at Art addresses these and countless more of the issues surrounding this frequently misunderstood microcosm, in a highly informative, yet conversational tone. History, fascinating and altogether human backstories, and information pertaining to every conceivable aspect of visual art are interwoven in twelve concise chapters, providing all the information the average person needs to comfortably approach, analyze, and appreciate art. Readers with a background in art will learn a few new things as well. This beautiful full-color book includes 45 full-page reproductions.

The Art of Looking Up
The Art of Looking Up

Author: Catherine McCormack

Publisher: White Lion Publishing

Published: 2019-10-29

Total Pages: 243

ISBN-13: 0711242178

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The Art of Looking Up surveys spectacular ceilings around the globe that have been graced by the brushes of great artists including Michelangelo, Marc Chagall and Cy Twombly. From the floating women and lotus flowers of the Senso-ji Temple in Japan, to the religious iconography that adorns places of worship from Vienna to Istanbul, all the way to bold displays like the Chihuly glass flora suspended from the lobby of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas: this book takes you on a tour of the extraordinary artworks that demand an alternative viewpoint. History of art expert Catherine McCormack guides you through the stories behind the artworks – their conception, execution, and the artists that visualised them. In many cases, these artworks also make bold but controlled political, religious or cultural statements, revealing much about the society and times in which they were created. Divided by these social themes into four sections – Religion, Culture, Power and Politics – and pictured from various viewpoints in glorious colour photography, tour the astounding ceilings of these and more remarkable locations: Vatican Palace, Rome, Italy Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, UK Louvre Museum, Paris, France Dali Theatre-Museum, Figueres, Catalonia Museum of the Revolution, Havana, Cuba Capitol Building, Washington, DC, USA Four eight-page foldout sections showcase some of the world's most spectacular ceilings in exquisite detail. First and foremost, this is a visual feast, but also a desirable art book that challenges you to seek out fine art in more unusual places and question the statements they may be making.

The Art of Looking Sideways
The Art of Looking Sideways

Author: Alan Fletcher

Publisher: Phaidon Press

Published: 2001-08-20

Total Pages: 534

ISBN-13: 9780714834498

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A primer in visual intelligence and an exploration of the workings of the eye, the hand, the brain and the imagination is comprised of an inexhaustible mine of anecdotes, quotations, images, trivia, oddities, serious science, jokes and memories, all concerned with the limitless resources of the human mind.

On Looking
On Looking

Author: Alexandra Horowitz

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-01-17

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1471126226

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You are missing at least eighty percent of what is happening around you right now. You are missing what is happening in your body, in the distance, and right in front of you. In marshalling your attention to these words, you are ignoring an unthinkably large amount of information that continues to bombard all of your senses. This ignorance is useful: indeed, we compliment it and call it concentration. It enables us to not just notice the shapes on the page, but to absorb them as intelligible words, phrases, ideas. Alas, we tend to bring this focus to every activity we do. In so doing, it is inevitable that we also bring along attention's companion: inattention to everything else. This book begins with that inattention. It is not a book about how to bring more focus to your reading of Tolstoy; it is not about how to multitask, attending to two or three or four tasks at once. It is not about how to avoid falling asleep at a public lecture, or at your grandfather's tales of boyhood misadventures. It is about attending to the joys of the unattended, the perceived 'ordinary'. Even when engaged in the simplest of activities - taking a walk around the block - we pay so little attention to most of what is right before us that we are sleepwalkers in our own lives. This book is about that walk around the block, and how to rediscover the extraordinary things that we are missing in our ordinary activities.

Slow Looking
Slow Looking

Author: Shari Tishman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-12

Total Pages: 166

ISBN-13: 1315283794

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Slow Looking provides a robust argument for the importance of slow looking in learning environments both general and specialized, formal and informal, and its connection to major concepts in teaching, learning, and knowledge. A museum-originated practice increasingly seen as holding wide educational benefits, slow looking contends that patient, immersive attention to content can produce active cognitive opportunities for meaning-making and critical thinking that may not be possible though high-speed means of information delivery. Addressing the multi-disciplinary applications of this purposeful behavioral practice, this book draws examples from the visual arts, literature, science, and everyday life, using original, real-world scenarios to illustrate the complexities and rewards of slow looking.

Looking In
Looking In

Author: Mieke Bal

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-28

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1135208689

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Mieke Bal is one of Europe's leading theorists and critics. Her work within feminist art history and cultural studies provides a fascinating alternative to prevailing thinking in these fields. The essays in this collection include Bal's brilliant analyses of the: Myth of Rembrandt Imagery of Vermeer Baroque of Caravaggio Neo-Baroque of David Reed Culture of the museum Visual representation of rape Closet in Proust Bal brings a keen visual sense to these studies, as well as an understanding of how literature represents visuality and how the ethics and aesthetics present within museums affect the cultural artifacts displayed. In his engaging commentary, eminent art historian Norman Bryson shows how Bal's original approach to the interdisciplinary study of art and visual culture has had wide- reaching influence.

Seeing Slowly
Seeing Slowly

Author: Michael Findlay

Publisher: Prestel Verlag

Published: 2017-09-26

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 3641225167

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When it comes to viewing art, living in the information age is not necessarily a benefit. So argues Michael Findlay in this book that encourages a new way of looking at art. Much of this thinking involves stripping away what we have been taught and instead trusting our own instincts, opinions, and reactions. Including reproductions of works by Mark Rothko, Paul Klee, Joan Miró, Jacob Lawrence, and other modern and contemporary masters, this book takes readers on a journey through modern art. Chapters such as “What Is a Work of Art?”, “Can We Look and See at the Same Time?”, and “Real Connoisseurs Are Not Snobs,” not only give readers the confidence to form their own opinions, but also encourages them to make connections that spark curiosity, intellect, and imagination. “The most important thing for us to grasp,” writes Findlay, “is that the essence of a great work of art is inert until it is seen. Our engagement with the work of art liberates its essence.” After reading this book, even the most intimidated art viewer will enter a museum or gallery feeling more confident and leave it feeling enriched and inspired.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Latino Art
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Latino Art

Author: Ilan Stavans

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2014-02-07

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0822376881

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The essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans and the analytic philosopher Jorge J. E. Gracia share long-standing interests in the intersection of art and ideas. Here they take thirteen pieces of Latino art, each reproduced in color, as occasions for thematic discussions. Whether the work at the center of a particular conversation is a triptych created by the brothers Einar and Jamex de la Torre, Andres Serrano's controversial Piss Christ, a mural by the graffiti artist BEAR_TCK, or Above All Things, a photograph by María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Stavans and Gracia's exchanges inevitably open out to literature, history, ethics, politics, religion, and visual culture more broadly. Autobiographical details pepper Stavans and Gracia's conversations, as one or the other tells what he finds meaningful in a given work. Sparkling with insight, their exchanges allow the reader to eavesdrop on two celebrated intellectuals—worldly, erudite, and unafraid to disagree—as they reflect on the pleasures of seeing.