When, in 1989, a collection of John Updike’s writings on art appeared under the title Just Looking , a reviewer in the San Francisco Chronicle commented, “He refreshes for us the sense of prose opportunity that makes art a sustaining subject to people who write about it.” In the sixteen years since Just Looking was published, he has continued to serve as an art critic, mos...(展开全部)

You will not open this book and read of frilly dresses, although they do hang in my closet, somewhere behind all of the shoes. While you peruse the pages you may cross the occasional rose petal, but I assure you, they have been strategically placed as distraction, laughing off the intensity. The first poem was birthed at the age of twelve, so please, be gentle and read with kin...(展开全部)

In 18 remarkable essays, John Updike has collected together his thoughts and observations on American art. Beginning with early American portraits and landscapes, he goes on to extol two late-nineteenth-century masters, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins, considers the eccentric pre-modern James McNeill Whistler, discusses the competing American Impressionists and Realists of the ...(展开全部)

In this, the only up-to-date critical work on still life painting in any language, Norman Bryson analyses the origins, history and logic of 'still life', one of the most enduring forms of Western painting. The first essay is devoted to Roman wall-painting while in the second the author surveys a major segment in the history of still life, from seventeenth-century Spanish painti...(展开全部)

When we view a work of art, we often experience an emotional response, but the causes of our reactions are complex. Our knowledge of why we respond to art as we do is rooted in science—in psychology and biology. Eric R. Kandel traces the origins of this understanding to early twentieth-century Vienna, which gave rise to the concept of the “beholder’s share,” the realization tha...(展开全部)

An extraordinary collection—hawk-eyed and understanding—from the Man Booker Prize–winning, best-selling author of The Sense of an Ending and Levels of Life. As Julian Barnes notes: “Flaubert believed that it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another, and that great paintings required no words of explanation. Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when ...(展开全部)

From one of the most respected historians in America, twice the winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a new collection of essays that reflects a lifetime of erudition and accomplishments in history. The past has always been elusive: How can we understand people whose worlds were utterly different from our own without imposing our own standards and hindsight? What did things feel like i...(展开全部)

An extraordinary collection—hawk-eyed and understanding—from the Man Booker Prize–winning, best-selling author of The Sense of an Ending and Levels of Life. As Julian Barnes notes: “Flaubert believed that it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another, and that great paintings required no words of explanation. Braque thought the ideal state would be reached when ...(展开全部)

Describing himself as a "visual jackdaw", master designer Alan Fletcher has spent a lifetime collecting images, useless information, quotations and scraps that take his fancy. This work distils this collection into a quirky and entertaining feast for the eyes and the mind. Loosely arranged in 72 "chapters", the book explores the workings of the eye, the hand and the brain.

Describing himself as a "visual jackdaw", master designer Alan Fletcher has spent a lifetime collecting images, useless information, quotations and scraps that take his fancy. This work distils this collection into a quirky and entertaining feast for the eyes and the mind. Loosely arranged in 72 "chapters", the book explores the workings of the eye, the hand and the brain.