What Are You Looking At?
150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye
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4.0 • 9 Ratings
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- £7.99
Publisher Description
What Are You Looking At? by Will Gompertz - a wonderfully lively and accessible history of Modern Art by the BBC Arts Editor
'An essential primer not only for art lovers but for art loathers too' **** Express
What is modern art? Why do we either love it or loathe it? And why is it worth so much damn money? Join Will Gompertz on a dazzling tour that will change the way you look at modern art forever. From Monet's water lilies to Van Gogh's sunflowers, from Warhol's soup cans to Hirst's pickled shark, hear the stories behind the masterpieces, meet the artists as they really were, and discover the real point of modern art.
You will learn: not all conceptual art is bollocks; Picasso is king (but Cézanne is better); Pollock is no drip; Dali painted with his moustache; a urinal changed the course of art, why your 5-year-old really couldn't do it. Refreshing, irreverent and always straightforward, What Are You Looking At? cuts through the pretentious art speak and asks all the basic questions that you were too afraid to ask. Your next gallery trip is going to be a little less intimidating and a lot more interesting.
'Robert Hughes's The Shock of the New redone à la Bill Bryson' ****Telegraph
This book is essential reading for sceptics, art lovers, and the millions of us who visit art galleries every year - and are confused. It will also be enjoyed by readers of The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich and is a perfect primer to the subject for the student or beginner.
Will Gompertz is the BBC Arts Editor and probably the world's first art history stand-up comedian. He was a Director at the Tate Gallery for 7 years. He has a particular interest in modern art and has written about the arts for The Times and the Guardian for over 20 years. In 2009, he wrote and performed a sell-out one-man comedy show about modern art at the Edinburgh Festival. He was recently voted one of the world's top 50 creative thinkers by New York's Creativity Magazine.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
BBC arts editor and former Tate director Gompertz sees a paradox in the contemporary "love affair" with modern art: while people increasingly visit museums such as MOMA and the Pompidou, they often do not fully comprehend what they're looking at. Gompertz's aim is to demystify modern art, to provide a basic history of each of its "isms," and show how these movements are interconnected. Gompertz's highly lucid, lively, and buoyantly composed history begins with Duchamp's omnipresent influence on the history of modern art and then chronicles movements that led up to and followed Duchamp's Fountain (1917), from pre-Impressionist artists Manet and Courbet to contemporary artists Banksy and Ai Weiwei. Gompertz devotes a chapter each to 20 artistic movements, and while his tone is breezy and conversational, he astutely and often wittily describes the core of every movement and its key artists. The result is an entertaining and elucidating guide to modern art, refreshing in its approach and intentions, that will interest the general reader and art enthusiast. B&w art throughout, 8-page color insert.
Customer Reviews
A must for anyone all modern art lovers, and haters
An informative read telling the story and stories of modern art, the artists who have contributed to the last 100-plus years of modern art, and the movements they were part of.
Gompertz doesn't write with pretentious elitism, nor does he patronise those who think modern art is a joke that is lost on them, he gets the balance perfect. In fact he manages to mock both camps and endear them too.
Without classifying modern art and its various movements like a dictionary, he clearly and easily explains how each artist he mentions has their place in modern art, and why we should notice their work.
I wish he had mentioned some other artists (where was Bridget Riley? David Hockney? Henry Moore?) and that there were more pictures of the works he mentions but since reading this book, I have realised I don't like modern art, I love it!