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A review by prappleizer
What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by Will Gompertz
5.0
As someone that has enjoyed modern and contemporary art for a while without always being able to describe why, I thought Gompertz does a fantastic job quickly and succinctly (but with humor and personality) summing up how the artistic movements of the last century fed into and influenced one another. For those who have taken art history courses before (but are rusty, like me), this is a perfect light read --- not academic and overly detailed, but a refreshing narrative of the time, along with some fun anecdotes from the artists' perspectives (pseudo-fictional) and some readings of specific pieces by Gompertz that gives a nice framework for approaching new art. He is also, thankfully, candid about where modern art -- and curators like himself -- often slip into presumptuous, academic language, and the book is a good faith effort to avoid this.
There are only two main drawbacks to the book. The first is that the number of pieces discussed vastly outnumbers those presented in figures or plates, meaning that my reading of this book was spent next to an open computer so I could look things up. His written descriptions of the pieces are accurate to a fault, but for anyone but an expert, you really need to see the piece to get it. I didn't hugely mind this, but I would honestly pay for a "coffee table" version of this exact book but with every substantively discussed piece present in at least a figure.
The only other drawback, narratively, is that a degree of favoritism is definitely present throughout. It's less present in the book's first half, which does a thorough and even job describing the impressionists up through cubism, etc. But for more recent works, he digs much deeper into the artists he seems to aesthetically prefer, and gives little space or quickly rushes through all others. In particular, the Abstract Expressionists get short shrift compared to the Pop Art artists who followed (and derided) them. A shame, since I love both and especially AE.
Still, for a book packed with a ton of raw information and art history, I tore through the book like a thriller, and making that subject matter that engrossing at a public level is a considerable achievement. I'd highly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in the last 150 years of art!
There are only two main drawbacks to the book. The first is that the number of pieces discussed vastly outnumbers those presented in figures or plates, meaning that my reading of this book was spent next to an open computer so I could look things up. His written descriptions of the pieces are accurate to a fault, but for anyone but an expert, you really need to see the piece to get it. I didn't hugely mind this, but I would honestly pay for a "coffee table" version of this exact book but with every substantively discussed piece present in at least a figure.
The only other drawback, narratively, is that a degree of favoritism is definitely present throughout. It's less present in the book's first half, which does a thorough and even job describing the impressionists up through cubism, etc. But for more recent works, he digs much deeper into the artists he seems to aesthetically prefer, and gives little space or quickly rushes through all others. In particular, the Abstract Expressionists get short shrift compared to the Pop Art artists who followed (and derided) them. A shame, since I love both and especially AE.
Still, for a book packed with a ton of raw information and art history, I tore through the book like a thriller, and making that subject matter that engrossing at a public level is a considerable achievement. I'd highly recommend the book to anyone with an interest in the last 150 years of art!