See What You’re Missing: 31 Ways Artists Notice the World – and How You Can Too
£15.20£19.00 (-20%)
The internationally bestselling author on how art can help us appreciate life in all its strange and exhilarating beauty
Artists have learnt to pay attention. The rest of us spend most of our time on autopilot, rushing from place to place, our overfamiliarity blinding us to the marvellous, life-affirming phenomena of our world. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
In his typically engaging style, Will Gompertz takes us into the minds of artists – from emerging stars to old masters – to show us how to look at and experience the world with their heightened powers of perception.
In See What You’re Missing we learn, for example, how Rembrandt can help us see ourselves, how David Hockney helps us to see nature, and how Frida Kahlo can help us see through pain. Each artist has their own unique way of looking, which when applied to our own lives stimulates our senses so we might know the intoxicating feeling of being truly alive.
‘Art can amaze us into changing our minds. This remarkable book teaches us how’ Es Devlin
‘Highly engaging and thought-provoking’ Philip Hook, author of Breakfast at Sotheby’s
‘Lucid and revealing’ Michael Prodger, The Times
‘Will Gompertz is the best teacher you never had’ Guardian
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Additional information
| Publisher | Viking, 1st edition (9 Mar. 2023) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Hardcover | 352 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0241315468 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0241315460 |
| Dimensions | 14.4 x 3.4 x 22.2 cm |
by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley
An interesting premise, to attempt to look at what the artist sees and how they endeavour to turn that into art that can share that vision. Plaudits for not just picking dead, white men to write about too. The thirty one artists are a mixed bag and I would be interested to know how Gompertz went about choosing which artists to write about.
I’m not sure who this book is aimed at, perhaps at someone who is interested in art but hasn’t really got to grips with it yet as we get a whistle stop tour through the artists and a strange mash up of biography crossed with descriptions of their work plus what the author thinks the artist was seeing, but it’s all jumbled up together.