eBook

Take a Closer Look

Arasse, Daniel

2013

Overview

What happens when we look at a painting? What do we think about? What do we imagine? How can we explain, even to ourselves, what we see or think we see? And how can art historians interpret with any seriousness what they observe? In six engaging, short narrative \"fictions,\" each richly illustrated in color, Daniel Arasse, one of the most brilliant art historians of our time, cleverly and gracefully guides readers through a variety of adventures in seeing, from Velázquez to Titian, Bruegel to Tintoretto. By demonstrating that we don't really see what these paintings are trying to show us, Arasse makes it clear that we need to take a closer look. In chapters that each have a different form, including a letter, an interview, and an animated conversation with a colleague, the book explores how these pictures teach us about ways of seeing across the centuries. In the process, Arasse freshly lays bare the dazzling power of painting. Fast-paced and full of humor as well as insight, this is a book for anyone who cares about really looking at, seeing, and understanding paintings.

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Subject: Adoration / Allegory / Allusion / Anachronism / Andrea Mantegna / Anecdote / Appreciation / Art & Art History / ART / Criticism & Theory / Art history / Banality (sculpture series) / Body hair / Calvin (Calvin and Hobbes) / Camera degli Sposi / Carlo Crivelli / Censure / Christianity / Counter-Reformation / Court painter / Courtesan / Courtier / Criticism & Theory / Criticism & Theory- Aba / Cuckold / Curator / Della Rovere / Eroticism / Exoticism / Flemish painting / Francesco del Cossa / Ghirlandaio / Giorgione / God the Father / Grisaille / Hieronymus Bosch / Holy Prepuce / Hope chest / Iconography / Illustration / Karel van Mander / Kunsthistorisches Museum / La Bella / Las Meninas / Madonna of Bruges / Mars and Venus (Botticelli) / Michelangelo / Narrative / Omnipotence / Painting -- Appreciation / Painting -- Themes, motives / Philosophy and theory of fine and decorative arts / Piero della Francesca / Pieter Bruegel the Elder / Pieter Brueghel the Younger / Polyptych / Pontormo / Pope Pius II / Pubic hair / Queen of Heaven / Renaissance art / Rogier van der Weyden / Sebastiano del Piombo / Simon's House / Slavery / Spirituality / Sprezzatura / The Adoration of the Kings (Gossaert) / The Duke of Milan / The Garden of Earthly Delights / The Geographer / The Other Hand / The Philosopher / The Way to Paradise / Themes, motives / Tintoretto / Titian / Tullia d'Aragona / Uffizi / Vestment
• ISBN: 1400848040, 9781400848041, 0691151547, 9780691151540