[(Learning to Look at Paintings )] [Author: Mary Acton] [Feb-2009] Hardcover – 28 Feb. 2009

interesting for reading

Excellent book, well written, well presented, lavishly illustrated and easy to follow.

My interest in this book derived from my interest in photography, and the conviction that study of paintings can teach us about photography as well. Elements that make a painting interesting, beautiful, moving, important, I believe can mostly do the same to a photograph.I found in the book an exposure of those elements, provided with a terse, clear language, illustrated with reference to works therein reproduced. There is some jargon, made accessible, but not the show-off of complicated language that I found in other writings about art.I believe this book can help look at paintings and appreciate them, more than to speak about them.I also found it gives a fresh alternative to the usual approach of looking at art in a chronological way, going by century, slicing instead the same subject in a different way.

This book consists of chapters considering certain technical aspects of painting (composition, space, form, tone, colour, subject matter). It's difficult to follow much of what the text is trying to say because most of the artworks discussed herein are in small, dark black & white reproductions. In that subset of instances where colour plates are used, they are in the centre section so you have to keep flipping back and forth constantly. It's certainly not a user-friendly book and will only teach you about observing technical aspects. You will not come out of the other end with the ability to impress your mates by sounding like a new Kenneth Clarke, Tim Marlow or Simon Schama.