About the Book

A master class in art appreciation with a great American man of letters.
In this lavishly illustrated collection of John Updike's recent art writings, a posthumous companion to the acclaimed "Just Looking" (1989) and "Still Looking" (2005), readers are again treated to "remarkably elegant essays" ("Newsday") in which "the psychological concerns of the novelist drive the eye from work to work until a deep understanding of the art emerges" ("The New York Times Book Review"). The first essay, "The Clarity of Things," was the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities for 2008 and perhaps Updike's major statement as art critic; here, by looking closely at Copley, Homer, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop, he explores what is "American" in American art. This is followed by fourteen essays, most of them written for "The New York Review of Books," on masterpieces of American and European art of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--from the sublime landscapes of Frederic Church and the series paintings of Monet and Degas, to the verbal-visual puzzles of Magritte and the steely sculptural environments of Richard Serra. With more than 200 full-color reproductions, "Always Looking" is, like everything else that Updike wrote, an invitation to see the world afresh through the eyes of a matchless connoisseur.

Product Details

Media: Hardcover Book, 224 pages

Edition: Unknown

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group

Publication Date: Nov. 27th, 2012

ISBN-10: 0307957306

ISBN-13: 9780307957306

Shipping Weight: 2.96 lbs

Series: Not Applicable

• Categories: Art Criticism and Art Theory