A New Way of Seeing: The History of Art in 57 Works

Description

From a carved mammoth tusk (ca. 40,000 BCE) to Bosch’s _Garden of Earthly Delights_ (1505–1510) to Duchamp’s _Fountain_ (1917), a remarkable lexicon of astonishing imagery has imprinted itself onto the cultural consciousness of the past 40,000 years. Author Kelly Grovier devotes himself to illuminating these and more than fifty other seminal works in this radical new history of art. Stepping away from biography, style, and the chronology of “isms” that preoccupies most of art history, _A New Way of Seeing_ invites a new interaction with art, one in which we learn _from_ the artworks and not just about them. Grovier identifies that part of the artwork that bridges the divide between art and life and elevates its value beyond the visual to the vital. This book challenges the sensibility that conceives of artists as brands and the works they create as nothing more than material commodities to hoard, hide, and flip for profit. Lavishly illustrated with many of the most breathtaking and enduring artworks ever created, Kelly Grovier casts fresh light on these famous works by daring to isolate a single, and often overlooked, detail responsible for its greatness and power to move.

Kelly Grovier

Kelly Grovier is a poet, historian, and cultural critic. He is a regular contributor on art to the Times Literary Supplement, and his writing has appeared in numerous publications, including the Observer, Sunday Times, and Wired. Educated at the University of California, Los Angeles, and at the University of Oxford, he is the author of 100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age and Art Since 1989.