Learning to Look at Paintings - Softcover

Acton, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415435188 ISBN 13: 9780415435185

Publisher: Routledge, 2008

Synopsis

Learning to Look at Paintings is an accessible guide to the study and appraisal of paintings, drawings and prints. Mary Acton shows how you can develop visual, analytical and historical skills in learning to look at and understand an image by analysing how it works, what its pictorial elements are and how they relate to each other.

This fully revised and updated new edition is illustrated with over 100 images by a wide range of Western European and American artists, ranging from Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Botticelli to Picasso, Matisse and Rothko, and now includes modern and contemporary artists such as Georgia O'Keeffe, Anselm Kiefer, Tacita Dean and Marlene Dumas. In addition, Mary Acton presents new examples highlighting the survival and revival of painting in recent years.

A new introduction situates the book in the wider context of recent changes in the approach to Art History. A glossary of critical and technical terms used in the language of Art History is also included, with an updated but still selective reading list.

About this title

Review:

'Each of the six chapters has a succint introduction and a short but useful summary... Recommended.' – CHOICE

From the Back Cover:

Learning to Look at Paintings is an accessible guide to the study and appraisal of paintings, drawings and prints. Mary Acton shows how you can learn to look at and understand an image by analysing how it works, what its pictorial elements are and how they relate to each other. The book is illustrated with over ninety images by artists ranging from Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Botticelli to Picasso, Matisse and Rothko. It also includes a glossary of critical and technical terms used in art history.

She describes the ingredients of composition, space, form, tone and colour which make up a picture, and discusses the importance of subject matter and the original function and setting of a picture in appreciating its visual meanings.
Mary Acton discusses work by a wide range of Western European and American artists, from the fifteenth century to the present day.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0415435188
• ISBN 13: 9780415435185
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 336