Will Gompertz

So far so frustrating. It's another Art History book. Maybe more engaging than some, if you have the same sense of humor as the author. But it still 1. focuses on individual artists and, even more tightly, on individual works 2. does not have nearly enough illustrations or even concrete descriptions to help us actually *see* the works, and 3. has an awful lot of speculation and personal interpretation, not enough grounded objectivity.

(re #2 - I have been lucky enough to see Van Gogh's "Olive show more Trees with Yellow Sky and Sun" and let me tell you, never mind a b&w photo in an art history book, or even a coffee-table book - the real thing blows me away like nothing else.)

Gompertz's creation would make a good app on the tablet. An image of each work should be linked directly to the text, Each work should be reproduced in a manner that shows the reader the brilliance (or lack thereof) the color, should be zoomable to show texture, and should have a standard figure of reference to show size. Each work should also be linked to related works, vocabulary, and the timeline.

I'm frustrated because I still can't see, in each work, that which Gompertz and other popularizers & experts say I should be able to. The pointillist "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte – 1884" by Georges Seurat is supposedly not a moment captured in time, but a surreal frozen tableau. I understand Gompertz' reasoning: Seurat took a lot of time and care precisely creating this scene, and yet there's no way that the models would be anywhere near so still and chill for anywhere near that long.... but Gompertz connects this to David Lynch. Huh?

And Gaugin's "Why are you so Angry?" still makes no sense to me, even after Gompertz tells us the story of the brothel on the island paradise. Does anyone see anger here? Does any member of the general public even see a brothel, or anger? How does a viewer like me have a chance of appreciating art *without* knowing the story behind each piece?

(And it isn't just modern art. Traditional art is full of religious allegory, symbolic iconography, classical allusions... It's frustrating. I read and study with an open mind, and have for years, and I took art history classes in college, and I'm not stupid... and I still feel excluded, or at least as if there's a code I can't break. Is most art created for other artists, for art experts, and for the status seeking wealthy patrons?)

I'm still looking for an art book that will help me actually figure out what I'm looking at without someone like Gompertz holding my hand through each and every piece. Art appreciation hasn't addressed this question, nor has art history, nor have books aimed at children (though they are generally the most helpful) ... do *you* have a recommendation? show less

I picked this book up from the library because I confess that Modern/Contemporary Art tends to leave me cold. I love the Impressionists, but the art movements that came after them often feel inexplicable and opaque to me. I was hoping this book could help me understand and appreciate the art I see in galleries...and to some extent I think it will help do that. Gompertz argues that judging art isn't the point; history will tell us if something was "good." The best way he says to appreciate show more art is by understanding its place in the history and development of art movements. He's not wrong; I do think I better understand why a Rothko is "art" now than I did before.

But I also think that thesis is my main issue with the book. History can certainly tell us if a work is important and influential. Understanding how a piece was influenced by and influenced other works is interesting on an intellectual level. But art, to me, shouldn't be intellectual and thinky. Great art should make me feel something, even if its just disgust or distaste. And I'm not sure this book got me any closer to being moved by monochrome squares on canvas or sculptures of boxes than I was before I read it. show less

The author, Will Gompertz, is the BBC Arts editor and former director of London’s Tate Gallery. He takes us on a tour of modern art that is chronologically arranged, but focused on the question of what constitutes “art” and how that idea has unfolded over time.

He includes a lot of fascinating gossip and background about the artists of the “modern” period, and very informative vignettes about how they influenced one another. The competitive Picasso, in particular, responded to the show more achievements of his artist friends first by being mesmerized by them, and then trying to better them. (And succeeding time after time!)

The author shows quite clearly how each movement in Modern Art segued into the next, as the artists - often working together - tried to solve problems that arose, such as, for example, representing three-dimensional subjects on a two-dimensional canvas. What he writes of Braque and Picasso during the Cubist period could apply to other groups of artists as well:

"…they were like a pair of jazz musicians, improvising with all manner of material and riffing ideas off each other.”

Even if you just go through the book to note the evolution of how artists defined art, you can get a sense of its general development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The concept of "what is art" changed from skill in exact representation, to getting to the "heart" of what was being seen, to excelling in design rather than illusory deception, to conveying concepts rather than materiality, to making an immediate and memorable connection with the viewer, to focusing on insight rather than sight, to prompting us to pay more attention to the everyday and the overlooked, to trying to create order out of chaos, to getting us to see that the viewer is as much a part of the work of art as the work itself.

And what about art that is totally abstract? Just lines and squiggles and colors? Gompertz maintains:

"It’s a surprisingly tricky thing to pin down exactly what it is that makes those lines any different from the lines you or I might draw, but there is a difference. There is something about their fluidity, or composition, or shape that has millions of us flocking to modern art galleries to see abstract paintings by the likes of Mark Rothko and Wassily Kandinsky.”

He explains how each generation of modern artists removed more and more traditional details in their paintings so as “to capture atmospheric light (Impressionism), accentuate the emotive qualities of color (Fauvism), or look at the subject from multiple viewpoints (Cubism).”

Eventually, of course, the details were removed altogether. Artists came to see themselves as not in the business of “reproduction” at all, but rather of exploring new ways to represent truth “that might provoke previously untapped thoughts and feelings in the viewer.”

My favorite chapter (that is, the one from which I learned the most) is the one dealing with Pop Art. My reactions themselves could have been transformed into a pop art canvas: “Wow!” And “I never thought of that!” And “How devilishly clever!”

A recurring theme in the book is how advances in the other arts (especially music), the sciences, and even politics echo, reinforce, and reverberate with, changes in art. Sometimes abstract art is meant to be like music; sometimes it is meant to be like the mind; and sometimes, it is meant to suggest sociological commentary and/or change. And similarly, giants in the fields of music, psychology, science, and politics have been stimulated in their thinking by ideas they gleaned from artistic trailblazers.

Laudably, Gompertz also lets us in on a rather disappointing fact about modern art. He writes:

"And yet, for all the rhetoric about creating new utopian societies and smashing the old elites, there has been one voice that has gone largely unheard. … Where, you might wonder, are the female artists?”

He includes a section on the marginalization of women artists such as the great Freda Kahlo, while noting that this situation continues even today, in an art world still largely dominated by white men.

Gompertz begins and ends the book with musings about Marcel Duchamp, the artist whom most contemporary artists cite as an influence, and whose seminal work “Fountain” is, according to the author, “the single most influential artwork created in the twentieth century.” The author concludes that whereas Picasso may have been the dominant force in the first half of the 20th century, “there is no question that the second half has increasingly been played out against a backdrop of Duchampian mind games.”

Discussion: The subtitle of the book is “The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art,” and this is so apt. I must have said “who knew?!!!” at least twenty times while reading this. (Moreover, Jim’s occasional challenge of details in the book sent me off to google many times as well, finding not only that in every case that the author was indeed correct, but also thereby exposing me to even more fascinating bits about the item in question.) (FYI, the biggest question was about the feasibility of the production of 100 million porcelain individually hand-painted sunflower “seeds” by Chinese artist Wei-Wei and 1600 assistants, a brilliant exhibit as explained by Gompertz, but also one requiring that each artisan had to have produced 62,500 seeds. How did they do it and how long did it take? Read an interview with the artist, here.)

Evaluation: Gompertz is excited and passionate about his subject. He wants us to love and appreciate art, and his enthusiasm is infectious. His prose is animated and entertaining. (In fact, this book was an outgrowth of the author's standup comedy show in the UK about modern art.) There are a gazillion fascinating and eye-opening (both literally and metaphorically) concepts presented. Since most of them have to do with visual communication, however, the book clearly would have benefited from more illustrations. Even the few full color plates included are so helpful that it’s a sin there aren’t more!

It is not a book once can (or should!) scan or race through. Rather, I think it should be sampled and savored and contemplated, bit by bit. I could see it as a text [non-traditional in the sense that it is not academic in tone at all] for a delightful evening class on art that meets once a week, and during which we see many slides while discussing the salient points of each chapter. (And then we break for wine and cheese and fruit, artfully arranged on a tilting table….)

Rating: 4/5 (I would have rated it higher had there been more illustrations, although in truth, there would have had to have been so many, it would have trebled the size and cost of the book. Maybe it would make a better online book, with hypertext links….?)

Highly recommended! show less

Art used to be so simple: a picture of a King, Queen, or a hero/heroine; perhaps slightly touched up, but essentially WYSIWYG. Then some clever dick invented photography and artists, concerned that they were likely to be viewed as surplus to requirements, became interpreters of life, the universe and everything.

It didn't take long for ordinary chaps, like me, to get lost in a sea of strange images and sculptures, all claiming a deep significance that passed us by: leaving that uneasy feeling show more that we were being conned. A trip to an art gallery does little to alleviate these feelings: a splodge of paint, a pile of bricks or a dead shark - all accompanied by a pretentious write up designed to tell those who claim to 'get it' that they are clever and that those who do not, that they are worthy only of being scrapped from the sole of the believer's shoe.

Help is needed and this book is the ideal entrée to a subject that loves to cover itself in subterfuge. Will Gompertz does not try to convince the reader of the awe and wonder required to become worthy of modern art, he simple relates the story of why and how the different genres came about. Mr Gompertz treats the reader as an adult: someone capable of making us his/her own opinion as to whether a group of artists, or an individual work is worthy of attention. He very rarely allows his own opinions to surface and even then, does not insist that the reader agrees.

Considering that it is slightly less than four hundred pages in length, and that it is copiously illustrated, this book does an excellent job of explaining one hundred and fifty years of art. The book begins with a pastiche of the London Underground Map used to show the major artists covered by the book by time and group. This, in the way of a map, is useful to ground the reader as to when and where each artist fits into the grand scheme of things. The text itself, is written in a knowledgeable, but light style. I would profess no more idea of modern art than the average bloke in the street, but I was able to understand and never felt that the author was talking down to me. I will not pretend that I shall be rushing to the next Tracey Emin exhibition but, even with works such as hers, I have a greater understanding as to what she is telling us. Of course, one may say, with some justification, that art should stand by its own merits and not need an instruction manual but, does not a Shakespeare play mean all the more when one has a little idea of the socio-political situation prevalent at the time that it was written?

All knowledge is good and, whether we like it or not, the art genie is out of the bottle and we are not going to persuade him back to the narrow confines of a picture of the Queen. The main point of this book is to say that if we spent a little less time shouting this is/is not art, and more looking at something that we understand; we would perhaps have less expensive rubbish and more art in our galleries. show less