The Art of Looking

The landscape of contemporary art has changed dramatically during the last hundred years. We have seen a painting of a single black square on a white ground, Kazimir Malevich's Black Square (1915), and a hand-signed porcelain urinal, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917). Mid-century brought us the Abstract Expressionist "drip" paintings of

Jackson Pollock. In Piero Manzoni's Artist's Shit (1961), we got a series of 90 sealed tin cans purportedly containing Manzoni's own excrement. A decade later, with Chris Burden's Shoot (1971), we saw a performance in which the artist was voluntarily shot in the arm with a rifle. More recently, Damien Hirst exhibited a shark floating in a glass tank of formaldehyde and fellow British artist Tracey Emin-in her autobiographical installation The History of Painting (1999)-displayed, among other items, her own used tampons.

It is no wonder, then, that the art-viewing public is perplexed. What's going on here? Do today's renowned artists-like earlier masters such as Giotto, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Matisse-represent the highest achievements of civilization? Or something else entirely? Have viewers always felt this way; or is their confusion a sign of something new-something exclusive to the experience of today's contemporary art?

In The Art of Looking, renowned art critic Lance Esplund shows that works of Modern and contemporary art are not as indecipherable as they might seem to be. Nor do they represent a dramatic break from the past. He situates more recent movements in the tradition of art and examines the threads that tie the art of the past to that of the present. For instance, Esplund elucidates the similarities between Picasso and El Greco; between the ancient Egyptian Pyramids and sculptor Richard Serra's monumental Torqued Ellipses. The Art of Looking will open the eyes of viewers who think that contemporary art is obtuse, nonsensical, and irrelevant, as well as the eyes of those who think that the art of the past has nothing to say to our present.

As our expert guide, Esplund has curated a personalized selection of moving and important works, using them as examples to walk the reader through the formal, emotional, and metaphoric experience of art, illuminating how an artist builds and explores a theme. Eager to democratize a genre that can feel inaccessible, Esplund empowers viewers to trust their own eyes, guts, and common sense. With The Art of Looking, readers will have the confidence to evaluate and appreciate galleries and museums for themselves, whether they are looking at a Greco-Roman statue, a Byzantine Madonna, a Rembrandt portrait, a Marina Abramovic performance, or one of Richard Serra's monumental sculptures.

“"If you've never understood contemporary art, or fear you've understood it all too well, then this book is ready to be your secret friend. In lucid prose that has the loft of poetry, Lance Esplund lifts the burden of 'art appreciation' to reveal that the subject of all great art is how it appreciates you for the way you look at it. His own encounters with exemplary work-by Joan Mitchell, James Turrell, and Marina Abramovic among others-are related in terms so complete, courageous, and physically convincing they make you want to see art as he has seen it, a giant step toward seeing it for oneself."-- Douglas Crase, author of The Revisionist”

"[A] wise, wonderful new book...Life is busy and art is demanding, but reading Esplund prods us to take the aesthetic plunge, to commit to a James Turrell light sculpture or a forbiddingly monumental Richard Serra art space the same way we do to a Rembrandt, a Berthe Morisot, a Picasso."--Washington Post
"[Esplund] guides us through art made in the last century and how we can approach it in a way that's accessible and rewarding."--My Modern Met
"Avoiding the exclusionary vocabularies that abound in the art world, Esplund's new book conversationally guides the interested newcomer towards confidence in approaching western contemporary art...Esplund believes art should actively stir, not passively amuse."--Aesthetica
"Despite dramatic shifts in art over the last century, [Lance Esplund] empowers and enables us to appreciate it with 'new eyes.' Rather than perceiving new art as inaccessible or irrelevant, Esplund gently encourages us to trust our own tastes, feelings and opinions."--Detroit Free Press
"Encouraging, intelligent, and thought-provoking."--New York Journal of Books
"Esplund's conversational new book aims to coach its readers through the slow process and at-times-difficult experience of seeing...[He] is at his best when he is able to reach to the past, and to the timeless traditions and values that all successful art shares in."--New Criterion
"Everybody who cares about the art of our time will want to own this brilliant book. Lance Esplund brings ease, elegance, and incisiveness to his passionate encounters with creative spirits old and new. His essential belief, presented in prose by turns tough-minded and tenderhearted, is that contemporary practice must be grounded in timeless, universal values. The Art of Looking shines a strong and steady light. We need it."--Jed Perl, author of Calder: The Conquest of Time and New Art City: Manhattan at Mid-Century
"If you've never understood contemporary art, or fear you've understood it all too well, then this book is ready to be your secret friend. In lucid prose that has the loft of poetry, Lance Esplund lifts the burden of 'art appreciation' to reveal that the subject of all great art is how it appreciates you for the way you look at it. His own encounters with exemplary work-by Joan Mitchell, James Turrell, and Marina Abramovic among others-are related in terms so complete, courageous, and physically convincing they make you want to see art as he has seen it, a giant step toward seeing it for oneself."--Douglas Crase, author of The Revisionist
"In a friendly and conversational tone, Esplund shares his insights honed during a long career...Inviting and informative."--Kirkus
"The Art of Looking is a wonderful book, filled with remarkable insights about experiencing whatever it is that we mean by the word 'art.' Whether it is Balthus and the Me Too Movement or walking through Richard Serra's enormous curving rust colored sculptures -- there is always something new and exciting to be discovered."--Robert Benton
"This important, unconventional book begins as a terrific first-aid manual, highly accessible and full of great common sense, for those for whom modern or contemporary art is puzzling or off-putting. It evolves into a dazzling, jargon-free display of the exercise of slow, close, curious looking at all kinds of art. Those seeking relief from the plague of art-speak will find it in this insightful, unashamedly personal volume."-- John Elderfield, chief curator emeritus of painting and sculpture, the Museum of Modern Art
Presenting itself as an introductory volume to help orient beginners, The Art of Looking opens with a brisk, illuminating historical sweep before zooming in on specific works by ten dissimilar artists spanning nearly a century. An intensive exercise in meticulous observation and close reading, the book offers a personal overview that should interest art-world sophisticates as well as newcomers to the field. --Elizabeth C. Baker, editor-at-large, Art in America

Lance Esplund is an art critic for the Wall Street Journal. Trained as a painter, he has taught at the Parsons School for Design and the New York Studio School. His essays have appeared in Art in America, Harper's, and The New Republic among others. Esplund lives in Milton, Pennsylvania, and Brooklyn, New York.

The landscape of contemporary art has changed dramatically during the last hundred years. We have seen a painting of a single black square on a white ground, Kazimir Malevich's Black Square (1915), and a hand-signed porcelain urinal, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917). Mid-century brought us the Abstract Expressionist "drip" paintings ofJackson Pollock. In Piero Manzoni's Artist's Shit (1961), we got a series of 90 sealed tin cans purportedly containing Manzoni's own excrement. A decade later, with Chris Burden's Shoot (1971), we saw a performance in which the artist was voluntarily shot in the arm with a rifle. More recently, Damien Hirst exhibited a shark floating in a glass tank of formaldehyde and fellow British artist Tracey Emin-in her autobiographical installation The History of Painting (1999)-displayed, among other items, her own used tampons.It is no wonder, then, that the art-viewing public is perplexed. What's going on here? Do today's renowned artists-like earlier masters such as Giotto, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Matisse-represent the highest achievements of civilization? Or something else entirely? Have viewers always felt this way; or is their confusion a sign of something new-something exclusive to the experience of today's contemporary art?In The Art of Looking , renowned art critic Lance Esplund shows that works of Modern and contemporary art are not as indecipherable as they might seem to be. Nor do they represent a dramatic break from the past. He situates more recent movements in the tradition of art and examines the threads that tie the art of the past to that of the present. For instance, Esplund elucidates the similarities between Picasso and El Greco; between the ancient Egyptian Pyramids and sculptor Richard Serra's monumental Torqued Ellipses. The Art of Looking will open the eyes of viewers who think that contemporary art is obtuse, nonsensical, and irrelevant, as well as the eyes of those who think that the art of the past has nothing to say to our present.As our expert guide, Esplund has curated a personalized selection of moving and important works, using them as examples to walk the reader through the formal, emotional, and metaphoric experience of art, illuminating how an artist builds and explores a theme. Eager to democratize a genre that can feel inaccessible, Esplund empowers viewers to trust their own eyes, guts, and common sense. With The Art of Looking, readers will have the confidence to evaluate and appreciate galleries and museums for themselves, whether they are looking at a Greco-Roman statue, a Byzantine Madonna, a Rembrandt portrait, a Marina Abramovic performance, or one of Richard Serra's monumental sculptures.

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