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 Copyright

Copyright © 2018 by Lance Esplund

Cover design by Ann Kirchner

Cover image: The Sun Recircled, 1966 (colour woodcut), Arp,

Hans (Jean) (1887–1966) / The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel /

The Arthur and Madeleine Chalette Lejwa Collection / Bridgeman

Images © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-

Kunst, Bonn

Cover © 2018 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and

the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage

writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our

culture.

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permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you

would like permission to use material from the book (other than for

review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank

you for your support of the author’s rights.

Basic Books

Hachette Book Group

1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

www.basicbooks.com
 First Edition: October 2018

Published by Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a

subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Basic Books name and

logo is a trademark of the Hachette Book Group.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Esplund, Lance, author.

Title: The art of looking : how to read modern and

contemporary art / Lance Esplund.

Description: First edition. | New York : Basic Books, 2018. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018026754 (print) | LCCN 2018028114

(ebook) | ISBN 9780465094677 (ebook) | ISBN 9780465094660

(hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Art, Modern. | Art appreciation.

Classification: LCC N6490 (ebook) | LCC N6490 .E798 2018

(print) | DDC 709.04—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018026754

ISBNs: 978-0-465-09466-0 (hardcover); 978-0-465-09467-7

(ebook)
E3-20181008-JV-NF
CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Introduction

Section I.

Fundamentals

CHAPTER 1 Encountering Art

CHAPTER 2 The Living Organism

CHAPTER 3 Hearts and Minds

CHAPTER 4 Artists as Storytellers

CHAPTER 5 Art Is a Lie

Section II. Close

Encounters
CHAPTER 6 Awakening: Balthus—The Cat with a

Mirror I

CHAPTER 7 Sensing: Joan Mitchell—Two Sunflowers

CHAPTER 8 Growing: Jean Arp—Growth

CHAPTER 9 Igniting: James Turrell—Perfectly Clear

CHAPTER 10 Evolving: Paul Klee—Signs in Yellow

CHAPTER 11 Interacting: Marina Abramović—The

Generator

CHAPTER 12 Journeying: Richard Serra—Torqued

Spirals and Ellipses at Dia:Beacon

CHAPTER 13 Goading: Robert Gober—Untitled Leg

CHAPTER 14 Alchemizing: Richard Tuttle—White

Balloon with Blue Light

CHAPTER 15 Submerging: Jeremy Blake—The

Winchester Trilogy

CONCLUSION Looking Further

Photos

Acknowledgments
About the Author

Praise for The Art of Looking

Illustration Credits

Additional Resources

Notes

Index
To Evelyn
INTRODUCTION

THE LANDSCAPE OF ART HAS CHANGED DRAMATICALLY during

the past one hundred years. We’ve seen Kazimir Malevich’s Black

Square (1915), an abstract painting comprising a single black square

within a white ground, and Marcel Duchamp’s infamous Fountain

(1917) (fig. 10)—a hand-signed porcelain urinal. Midcentury

brought us the Abstract Expressionist “drip” paintings of Jackson

Pollock, as well as Pop art, which featured Andy Warhol’s pictures

of Marilyn Monroe, Campbell’s soup cans, and Chairman Mao. With

the rise of neo-Dada and Conceptualism, we saw Piero Manzoni’s

Artist’s Shit (1961), a series of ninety sealed tin cans, each

purportedly containing 1.1 ounces of Manzoni’s own excrement. In

1971, Chris Burden, in his performance artwork Shoot, was

voluntarily shot in the arm with a .22 caliber rifle. In 2007, Urs

Fischer, for his installation You, took a jackhammer to Gavin

Brown’s enterprise gallery, in New York City, to create a giant crater

in the cement floor. And uptown, in 2016, at the Solomon R.

Guggenheim Museum, the artist Maurizio Cattelan replaced a

porcelain toilet in one of the public restrooms with the interactive

sculpture America—a fully functional replica of a toilet, cast in 18-

karat gold.

Is it any wonder that the art-viewing public is bewildered, even

intimidated? What are they to make of the range of possibilities

offered in galleries and museums? Are Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso,

and Pollock old hat? Is the art of the past century meant primarily to

baffle, shock, and provoke us? Are Modern and contemporary artists

speaking only to an elitist art-world few or creating inside jokes? Or

is the joke, perhaps, on us? And if viewers don’t bother to queue up

to use Cattelan’s America, or to see a Jeff Koons, Kara Walker, or

Gerhard Richter retrospective, are they missing out? Or is

something else afoot? Today’s viewers might rightly wonder: Has

the public always felt uneasy about and out of step with the art of

their time? Or is all the confusion and apprehension a sign of

something new and very recent—something exclusive to the

experience of today’s contemporary art?

The answers to these questions—just like the art under

discussion—are complex and manifold. People have had to grapple

with the revolutionary art of their contemporaries throughout

history: the jarring, naturalistic sense of space introduced during the

Renaissance in the early fourteenth century was just as unsettling

and revolutionary as the jarring, antinaturalistic sense of space of

Cubism, which upended the Renaissance’s approach in the early

twentieth century, or the jarring objectlessness of Conceptual art in

the late twentieth century. It’s important to understand that art,

despite its relationship to its time, is a language unto itself—a

language that exists beyond its particular era. That language

continually evolves and reinvents itself—even often quotes itself.

But there are also qualities specific to Modern and contemporary art

that are unique.

Definitions of the word “art”—as well as of many of the different

terms used to classify art’s periods, movements, and “isms”—are

now fluid and open to discussion. Whether any given movement is

truly “modern”—as in recent—is therefore often up for debate. One

could argue, for example, that the twentieth-century movement

Surrealism, fueled in part by the workings of the artist’s

unconscious, reached its zenith in the fantastical religious narratives

created by the Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch (1450–

1516); or that the Modern movements Expressionism and Cubism

were in ascendance already in the angular elongations and fractured

spaces of the Spanish painter El Greco (1541–1614); or that some of

the most inventive abstract art was created by medieval nuns and

monks, or by the ancient Egyptians. In this book, I’ll shed some

light on these issues, and perhaps make these movements more

approachable, by illuminating the similarities between recent and

past art.

It’s useful to discuss terminology, because there is such a wide

range of work being done—and such a wide range of opinions,

philosophies, agendas, and approaches around art. By “Modern,” I’m

referring primarily here to artworks made since 1863, when

Édouard Manet exhibited his scandalous painting Le Déjeuner sur

l’herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass) (fig. 1) in the Salon des Refusés,

after it had been rejected by the academy of the official Paris Salon.

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, a painting in which a nude woman, looking at

the viewer, picnics with a couple of dandies, was among the first

artworks that provocatively and self-consciously questioned and

poked fun at the hallowed traditions and conventions of painting. In

this case, it was through, among other things, its subject, which

transformed the classical nude from goddess and muse into floozy, if

not prostitute, and its willfully slapdash paint-handling. But we

could start earlier, with the gritty Realist paintings of Gustave

Courbet, or later, with Picasso’s and Georges Braque’s Cubism.

Modern art incorporates not only Manet’s Impressionism, but also

those groundbreaking movements Realism and Cubism, as well as

Symbolism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Dadaism, and

abstraction, among many others. To be a Modern artist means not

so much belonging to a particular era or movement as taking a

particular philosophy and stance in relationship to art and art-

making.

Modernism in its early days represented liberation and

independence. Modernists created radical new modes of artistic

expression. They embraced new materials, technologies, artistic

innovations, and subject matter—including photography, the

assembly line, the machine aesthetic, kinetics, plastics, abstraction,

Expressionism, refuse, reinforced concrete, and steel—the same

material that was allowing for the creation of the vertical skyscraper

and the modern city. They were inspired by the art of other cultures

—such as the flat space, active patterns, and everyday subject

matter of Japanese prints, and the spare, rectilinear organization of

Japanese architecture; the pared-down forms of so-called primitive

masks and totems; and the exoticism of other non-Western

societies. Modernists, free to focus on whatever they wished, also

looked inward, embracing not just the nightclub, the brothel, and

the racetrack, but themselves, their culture—both lowbrow and

highbrow—and art itself: how they felt about being in an

increasingly unfamiliar world that was changing and speeding up at

an exponential rate, that was becoming increasingly global, and

being flooded with new art, new cultures, new technologies and

inventions, and new ideas, leaving behind the old and the familiar.
 Modernists rejected a lot of what they saw as outmoded and

academic. They no longer believed that art needed to be about

mythology and religion, or kings and queens. They no longer

believed that art needed to mirror the world, or that perspective

needed to be the organizing principle of a picture (why not organize,

instead, in accordance with the artist’s feelings, or why not let the

artwork be the subject of itself?). Modern artists didn’t believe,

necessarily, that a sculpture must be separated and elevated on a

pedestal, or that a sculpture must be conceived and built out of an

accumulation of masses (why not incorporate the pedestal, as in a

primitive totem, so that it is integral to the work, equal to and

inseparable from it—as in the Modernist sculptures of Constantin

Brâncuşi and Alberto Giacometti?).

Modernists sought to liberate pedestal, sculpture, mass, and

even the stationary artwork itself: space—void—was transformed,

by the Cubists, into volume; and the stationary object could be freed

to move and interact among the viewers—as in the mobiles of the

American Modernist sculptor Alexander Calder. But Modernist

artists, acknowledging and honoring newfound technologies and

modes of thinking and feeling as well as the primacy of individuality,

didn’t reject the past out-of-hand. They willingly and excitedly

embraced the new—alongside tradition—in order to speak in the

present by reinventing the past, and thereby further the tradition of

art. The radical French Realist painter Gustave Courbet, a

pioneering figure of Modernism in the 1800s, said, “I have simply

wanted to draw from a thorough knowledge of tradition the

reasoned and free sense of my own individuality. To know in order

to do: such has been my thought. To be able to translate the

customs, ideas, and appearance of my time as I see them—in a

word, to create a living art—this has been my aim.”

Courbet’s stance continues to be that of many artists working

today. It’s essential to keep in mind that Modern artists were not

merely reacting to the modern world and embracing every new

material and technology that came their way. They were and are

individualists who honor what they think and feel and the path their

art naturally takes. It matters little that Modern artists embraced

new materials and technologies and subjects. What matters is what

those artists did and continue to do with those newfound things.

Although, for instance, the relativity of space and location

experienced in Picasso’s and Braque’s Cubism has been aligned with

the relativity of Albert Einstein, Cubism was not illustrating an idea

about physics or about the nature of the universe; it was born out of

the formal interests and inner needs of its creators—their

independence and individuality. The fact that Modern art and

modern science sometimes took similar trajectories, though

intriguing, really is beside the point.

Art and artists make their own paths. Artists, despite their

alignments, can be movements unto themselves. Modern art is wide

ranging and omnivorous—a movement encompassing the

provocative representational paintings of Manet, the abstract

weavings of Anni Albers, the Surrealist and figurative art of

Giacometti, the fluorescent light installations of Dan Flavin, and the

Minimalist sculptures of Donald Judd, as well as the land art of

Robert Smithson and Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

Despite the popular belief that Modernism is over and dead, there

are plenty of contemporary artists who consider themselves Modern

artists.

It’s necessary to keep in mind that art history is fickle. Artists go

in and out of fashion. Some of the past artists we celebrate today

were virtually unheard of for decades, and even centuries. And it is

usually artists who resurrect artists. We are still in the throes of the

Modernist era. We have yet to get enough distance to see

Modernism objectively, let alone many of today’s fashionable

contemporary artists, some of whom art history will consign to the

rubbish heap. And there are also many underappreciated

contemporary artists who are virtually unknown and who will be

celebrated by future generations.

WHAT IS “CONTEMPORARY art,” anyway? Although it may seem

like it would be a simple matter to state a basic definition, for many

artists, art historians, curators, and art critics, that is not the case. I

once participated on a panel titled “What Makes Contemporary Art

Contemporary?” Among the definitions and requirements bandied

about were these ideas: that contemporary art, to be designated

“contemporary”—“relevant”—must address contemporary political

and social issues; that it must be engaged with the latest technology

and with globalization; that it must be multimedia, must be

revolutionary, and must question, appropriate, and depose the art

and artists of the past—especially the “Modernists.” Some panelists

argued that contemporary art began with Pop art or Conceptualism

or Postmodernism; or circa 1945, or 1970; or that it could only

include art made since 1990, or 2000. One person suggested that a

contemporary artist was anyone born since 1950. Another said that

a work of contemporary art, by definition, must have been

completed “today,” or maybe “yesterday”—and by someone under

the age of thirty. Even more recently, I encountered the idea that

today’s most important contemporary artists don’t necessarily make

art objects at all; rather, they are closer to first-responders and

activists, resorting, when and if necessary, to guerrilla tactics in

order to address emergency crises, assist victims of natural

disasters, counter social injustice, or instigate change. Following in

their footsteps, some contemporary curators have shifted their role

from organizing exhibitions to organizing curatorial activism.

I do not believe that art today has to be one thing or another, or

that a contemporary artist must have an agenda. I do believe that

the best artists have a position—something to say, and the creative

means to say it well. This might be a feeling about the qualities of

light in a sunset, the weight and color of an eggplant on a table, the

sense of loss in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, or contemporary

politics. I’d much rather see an inventive still-life painting or

landscape than a derivative and uninteresting work of politically

driven performance art. Likewise, I’d rather spend time with an

engaging multimedia installation than a banal, uninspired

landscape, video, or abstraction. I define “contemporary art” as any

art being created by living or recently deceased artists—generally

speaking, any artist, young or old, who is working currently,

whatever the mode and materials and subjects.

The term “Postmodern” in art is often used interchangeably with

“contemporary” or “Modern,” but Postmodernism is actually a

subset of movements in contemporary art. Like Modernism,

Postmodernism is extremely eclectic and embraces diverse and

contradictory positions. It has affected all of contemporary culture,

from architecture, literature, music, theater, and dance to

philosophy and criticism. Like Modernism, Postmodernism is about

liberation—albeit liberation from what are seen as the shackles and

ideals of Modernism.

Although Postmodernism has its roots in the nineteenth century,

most scholars see it as flourishing after the mid-twentieth, as a

reproach to the individualism and bravado of artworks by Abstract

Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning and Pollock, and to the

then dominant less-is-more postwar aesthetic of the International

Style in architecture, which had produced impersonal, minimalist

boxes of concrete, glass, and steel—machines for living. But many

others believe Postmodernism began around 1915, with the birth of

Duchamp’s “Readymades”—store-bought or mass-produced objects

exhibited as works of art—because Postmodernism, like

Modernism, is defined less by a time period than by an artist’s

philosophy.

Practitioners of Postmodernism operate as if Modernism were

over, or were dying embers needing once and for all to be

extinguished. Others see the Postmodernism movement as

Modernism’s death rattle, or last hurrah. Postmodern art, for our

purposes, refers to any art made as a rebuke to Modernism.

Postmodernism, which sees Modernism, and especially formalism,

as bankrupt (I’ll address the fallacy of this belief in later chapters),

embraces irony, humor, theory, and pluralism. Self-conscious and

self-referential, it is art that willfully critiques, if not makes fun of,

other “Art”—art with a capital “A.” Postmodernism takes an anti-

aesthetic, nihilistic stance, one that denies that there is any

discernible or hierarchical value in anything, that believes there are

no such aesthetic distinctions as “good” and “bad,” “less than” and

“greater than.” The Postmodernists assert that all art is subjective,

that there are no truths—only interpretations—and that the

Modernists’ so-called values and qualitative judgments are

insignificant and unmeasurable. They maintain that meanings and

rankings are elitist inventions—holdovers from the old regime—and

that discussing and valuing the formal properties in a work of art,

and believing that a Rembrandt or a Picasso or a Pollock might be

better than some random scribble, is a load of hooey.

Adherents to the Postmodernist philosophy believe in the

importance of leveling the playing field and value inclusivity—they

embrace everything, high and low, equally with open arms,

especially chance, ugliness, disharmony, and kitsch. They choose the

freedom and messiness of irrationality over what they see as the

restrictive, puritanical rationality of Modernism. The

Postmodernists seemingly imagine Modernism to be much purer

and less messy and omnivorous than it actually is. And they want to

mess it all up, if not tear it down.

Many Postmodernists believe that the participatory viewer is as

important as, if not sometimes more important than, the artist, and

that the intention of the artist is meaningless. This anti-formalist,

anti-aesthetic position has led to movements such as Process art,

which values impermanence and perishability—and in which an

object, such as a hay bale, might just be left outside to weather the

elements—and Conceptual art, in which the idea or concept is

prized above the finished artwork, and in which, occasionally, the art

object never materializes. At times in Conceptual art, the viewers

themselves must create, or merely imagine—conjure in the mind’s

eye—the unrealized “artwork” or artistic “act.”

 Like Modernist artists, however, Postmodern practitioners

represent a broad range of approaches and artists. Postmodernists

embrace irony, Conceptualism, and deconstructionism. They also

resort to appropriation—in which artists borrow, if not steal, and

reuse the work of other artists. Appropriation artists include

Richard Prince, who, in photographing and altering vintage cigarette

advertisements, repurposed the Marlboro Man; Christian Marclay

collaged together thousands of film and television clips for his

twenty-four-hour-long looped video montage The Clock, from 2010.

Postmodernists also embrace nostalgia for the academic art against

which the Modernists originally rebelled. In Postmodernism, what

was once considered “bad” or tasteless is now considered “good”—if

only for the reason that it goes against Modernism’s notions of

“good” and “bad.” And it is worth noting that Postmodernism,

which displaced Modernism in the 1980s and 1990s, is the current

reigning ideology in galleries, museums, art history programs, and

art schools.

Postmodernism—as well as a lot of contemporary art and artists

—prizes rebellion. Oftentimes, in fact, we are told that one of the

main functions of contemporary art is to challenge and prod us and

to be revolutionary. The art of the past two centuries has often been

groundbreaking, challenging, and provocative, and the birth of

Modernism coincided with the birth of the Industrial Revolution

and violent revolutions in the United States and France. Modern

artistic innovations were often jarring, intentionally or not. When

you are familiar only with figurative sculptures of bronze and

marble, a kinetic abstract mobile by Calder can positively provoke

you. And sometimes, in order to be heard, artists who were ignored

by the establishment have had to embrace revolutionary tactics. Too

often, though, the notions of innovation and revolution have been

misunderstood to be the rallying cry of Modern and contemporary

art, their raison d’être. Because some of the greatest Modern art,

completely new, was shocking and revolutionary, it is now believed

that art’s job is to upset the status quo.

If we approach art with the belief that it must be this and not

that, then we risk missing out on a lot of worthwhile Modern and

contemporary art. We also limit our understanding of what art is.

And if we believe that our contemporary art is more important and

relevant to us than the art made a decade ago, or a century or a

millennium ago, we take a position of false superiority, a stance that,

as it increasingly cuts us off from our histories, distances us from

ourselves. When we consistently focus on the new, we embrace the

next thing out of habit, not necessity. And when provocation is

expected in art, provocation becomes rote—no longer provocative—

and art and artists assume the role of bully. Bucking the status quo

becomes the status quo, with last year’s “revolutionary” model

always being rotated out to make room for this year’s

“revolutionary” model. If we blindly accept that the latest art is

better and more relevant than earlier art, each time we embrace the

next fashionable thing we leave something of what came before, and

once mattered to us, behind.

THE ART OF LOOKING acknowledges the interconnectedness

between the art of the past and the art of the present. It recognizes

that Modern and contemporary artists are in dialogue with, recycle,

and reinvent the art of the past. Although my focus will be on how

to navigate Modern and contemporary art, I want to encourage you

to engage with all art—not just the art of the past century or decade

—at the deepest level, and to see that the art of the recent past and

of the present can open us up to the art of the past. I also want to

encourage you to develop your aesthetic judgment—your critical

mind and eye—and to begin to trust yourself and to see art the way

artists see art.

Though there are differences among philosophies and emphasis,

the art of the present and the art of the past share many of the same

elements and much of the same language. With that in mind, I’ve

interspersed art from many periods and cultures throughout the

book in order to underscore the continuum of art’s language. I’ve

used paintings for the majority of my examples because painting is

among the oldest and most consistent and prevailing forms of visual

art; it also contains the majority of art’s universal elements: color,

line, movement, form, shape, rhythm, space, tension, and metaphor.

These same elements can also be found in contemporary

assemblages, works of performance art, and sometimes even

Conceptual art. When you encounter an artwork that is new and

different, it is worthwhile to look for its similarities with more

familiar works, rather than focusing only on what is unique or

seemingly revolutionary. By grounding yourself in the larger

language of art, you may find that those things that initially seemed

strange might not be as unfamiliar as you at first thought.

I’ve organized The Art of Looking into two sections. The first

section is “Fundamentals.” In its five chapters I relate my own

experience of first coming to art, and I explore the elements and

language of art, the use of metaphor in art, and the value of

marshaling your powers of both subjectivity and objectivity when

engaging with works of art. In Chapter 5, after we’ve explored how

to approach the art of all eras, I discuss the nature of Modern and

contemporary art and touch on how Postmodernism came into

being.

The second section of the book, “Close Encounters,” is devoted

to close readings of a variety of individual works of Modern and

contemporary art: painting, sculpture, video, installation, and

performance art. These eclectic works show the range of deep and

surprising experiences viewers can have when engaging with art. My

close readings in these ten chapters are in-depth analyses of how I

have looked at, thought about, and experienced art.

I’m well aware that in doing close readings of artworks, we are in

danger of injuring the delicacy and intricacy—the mystery—of an

artwork’s inner life, and of introducing the proverbial rock on which

so many of those who interpret artworks are commonly wrecked.

But please bear with me and follow along in these chapters, as it is

precisely in the navigating and interpreting of an artwork’s

intricacies—and in identifying, reading, and attempting to glean

what, exactly, its forms and pathways are doing, where they’re

taking us, and why—that an artwork unfolds and reveals its inner

life.

We are seeking questions and possibilities, not answers. Art is

less concerned with answers than with inspiring you to expand and

deepen your experience—to feel and think. In sharing my

experience of artworks, I’m not suggesting that they are definitive. I

present one set of possibilities and responses. As you follow along

with me, check in with yourself, just as I have done and continue to
do, to get closer to the truth of the work and to the truth of your

own responses. Start with your eyes and your gut feelings. Then

pose questions: to the artwork, to me, and to yourself. Ask yourself

if your responses and experiences jibe with mine. Ask yourself what

you think: where the artwork takes you and what thoughts it

inspires, because it is great to have feelings about something, to

have likes and dislikes, but it is even better to know why—to think

in accompaniment to feeling—to reach a place, in your experience of

an artwork, where feelings and ideas support, inspire, and further

one another, where they fuse.

The concluding chapter, “Looking Further,” addresses the

changing nature of art museums, the pitfalls of the use and

intrusion of technology to interact with art, and the role and

importance of the artist. I also make some suggestions about how to

keep your bearings while navigating art’s evolving landscape.

The Art of Looking is by no means exhaustive, encyclopedic, or

even absolute (there are no absolutes). What I have written here is

what I know to be true for me, and what I have gleaned and believe

from a lifetime of looking at art. The book is more of an

impassioned primer on the subject—some ideas that you can try on,

take, and run with—than a comprehensive text on Modern and

contemporary art. No book of this size and scope can hope to be all-

encompassing. (Much more—in terms of artists, movements,

philosophies, genres, and “isms”—has been left out than included.)

My focus here is on grounding you in art’s fundamentals and on

empowering you to look and think for yourself—to help you to

discover your own passions. Once you’ve gotten enough of your

own footing with art, you’ll begin to trust yourself and your
experience. My goal has been to help you learn to have faith in your

own eyes and heart and gut, and to feel confident reading works of

art on your own—that is, to help you begin to think like an artist.

This is not a book of art history, or about the art market. It is not a

collection of greatest hits. Nor is it a rundown of the most

important, groundbreaking, expensive, revolutionary, or shocking

artworks of the past century or decade. Although I expend a great

deal of time and energy here telling you what I personally think and

feel about works of art, I do not aim to convince you that my way of

seeing is the only way of seeing, or that the art I love is the art you

should love—that the art I’ve assembled on my personal altar is the

art that should grace your altar. Rather, my aim is to familiarize you

with the language of art, to help you open up to art that might be

unfamiliar, to engage further with the art that interests you already

—whether it is Modern, contemporary, or ancient—to begin to

assemble your own personal altar.

My goal is to give you some tools so that you can get out and go

to work. Think of The Art of Looking as a guide to help you to hone

your skills of perception and to home in on the truth of your

experience. You do not have to agree with or share my tastes in art,

or even see what I see. It is more important that you begin to see

and to feel for yourself in front of works of art. I cannot give you my

experience or love of art. You must come to and love art on your

own. And it is essential that you get out and see artworks in the

flesh, because there is absolutely no substitute for the face-to-face

encounter with art.

Many people tell me that they don’t know how to look at art,

that they are afraid they are not sophisticated enough and will see or
focus on the wrong things, that they will miss what’s important, and

that they feel intimidated by art (especially Modern and

contemporary works). They fear that instead of getting closer to a

deep experience and understanding of art, their encounters will

merely expose their ignorance and further alienate them from art.

Others are quick to point out that they know what they like and

don’t like, and that when it comes to art, they don’t need any

experts or art critics to tell them what to look at and how to look.

These are all valid feelings that most of us share to one degree or

another. But it’s crucial to realize that great art is extremely

generous, welcoming, and encouraging. It’s a gift. And it needs to be

approached with the curiosity of a child. Great art, offering

countless doorways—one of which was made just for you—invites

you in. Great art tells you in clear language everything you need to

know and takes you everywhere you need to go. And it’s also

important to remember that the experience of art, although we can

all share in it, is ultimately—like your experience of love—yours

and yours alone.

When I send my college students to the museum, I remind them

that art offers a personal, one-on-one encounter, not unlike a first

date, during which one needs to be open enough to be able to take

in what art has to say. For the encounter to be successful, there

should be flirtation, seduction, and chemistry—a back-and-forth.

There also has to be a level of trust, self-awareness, and self-

confidence going in. You need to know something about your own

truths before you attempt to know those of another. It’s imperative

to be mindful of your own prejudices. With art, as in courting, you

should ask questions and listen closely to the responses; you should
be curious, patient, and attentive. And you shouldn’t make snap

judgments, or assume immediately that an artwork is “not your

type.” Otherwise—as in dating—you might miss out on meeting

kindred spirits or the love of your life.

SECTION I

Fundamentals
 one

ENCOUNTERING ART

WHEN I WAS THIRTEEN, MY PARENTS GAVE ME AN enormous art

book for Christmas. It was an illustrated tome of Leonardo da

Vinci’s paintings, drawings, and inventions. Inside were large color

pictures of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne (fig. 3), the Mona Lisa,

and St. John the Baptist, as well as an impressive Last Supper

centerfold. The book included drawings of nature, anatomy,

innovative weaponry, and flying machines—all of which were very

cool. I admired and pored over their details. But what I remember

most was that the paintings and drawings didn’t move me, and the

secret shame I felt because I knew that Leonardo was considered

among the greatest artists of all time. What did it say about me,

about art, and about Leonardo, if I wasn’t excited by his work?

What did interest me at that time was practicing martial arts,

listening to music, acting in plays, and making my own paintings

and drawings. I was proud of the tightly rendered pencil drawings I

copied from black-and-white photographs, and the painstakingly

detailed paintings I made of friends, cars, and rock stars. But I knew

somehow they weren’t art, even though I had no idea what art really

was or what my own work was lacking. I sensed back then that my

own pictures, though time-consuming to make, came too easily; that

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 PREFACE. Our Purpose. — " Merck's Index " is to provide,
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affords recent information on the topics here related, that cannot be
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information that otherwise might have to be sought-for in many
volumes before being found. Secondly, — it will in many instances
give satisfaction where tedious research throughoixt any library,
however complete, must result in disappointment, or — what is
worse — in misinformation ; because the subjects in question, being
but newly investigated, have not yet been described, or not correctly
so, in the literature hitherto extant. Scope of the Matter. — "Merck's
Index" covers, in the brief est shape consistent with satisfactory
results, the following categories : I. — Remedies or Remedial
Ingredients that are official through the " U. S. Pharmacopoeia";—
those for which processes are given by the "National Formulary"; —
those in established use by American practitioners ; — and those
recently introduced into practice by domestic or foreign clinicians. II.
— Chemical Preparations or Compounds that are of service in
Laboratory or Manufactui'ing work, or for purposes of Instruction.
(»Sl3e, on page VIII, the explanation regarding the special class : "
Guaranteed Reagents" !)
 Excluded from the "Index" list are the following classes of
articles (though pertaining to either of the above cUvisions) : (a)
Crude botanical drugs ; that is, portions of plants unaltered by
chemical or pharmaceutical process (barks, herbs, roots, seeds,
etc.). (&) Such chemical or pharmaceutical preparations as are not
adapted to be kept in readymade form, because they rapidly
deteriorate. (c) Such medicinal mixtures as are of secret
composition. Arrangement of tlie Xext. — The following hints may be
useful, in enabling the reader to determine at precisely which point
of the alphabetic scale he will find an article sought for : 1_ The
Alphatoetic Sequence applies, strictly, to the first complete word
(whether subdivided by hyphens or not) of each list-name,
irreqxctive of chemical or other relationships between the substances
listed, that might run counter to such sequence. Several titles,
composed of two or more separate words, the first of which is
common to all these titles, always stand in one consecutive group of
their own, — being arranged according to the alphabetic sequence
of their necond words, respectively. Thus — pp. 162-4 : under "
Methyl " will be found, first, all the names composed of " Methyl "
with a second, separate word, from " Methyl Acetate " to " Methyl
Valerianate " ; the7i the extensions of the original word "Methyl"
itself, by the addition of simple terminations, or of hyphens with
other words joined on; as, " Methyl-acetanilide," "Methyl-acetone,"
"Methylal." Further on, under "Methylene," there is another group of
titles composed of two separate words each, from "Methylene
Acetate" to "Methylene Iodide"; then, again, extensions of the first
word, from " Methylene-proto-catechuic " to "Methylstrychnine." 2.
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base: "Silver Nitrate" — not Nitrate of Silver. — Double salts are
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substantive: "Naphtol, Alpha-"; " Pelletierine, Pseudo-." — (For the
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sometimes retained at the beginning of the name : "Paraldehyde,"
"Meta-cresol-bismuth.")
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Oa:j/-sparteine ; " " ^j/dro-cotarnine ; " "Meth-07^, caffeine." —
Others are placed after the leading word : " Caffeine, Ethoxy-.''^ 3.
— Nomenclature. — Salts of the same base and acid, differing in
proportions of both, (also various Oxides, Sulphides, etc., of same
base) are in most cases distinguished by appended adjectives of
degree: "Iron Sulphate, Ferrous." — When Pharmacopojial
nomenclature, or other firmly rooted usage, preferably employs
eofor-descriptiona for such distinction, this method has been
followed: " Mercury Iodide, Red." — Prefixes have been used where
mor,e customary : " Barium Dioxide." The so-called "■Acid Salts^'
(Hydrogen-double-salts), in which wiiwiecic jure^re.'S are usually
employed in commercial chemical nomenclature, have been listed
thus : " Potassium Bicarbonate." Indefinite prefixes, as "per-,"
"sub-," when meant to indicate proportions in salts, &c., have been
replaced by more descriptive terms (appended adjectives or definite
prefixes): "Iron Chloride, Ferric;" "Bismuth Oxyiodide," to accord
with good contemporary professional usage. — Where exact
expression is impossible or too cumbersome, the indefinite terms are
retained : "Bismuth Subnitrate." Ti-iie Anhydrides are listed as
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elenvents whose oxides they are, but under "Acid" : "Acid Tungstic."
— Where custom points largely the other way, this rule has been
departed from : "Antimony Oxide, Antimonic," etc. Basic ^' Hydrated
Oxides,'''' or "Hydroxides," are listed as "Hydrates" (" Sodium
Hydrate"), except in a few special instauces (" Iron Oxide, Brown ").
" Mhers^^ (excepting "Ether. — U. S. P.") are listed as salts or
oxides of their respective radicals: "Ethyl Acetate," " Amyl Oxide,"
etc. Synonyms are freely recorded, leading the descriptive matter
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THE PUBLISHERS.
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the ^rs
 Merck's 1896 Index AN ENCYCLOPEDIA FOR THE
PHYSICIAN AND THE PHARMACIST. MERCK & CO., NEW YORK.
[COPYRIGHTED.] Please note : (1) that the prices quoted (including
containers) are those ruling in the New York Market end are subject
to fluctuations. (2) That we publish the Actual net cost of all the
articles listed. (3) That fhysicians must expect to pay an advance on
the prices quoted, since these represent the figures that are actually
charged to the trade and do not cover expenses of any Tcind, The
Abbreviation ^^KercWsG.R." Btsmde toT Merck's Guaranteed
Reagent; "c.b." and "c. v." for Cork-stoppered Bottle or Yial ; "g.s.
b." and "g.s. v." for Glass-stoppered Bottle ot Vial; "g. p. b." for
Gutta-percha Bottle. For Dose, read Dose by Mouth ; In.t., read
Hypodermic Injection; Appl., read External Application. — Other
Abbreviations, see Table at end of book. — TJie Descriptions below
are given on the best authorities accessible at the time. At brastol,
— see Asaprol. Abrin Merck i5 gr- vial 2.75 Albuminoid ; act. prin. of
seeds Abrus precatorius, L. (Jequirity).— Brownish-yellow pwd.—
^'o^. W.— Exceed, toxic. — Uses: Sugg, by Kobert for prod, artif'l
conjunctivitis. — Caitt. Handle very carefully. Smallest particle may
be fatal in slightest wound. Extremely dangerous in eye & nose.
Absiiithin Merck 15 gr. vial .50 Also in ig oz., 10 & 5 gr. vials.
(Absinthiin; Absynthin [or -iin]).— Bitter prin. fr. Artemisia
Absinthium, L. (Wormwood). — C40H29O9 (?). — Yellowishbrown,
amorph. or cryst. pwd. ; very bitter. — Sol. A., C. ; v. si. E.; insol. W.
—Melt. 120-125° C— Bitter Tonic— Uses.- Anorexia constip.,
chlorosis, &c.—Dose 1)4-4 grains (0.1-0.26 Gm.>. Acacia.— fT. S. P.
lb. -55 (Gum Arabic). — Fr. Acacia Senegal, Willd. — Sol. 2 W.; insol.
A.— Lenitive. — Uses: Intern., bronch. inflam., gastrointest.
irritation, dry fauces, &c.; gen'ly as demulc. Also pharra. & techn.
do. —U. S. P.— Powder lb. .65 Acenaphtene Merck c. v.— oz. 1.75
Constit. of coal-tar. — Cj2H,o=C,oH6.(CH2)2. — Color], need. —Sol.,
hot A.— Melt. 95° C.—Boil. 277.5° C. *Acetal Merck.— Pure,
medicinal g. s. V. — oz. 1.07 (Diethyl-acetal ; Ethylidene-diethylic
Ether ; Diethyl-aklehyde).— Prod, by imperf. oxid'u of alcohol.—
C6Hj402 = CH3.CH(OC2H5l2.— Colorl., volat. liq. ; agre. odor; nutty
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