- Hardcover: 340 pages
- Publisher: Prestel Publishing Ltd; illustrated edition edition (30 Sep 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 3791331507
- ISBN-13: 978-3791331508
- Product Dimensions: 24.1 x 17 x 3.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 346,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'[Julian Spalding] presents a mind-boggling assortment of thoughts on matters that go far beyond the perception of art.''His wide-ranging arguments challenge us to open our eyes wide and look afresh at things familiar...'The Art Book, May 2007
Product Description
Destined to become an indispensable classic, this fresh and invigorating guide to appreciating the world's art encourages readers to trust their own instincts, tastes, eyes and experiences. Renowned curator, award-winning museum director and controversial art critic Julian Spalding has never been part of the academic establishment. He is not bound by the burden of scholarly trends - deconstruction, post-structuralism or post-Marxism. As a connoisseur and a practising curator, he helps us reconsider our relationship with the arts and makes us aware that seeing is the true gift. He shows us how mankind's early vision of the sun and moon, the seasons and death is reflected in art and draws striking parallels between apparently disparate cultures, eras and peoples. Reaching across continents and back through time to study the earliest known works as well as the modern world's most memorable accomplishments, Spalding offers a highly original and revealing history of art. The wonders of the world have changed little, what has changed through history is our way of understanding, approaching and seeing them and our role in it.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Idiosyncratic, occasionally didactic but thought provoking,
By
This review is from: The Art of Wonder: A History of Seeing (Hardcover)
Spalding has written an art history book that is totally different, exchanging chronology for a narrative about how our ancestors responded to phenomena such as the changing seasons, day and night, birth and death and sun and moon and made sense of it with the medium of art.
The first chapters after the Introduction are thematic: the stars, our vision of the world, the sun and moon, death and darkness, before moving on to modern art and the exchanging of representation of reality for expression of the internal world of the artist. It is a difficult book to describe, Spalding writes idiosyncratically bringing together diverse strands from across the entire panapoly of human history, and I may not agree with all his jumps of the imagination but I enjoyed it throroughly because it made me think and appreciate the power of art not as a luxury but as something far more fundamental to our needs as human beings since the earliest human history.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
exploration of the sources of art over ages and cultures with a call for getting back in touch with these,
By Henry Berry "Henry Berry" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Art of Wonder: A History of Seeing (Hardcover)
Spalding's book on art breathtaking in its breadth and fascinating for its enormous store of details locates the sources and influences of art in cultures of all times and all parts of the earth. "The colour green appeared to have a sacred meaning for the ancient Mayan people..."; "The only decorations allowed [in Islamic religious art] apart from stylized, intertwined flowers, are quotations from the Koran...." But Spalding sees beyond the local and historical bases for each culture's distinctive art to its common human elements running through all time and all circumstance. "When we encounter faces from the past, we almost always recognise the look in their eyes." The great diversity of material is divided into chapters of general topics--Under the Sun, Birth, Visions, The Age of Light, and others. The work is intended not only to impart a wealth of factual, cultural, and historical information on art, but also to form a comprehension and perspective of art based on the author's belief that the sense of wonder is essential to the spirit and allure of art. Spalding is an English art critic and art museum and gallery director who has controversial, provocative views of modern art. He maintains that "Western art fell apart in the 1940s..."; and that its millenial sources became supplanted by the new, modern, art's twin dictums that it had to be new and that it had to shock. The author hopes that eventually these dictims will die away so that art will once again grow out of the sense of wonder.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The pleasure of reading while sharpening your eyesmto the beautynofmwonder.,
By Jaderson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Art of Wonder: A History of Seeing (Hardcover)
I was gifted with this book by my brother in law. It was chance but the way he went throguh the very first pages figuring I would quickly like it. He was not only right, but also provided me withnthe art of writing of Julian Spalding, the way he gets you into a new perpsctive of seeing through simplicity and joy. Everyone who might be traveling through this marvelous book would change the way he or she will see the world of art, a way not experienced before.
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