- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Knopf (Nov 8 2005)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1400044189
- ISBN-13: 978-1400044184
- Product Dimensions: 21.1 x 2.3 x 26.2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 Kg
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #729,386 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Updike's art criticism is free of abstraction and jargon and radiant in its curiosity and discernment. He can't help but bring a novelist's gift for psychological insight to his discussions of art, even as he expertly considers technique and aesthetics. American art is his passion, and within that realm, it is painting that he loves best, although he has included a judicious discussion of Alfred Stieglitz, the most painterly of photographers. Updike begins with a witty discussion of American portraiture and John Singleton Copley, then celebrates American landscape painting in his most rousing pieces, discussing with deep feeling the idea of the sublime during the oh-so-brief era in the New World when "nature reigned untamed" and offering agile responses to the paintings of Frederic Edwin Church, Martin Johnson Heade, and Winslow Homer. Forthright in his castigation of museum exhibitions burdened with dunning commentary, incisive in his interpretation of John Sloan and Arthur Dove, and brilliant in his response to Edward Hopper, Updike is receptivity personified, writing about art with ardent attention, knowledge, and profound appreciation. Updike's immersion in art assures us that there are oases, still, from the crassness of commercial images. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
When, in 1989, a collection of John Updike’s writings on art appeared under the title Just Looking, a reviewer in the San Francisco Chronicle commented, “He refreshes for us the sense of prose opportunity that makes art a sustaining subject to people who write about it.” In the sixteen years since Just Looking was published, he has continued to serve as an art critic, mostly for The New York Review of Books, and from fifty or so articles has selected, for this richly illustrated book, eighteen that deal with American art.
After beginning with early American portraits, landscapes, and the transatlantic career of John Singleton Copley, Still Looking then considers the curious case of Martin Johnson Heade and extols two late-nineteenth-century masters, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. Next, it discusses the eccentric pre-moderns James McNeill Whistler and Albert Pinkham Ryder, the competing American Impressionists and Realists in the early twentieth century, and such now-historic avant-garde figures as Alfred Stieglitz, Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, and Elie Nadelman. Two appreciations of Edward Hopper and appraisals of Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol round out the volume.
America speaks through its artists. As Updike states in his introduction, “The dots can be connected from Copley to Pollock: the same tense engagement with materials, the same demand for a morality of representation, can be discerned in both.”
On Just Looking
“Some of these essays are marvelous examples of critical explanation, in which the psychological concerns of the novelist drive the eye from work to work in an exhibition until a deep understanding of the art emerges.”
—Arthur Danto, The New York Times Book Review
“These are remarkably elegant little essays, dense in thought and perception but offhandedly casual in style. Their brevity makes more acute the sense of regret one feels to see them end.” —Jeremy Strick, Newsday
After beginning with early American portraits, landscapes, and the transatlantic career of John Singleton Copley, Still Looking then considers the curious case of Martin Johnson Heade and extols two late-nineteenth-century masters, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. Next, it discusses the eccentric pre-moderns James McNeill Whistler and Albert Pinkham Ryder, the competing American Impressionists and Realists in the early twentieth century, and such now-historic avant-garde figures as Alfred Stieglitz, Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, and Elie Nadelman. Two appreciations of Edward Hopper and appraisals of Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol round out the volume.
America speaks through its artists. As Updike states in his introduction, “The dots can be connected from Copley to Pollock: the same tense engagement with materials, the same demand for a morality of representation, can be discerned in both.”
On Just Looking
“Some of these essays are marvelous examples of critical explanation, in which the psychological concerns of the novelist drive the eye from work to work in an exhibition until a deep understanding of the art emerges.”
—Arthur Danto, The New York Times Book Review
“These are remarkably elegant little essays, dense in thought and perception but offhandedly casual in style. Their brevity makes more acute the sense of regret one feels to see them end.” —Jeremy Strick, Newsday
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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4.3 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
70 of 73 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Artist of Words Writes About Artists of Image, Nov 19 2005
By Grady Harp - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Still Looking: Essays on American Art (Hardcover)
Though not widely known, brilliant American novelist John Updike has a life passion for the art of painting, even to the point of studying the making of art at the Ruskin School of Fine Art in England. It is this preoccupation with simply looking at art, especially American art, throughout his life that makes this short collection of essays so intriguing and so alive with the words of a writer instead of those of a scholar or critic.Some of these essays reference his published essays or art reviews from earlier years ('Just Looking') while the bulk of this book is composed of his very well observed paintings by his favorite artists and art topics: the study of the development of landscape in American painting, the comparison of Albert Pinkham Ryder with Jackson Pollock ('Americans, with their basically millennial expectations, admire holy fools, especially in the arts, and Ryder is our holy fool of painting'), his evaluations of Winslow Homer ('With Homer we feel no waste...He beautifully exploited his talent and his days...'), Thomas Eakins, Edward Hopper (his favorite American painter), Whistler, Childe Hassam, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz, Arthur Dove, and Andy Warhol. He rages against the period of Abstract Expressionism (!), comparing it to the parallel in American thought processes and mental needs of the time.
Where Updike differs from other commentators on art is in his degree of passion. His obsession with painting informs all of his writing and while some of the essays go on a bit too long, they are never less than wholly felt. This book can be read as an Updike digression, as a scintillating book of art criticism, or as a look at American art history from the stance of a novelist. Whatever approach appeals to the reader, this is a fine, well written, and exceedingly entertaining book. Recommended. Grady Harp, November 05
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Sampler of American Art History, Feb 20 2006
By David B Richman - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Still Looking: Essays on American Art (Hardcover)
John Updike is a prize-winning novelist, but he was also trained in fine art and has written a number of gallery show reviews, especially for the New York Review of Books. His reviews are always interesting and point out many aspects of the artist's work being shown. "Still Looking: Essays on American Art" is a collection of his reviews and that collection is quite eclectic, covering such artists as Whistler, Copley, Ryder, Eakins, Homer, Hopper, Nadelman, Dove, Hassam, Pollack and Hartley, as well as the photographer Stieglitz and two theme reviews on storms and landscapes in his eighteen chapters. While all of his highlighted artists are male, he has good things to say about Mary Cassatt (p. 118) and he does reproduce two of O'Keeffe's watercolors (p. 142) and one of her oils (p. 143). I think his relative lack of female artists in this volume may have more to do with the shows he reviewed for the various publications than any especially strong male bias.That said, this book is magnificent! The articles are well done and the art work is reproduced in vibrant color. I found a number of works I had never seen as well as "discovering" several artists that were essentially new to me, and was fascinated by the depth of the art produced by them. If you want to begin to learn about American artists, this collection of reviews is a very good place to start.
13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Well Worth a Look, Jan 7 2006
By Christian Schlect - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Still Looking: Essays on American Art (Hardcover)
An enjoyable and elegant book of short essays on several American artists from a rightfully esteemed writer, John Updike. He draws his thoughts from visits to special museum exhibits on selected works by these painters, one photographer (Stieglitz) and one sculptor (Nadelman).Some paintings that I have previously seen and enjoyed now have greater meaning to me due to the insights conveyed by Mr. Updike on the life and work of the responsible artist. Two good examples being the art of Childe Hassam and that of Edward Hopper.
Non-experts (like me) will be induced to go beyond this survey and more deeply explore the full range of work of some, if not all, of Mr. Updike's featured artists.
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