Learning to Look at Paintings 
Customer Ratings: - Informative yet accessible to those who are not experts. A useful book for the beginner with an interest in this subject. Black and white and colour pictures assist with understanding the art works. A good book for those who would like to get a little more out of their visits to galleries and museums.
- Will not turn you into a Clarke, Marlow or Schama. This book consists of chapters considering certain technical aspects of painting (composition, space, form, tone, colour, subject matter). It s difficult to follow much of what the text is trying to say because most of the artworks discussed herein are in small, dark black & white reproductions. In that subset of instances where colour plates are used, they are in the centre section so you have to keep flipping back and forth constantly. It s certainly not a user-friendly book and will only teach you about observing technical aspects. You will not come out of the other end with the ability to impress your mates by sounding like a new Kenneth Clarke, Tim Marlow or Simon Schama.
- Some colours on a flat plane, disposed in a certain order.. This book is a very good introduction to art history (from the XVth to the XXth century) and helps the layman in the sometimes arduous interpretation of many of the greatest masterpieces of painting that grace our museums.
It is divided into 8 chapters (composition, space, form, tone, colour, subject matter, drawing and prints), each of them picking out representative works and analysing them in a short and vivid text. The pedagogical aim is obvious and the author actually gives the reader a complete guideline to understanding the works of art. The book ends with a very useful glossary of art and technical terms.
One shortcoming though: the quality of the reproductions, most of them in black and white, leaves a lot to be desired. - dissapointed. I ordered this book and received it, but the colour plates were missing. I contacted the company but they just refunded the money. I didn t want this, I wanted the book complete! They didn t want the book returned, so I have an art book without the relevant pictures!!!
- A terse introduction to the stated subject. My interest in this book derived from my interest in photography, and the conviction that study of paintings can teach us about photography as well. Elements that make a painting interesting, beautiful, moving, important, I believe can mostly do the same to a photograph.
I found in the book an exposure of those elements, provided with a terse, clear language, illustrated with reference to works therein reproduced. There is some jargon, made accessible, but not the show-off of complicated language that I found in other writings about art. I believe this book can help look at paintings and appreciate them, more than to speak about them. I also found it gives a fresh alternative to the usual approach of looking at art in a chronological way, going by century, slicing instead the same subject in a different way.
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Learning to Look at Paintings (ID: 0415148901)
