Just Looking: Essays on Art

Rating:
Summary: A Fine Art Critic Too!
Review: Painting is to Updike what music was to Anthony Burgess: not so much a second love as a parallel infatuation. One always knew it from his prose: from the references to painters and painterly styles, and from the conspicuously visual quality of his description. It is good, then, to have this collection of the writer's thoughts on selected artists and art-works. He is neither too academic nor too personal in his opinions, and speaks with authority but without jargon. Of the longer essays, 'Something Missing' struck me as particularly good - a tentative, penetrating, careful pondering about what it is in John Singer Sargent's work that misses the mark of great art. The shorter pieces offer bite-sized reflections on single paintings or objects: 'Some Rectangles of Blue' discusses an abstract work by Richard Diebenkorn in such a way that one not only feels enlightened about the particular work but about abstract painting generally. As a critic, Updike has a refreshing freedom from academic orthodoxy - 'We are on the verge here of poster art', he reflects on some of Renoir - and as a (verbal) artist himself has licence to entertain as well as instruct with his prose. The book is lavishly illustrated with uncompromising colour reproductions and, of all his books, the most pleasant simply to hold in the hands.

Rating:
Summary: A Fine Art Critic Too!
Review: Painting is to Updike what music was to Anthony Burgess: not so much a second love as a parallel infatuation. One always knew it from his prose: from the references to painters and painterly styles, and from the conspicuously visual quality of his description. It is good, then, to have this collection of the writer's thoughts on selected artists and art-works. He is neither too academic nor too personal in his opinions, and speaks with authority but without jargon. Of the longer essays, 'Something Missing' struck me as particularly good - a tentative, penetrating, careful pondering about what it is in John Singer Sargent's work that misses the mark of great art. The shorter pieces offer bite-sized reflections on single paintings or objects: 'Some Rectangles of Blue' discusses an abstract work by Richard Diebenkorn in such a way that one not only feels enlightened about the particular work but about abstract painting generally. As a critic, Updike has a refreshing freedom from academic orthodoxy - 'We are on the verge here of poster art', he reflects on some of Renoir - and as a (verbal) artist himself has licence to entertain as well as instruct with his prose. The book is lavishly illustrated with uncompromising colour reproductions and, of all his books, the most pleasant simply to hold in the hands.