What are some books that'll help me appreciate art...

What are some books that'll help me appreciate art? I don't know shit about art and I'm trying to foster an appreciation for it. I don't mind if it's ancient, classical, or modern.

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Bump. I'm interested in this as well.

denisdutton.com/bell.htm

This will help you more than a hundred books. You must understand yourself and your own capacity to see first.

Even though it sounds super-super plebby, i think video (maybe youtube) is a better format to talk about painting and sculpture.

I think art is the realm of pseuds who make these incredibly one-dimensional pieces that have to make some incredibly brash statement.

then when you don't like the work, in comparison to, say, a hugely complex and long piece of literature, the artist thinks you're a brainlet who doesn't get the significance of the fact that the nuts and bolts used in their silly sculpture came from a poorly maintained chinese construction site which collapsed and killed 50 children, and if I were an intellectual like them I would be stirred by such a backstory.

but hey, perhaps I just hate art because it's what my dad does and I think he and all his art friends are idiots.

Unironically KhanAcademy/Smarthistory gives you a pretty comprehensive rundown of most major art movements.

Honestly I'd just go to a good museum really dude. Stop asking yourself "what am I looking at?" but instead "what does it make me feel?". Especially with modern art past the 1930's, the intention is to make you feel something anyway. Or maybe think about what the artist is trying to make you think about, like a person who is trying to think about what other people are thinking about while people watching.

Also, as far as I'm aware, there is no book that can teach you art appreciation but only art history. You can learn to appreciate the work because of interesting history (like the Medici were basically the proto-mafia in Italy), but it isn't going to actually make you appreciate it for the sake of it being art.

Sculpting in Time desu wa

good post

I'd say that, other than the fact that you're projecting, this is actually accurate for like 95% of artists / artist communities

Watch shock of the new

Good artists don't give a fuck about doing "statements", they like doing cool-looking and original stuff that then gets overly analyzed by pseuds thinking everything is a critique of society.

Artists have to roll with this pseudery because that's the only kind of people who care about art nowadays.

pick up some kenneth clarke books user

Art teacher here

I always recommend this series for a start, I think it is fantastic:
youtube.com/watch?v=0pDE4VX_9Kk
(there is a book of it too)

I think the best material to understand the transition into the modern world of art is this series:
youtube.com/watch?v=J3ne7Udaetg

The two most well known books on history of art, imo, are The Story of Art by E. Gombrich and Arte Moderna by Carlos Argan.
If you want to know of aesthetics (in art, though not exclusively), I really like Umberto Eco's On Beauty and On Ugliness, because the books are a compilation of texts of different times.

I think the problem with art appreciation is how attached people are to what they think is a legitimate and illegitimate way to appreciate art. A lot of people who are not used to go to museums, when facing a painting, they kind of expect you to explain it, and therefore they don't really look at it. On the other hand, there are those who look at it but that cling to what they are seeing (if they like it or not at first glance) and do not allow their experience to unfold into other forms. The major problem, in my opinion, has to do with ones relation to knowledge and to experience. Today, it seems so crucial for us to choose the experiences around us, as if we could "waste time" on things, as if to validate some things and not others. There is no such a hurry, really. I don't think it is about what we "feel", neither it is about what we know of art. Art is something to be talked about and so I think the greatest issue is to close the door on the next interpretation, whether it is your own change of heart or someone else's opinion.

It's not that there is a secret dimension to each artwork, a truth that is hidden and that can only be found in what the artist meant or how he mastered his technique. It's also not about despising such things and just "feeling feelings" about it. It's a conversation. Art does not exist in a vacuum.

Just a thought: Zizek says that it's not so much that we ought to know history to understand art, but that in order to understand history we ought to see what art each time was producing and I agree.

It's also worth mentioning that the word "Art" has a current meaning going on, but it is not only that. Some pieces you'll find in the museum will dialogue with western art history, but that's not always the case. I think it's important to understand that, for example, woodblock printing in Japan was more about selling souvenirs than creating "Art", in spite of the quality of the technique and in spite of the fact that we see it as art today. Not only artworks have changed, but their appreciation have changed as well in a retroactive way.

Go to the museum, get involved. Talk to art educators and guides at those places. See art in what's outside the museum too. Don't settle down.

I wish I could talk more about it and respond to you later on, but I'm going on a trip now. Happy 2018 Veeky Forums.

John Berger

Not OP, but thank you.

Seconding Gombrich's Story of Art. I have not read Arte Moderna but I will for sure check it out.

>woodblock printing in Japan was more about selling souvenirs than creating "Art", in spite of the quality of the technique and in spite of the fact that we see it as art today. Not only artworks have changed, but their appreciation have changed as well in a retroactive way.
Heidegger and Benjamin touch upon this, but I wouldn't recommend aesthetics as an enty point for appreciating art. It can definetly expand your point of view and change the way you look at art, but it is a very detached discipline. Sometimes it seems as if the artworks were only accessory for aesthetics.

First, go to a museum. Books won't help you that much if you can't find art to appreciate outside of them.

It must be good art if it's big!

Just understand that where classical art was oriented toward content, the great marker of art in modernity is reflection on its own medium, a consideration of its own conditions of possibility. This was perhaps one of the more valuable insights I gained from my survey course on German art.

>the great marker of art in modernity is reflection on its own medium
Honestly I thought that this was postmodernism. Can someone explain postmodern art to me?

A failure of communication is due to the artist and not the viewer.

If the art is too high-concept for most people too understand then the artist has failed at his work.

Danke. Any thoughts on the Annotated Mona Lisa?