Free Download Always Looking: Essays on Art, by John Updike

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Always Looking: Essays on Art, by John Updike

Free Download Always Looking: Essays on Art, by John Updike

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From Booklist

In the third volume of his Looking series of art-essay collections, following Just Looking (1989) and Still Looking (2005), and published posthumously, Updike expands on his articulation of the complex pleasures of intense scrutiny. He is sensuously receptive and discerningly critical as he peers closely and steps back for a more encompassing gaze to assess how each artist brings paint to life. Most of the essays are scintillating and learned biographical and aesthetic responses to major museum exhibits of such artists as Édouard Vuillard, René Magritte, Max Beckmann, Joan Miró, and Richard Serra. But in “The Clarity of Things,” his 2008 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities, Updike discusses Picturing America—a set of 40 reproductions created by the American Library Association and the National Endowment for the Humanities for use in schools and libraries, taking fresh approaches to Gilbert Stuart, Winslow Homer, and Norman Rockwell and posing and answering the question, “What is American about American art?” For all their immediacy, Updike’s vital works of art criticism are timeless. --Donna Seaman

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About the Author

John Updike was the author of more than sixty books, including twenty-three novels and dozens of collections of short stories, poems, and criticism. His work has been honored with the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Gold Medal for Fiction of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in January 2009.   Christopher Carduff is a member of the staff of The Library of America and the editor of John Updike’s Higher Gossip: Essays and Criticism.

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Product details

Hardcover: 224 pages

Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition edition (November 27, 2012)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 9780307957306

ISBN-13: 978-0307957306

ASIN: 0307957306

Product Dimensions:

8.3 x 0.8 x 10.3 inches

Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.3 out of 5 stars

15 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#792,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Arguably America's last great man of letters, the late John Updike's interests ranged from art, to literature, children's books, and occasionally to golf. With the exception of literature, in which he wrote from the perspective of a foremost practitioner, he was, as he admits himself, more of a well-informed dabbler. Therein lies the charm of this book, capturing his observations on art by collecting various pieces he wrote, primarily for the NYRB, New Republic, and for honorary lectures. They are not the observations of an "art critic" per se, but of a professed non-expert (like most of us), who was at the same time, one of the most profoundly literate, and intelligent men of his era. In short, he approached art in the way most of us do, as an amateur, yet with far greater artistic gifts and sensibilities than certainly I, and probably most people, could ever dream of. Thus, I found his observation to be so helpful to me -- like, "yes, that is exactly the same question I had, and, of course, that is exactly what I was sorta' thinking, but couldn't quite get too." In short, I enjoyed lingering on every page of this book, with its lovely reproductions of the art Updike is describing (I only wish that more of the painting/art were actually pictured), and of course, the mind of John Updike himself, who loved art, and who took time from his too short, but marvelously productive literary life to explain art to those of us who shared his passion for it, using the full range of his immense intellectual and humanistic gifts.

the chronological arrangement of some of john updike’s essays on art collected here, offers an unexpected historical glance at american portraiture, severed by the shift in interest toward european art of the 19th century. the lost thread of portraiture, found again, when interest in art on the american shores reclaimed our national interest, as a form of branding and commercialism, has us, for the moment, looking at kehinde wiley’s near scandalous portrait of our forty fourth president.updike begins with copley, who, painting before we had presidents and gave us instead a patriot, a portrait of paul revere. then came presidents and gilbert stuart, who painted portraits of four of them. his first, our first, washington, ‘a difficult sitter’, described by updike as ‘our first supermodel’.this book is also an encapsulated history of early america through art, and of biographical sketches of our first artists, and of art collectors in the united states, represented in the collection by the clark brothers, co-heirs to the singer fortune—the canvases and statuary of european impressionism collected by them, our transition, segueing to european art. the essays on monet, degas, vuillard, klimt, and miro, magritte, called by updike, the great, and their triumphant march to our palaces of art lining upper fifth avenue and elsewhere throughout our land, speak to our national dearth.american art, what had become of it? from within these pages, the perspective is gloomy. the three essays which close the book return to the american shore, picking up, more than a century later, as late as 1975. since then, we have seen the collector of european art and the american art museums to exhibit european art.in A Case of Monumentality, the case is made for pop art and, referencing the work of the american artists, claes oldenburg, his ‘…plastic hamburgers, giant typewriter erasers and baseball caps…that beckons us into the mute, inhuman world of artifacts …of human manufacture …Jasper Johns dignified flags and beer cans… Roy Lichenstein … There was a joy of reclamation in Pop Art…after the monkish austerities and tragic mood of action painting (mentioned in the briefest essay in this book ). Nothing was too lowly to notice—bottle caps, dollar bills, junk food, crushed cars—and to elevate into the museum of the cherishable.’it’s in his essay on a roy lichenstein retrospective at the guggeheim that updike, the observer, ceasing to be fixed before a wall, becomes mobile, a figure of action,: ‘A queit sign beckoned me yet upward’ unaware he had begun his looking from the wrong end, he ‘plunged impatiently on the smooth slope downward in search of the comic-strip enlargements that are Lichenstein’s deathless contributon to contemporary art.’ here updike’s looking and remarks contain the contents of the museum and the enclosing edifice, the museum itself.the final essay is Serra’s Triumph, the work of the arrogant sculpture, richard serra. serra’s art are monumental slabs of metal faces bent in foundries and dropped on cityscapes as impositions to daily activities an art form of boundaries and mazes discomforting and unsettling to the human perspective, as though our landscape and museum space are dumping grounds for industrial junk.if the conclusion of our history of art in the america as presented in this arrangement is too bleak, i suggest one follow the beckon of updike’s words and wind one’s way back through the mazes of iron mongers and the architectural inclines of ascendency and descendency, back to the essay on magritte the great. hear him, updike: Out of anxiety, uncertainty, and awareness of nothingness, he had generated images that that, recurrently explored, acquired a resonant somethingness, an enduring truth.’ images on canvases.back to kehinde wiley. it is with magritte’s Waterfall, a painting of forest of trees on an easel in a cascade of leaves that in the wasteland of american art we glimpse the forests and the leaves. kehinde wiley, influenced by rene magritte, while within the tradition of stuart, situates our forty-forth president in the space of magritte’s canvas on an easel framed within his frame, continuing our american art with european influence of portraiture and landscape. and I’ve little doubt, john updike, who never stopped looking, would also have seen matters this way.

Here Updike defines his back-ground by a point of view of art. First we can learn the characteristics of important painters of landscapes, or of human faces of great personalities. Those aspects run with a certain interest by the lector, but, when Updike passes to consider the great painters of our times, the context becomes of true importance. In fact the author is so able to make an approach between art, phylosophy and literature, producing connections between several aspects of the modern culture. We know sufficiently the role of Updike as teacher of the word, here we can see the same fact about the image: therefore a great interpreter of the modernity. A great lesson which today is still unease to forget.

Only a few people can use words to help one see. Sometimes art writers use words are used to impress each other I fear. . Clarity abounds in this celebrated authors insights. Who knew he was an art groupie?

I enjoyed this, the third in a series of essay on art. I only wish the illustrations could have been larger to enable the reader to fully appreciate Updike's critiques.

We have all of his books of essays on art for a good reason. He's writes beautifully and knows his subject.

I love this book. Pictures and comments are great.

Updike researched the art and the artists to give a rich, thoughtful commentary on a number of art shows. He took art seriously.

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