Looking at the Overlooked: Four Essays on Still Life Painting (Essays in Art and Culture (Reaktion Books))

I liked this book of four essays. It is very well written. The author gives thoughtful explanations on several types of still life from low to high and also provides historical context as well as a bit of literary criticism. I am a museum docent, and I refer to this book over and over especially when i am preparing to give a still life tour. Perhaps it is because I am drawn to still life paintings, but it never gets tiring, and I am given fresh eyes to appreciate this genre. Although, I will say that the book is limited to the western canon up to perhaps the 20th century.

Disliked the nerd approach to art. That is the sum total of my rating on this book.

I used this as the basis for an hour tour at a major encyclopedic museum. Great read.

I was looking for something that would take me on a musing tour through various paintings. Too technical and analytical for my reading needs. Maybe more insight into the writers intention needs to be part of the adverts.

If you're wavering on your decision to purchase this work, just go for it. I took a seminar from Professor Bryson one semester, and let me tell you, this man simply exists on a whole different intellectual level. He constantly confronts and re-perceives art and artistic theory, pushing your mind to process visual information in radically different ways.

There is not much literature available on the subject of still life painting that goes beyond the obvious surface information. This is the first review of the history of still life painting which reexamines the human implications of different still life ideas throughout history. The four essays are in depth explorations of the challenging questions asked by seemingly ordinary subject matter and the formal ways in which artists engage these concepts. I wish I would have known about this book years ago.

In many american universities there is a sharp division between the classic art historians and the linguistics-inclined post modernists. Bryson's range encompasses both.

This is a very good book about still life painting. It's an academic text analysing an genre of painting that weirdly gets far less attention than it should.I'm an artist and found it excellent with lots of salient insights. It's not lightweight but definitely worth it 👍

If you have any interest in still life I would suggest that this book is an absolute must , it covers the subject with such depth and insight that it must be considered a seminal work in the study of genre .

Still life inspiration

The tome makes for heavy reading where the concepts becomes ever lost by the over use of verbiage. Not a volume to be digested easily.

è un libro raro, l'ho cercato in ogni dove senza molto successo. Nella maggior parte delle biblioteche quando è presente a catalogo poi è comunque in consultazione interna. Il fatto che fosse disponibile in ebook mi ha salvato la vita! Grazie mille