How to Enjoy Art: A Guide for Everyone

By Ben Street

Book Overview

An entertaining and lively guide to rediscovering the pleasure in art

How to Enjoy Art: A Guide for Everyone provides the tools to understand and enjoy works of art. Debunking the pervasive idea that specialist knowledge is required to understand and appreciate art, instead How to Enjoy Art focuses on experience and pleasure, demonstrating how anyone can find value and enjoyment in art. Examples from around the world and throughout art history--from works by Fra Angelico and Berthe Morisot to Kazuo Shiraga and Kara Walker--are used to demonstrate how a handful of core strategies and skills can help enhance the experience of viewing art works. With these skills, anyone can encounter any work of art--regardless of media, artist or period--and find some resonance with their own experiences. How to Enjoy Art encourages us to rediscover the fundamental pleasure in viewing art.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300257627
• ISBN13: 9780300257625
• Release Date: October 2021
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

A guide for EVERYONE!

Street's book is really insightful. His approach to art appreciation is accessible, but his prose is beautiful. There are so many other factors that influence our ability to appreciate art than just subject matter or the artist's skill (though he does touch on those), but the art world and museum culture make the simple viewing of art seem like such a daunting task. Street's here to remind us of seemingly simple concepts like color and scale, and how the impression they leave is more than enough to view a work of art critically. I would highly HIGHLY recommend it to anyone at all interested in art, professionally or personally.