Still Looking: Essays on American Art

By John Updike

Book Overview

From a master of American letters and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series comes a richly illustrated book of eighteen insightful essays about American art, written while he was the art critic at The New York Review of Books.

"Remarkably elegant little essays, dense in thought and perception but offhandedly casual in style. Their brevity makes more acute the sense of regret one feels to see them end." --Newsday

When, in 1989, a collection of John Updike's writings on art appeared under the title Just Looking, a reviewer in the San Francisco Chronicle commented, "He refreshes for us the sense of prose opportunity that makes art a sustaining subject to people who write about it." In the sixteen years since Just Looking was published, he continued to serve as an art critic, mostly for The New York Review of Books, and from fifty or so articles has selected, for this book, eighteen that deal with American art.

After beginning with early American portraits, landscapes, and the transatlantic career of John Singleton Copley, Still Looking then considers the curious case of Martin Johnson Heade and extols two late-nineteenth-century masters, Winslow Homer and Thomas Eakins. Next, it discusses the eccentric pre-moderns James McNeill Whistler and Albert Pinkham Ryder, the competing American Impressionists and Realists in the early twentieth century, and such now-historic avant-garde figures as Alfred Stieglitz, Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, and Elie Nadelman. Two appreciations of Edward Hopper and appraisals of Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol round out the volume.

America speaks through its artists. As Updike states in his introduction, "The dots can be connected from Copley to Pollock: the same tense engagement with materials, the same demand for a morality of representation, can be discerned in both."

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400044189
• ISBN13: 9781400044184
• Release Date: November 2005
• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 2.49 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.2" x 10.4"

Customer Reviews

An art critic's prime articles on American art

In 1989 a collection of John Updike's writings on art appeared under the title JUST LOOKING, providing a refreshingly different viewpoint on the art world: in the last sixteen years he's continued his career as an art critic and has selected eighteen prime articles on American art for this edition. From eccentric artists and unusual American art history influences to portraits of historic figures, Updike's literary and historical review touches upon a range of mediums, artists, and emotional and spiritual influences, making STILL LOOKING: ESSAYS ON AMERICAN ART a vivid, lively consideration.

Excellent Sampler of American Art History

John Updike is a prize-winning novelist, but he was also trained in fine art and has written a number of gallery show reviews, especially for the New York Review of Books. His reviews are always interesting and point out many aspects of the artist's work being shown. "Still Looking: Essays on American Art" is a collection of his reviews and that collection is quite eclectic, covering such artists as Whistler, Copley, Ryder, Eakins, Homer, Hopper, Nadelman, Dove, Hassam, Pollack and Hartley, as well as the photographer Stieglitz and two theme reviews on storms and landscapes in his eighteen chapters. While all of his highlighted artists are male, he has good things to say about Mary Cassatt (p. 118) and he does reproduce two of O'Keeffe's watercolors (p. 142) and one of her oils (p. 143). I think his relative lack of female artists in this volume may have more to do with the shows he reviewed for the various publications than any especially strong male bias. That said, this book is magnificent! The articles are well done and the art work is reproduced in vibrant color. I found a number of works I had never seen as well as "discovering" several artists that were essentially new to me, and was fascinated by the depth of the art produced by them. If you want to begin to learn about American artists, this collection of reviews is a very good place to start.

Insightful prose, insightful images

Updike makes for a keen and amiable exhibition companion in this collection of essays on American art, and there's little I can add to the positive editorial reviews. The illustrations, however, deserve note: they are extraordinarily sharp, despite their size. As one example on p. 50, the lightning bolt in Heade's "Approaching Thunderstorm" (1859) razors down on the left side of the canvas--a detail I have never seen captured in any other book, including those devoted to Heade and containing much larger reproductions of this memorable work. The publisher's technical staff deserve credit and the appreciation of art lovers who, for this reason, will enjoy Updike's guided tours even more.

Well Worth a Look

An enjoyable and elegant book of short essays on several American artists from a rightfully esteemed writer, John Updike. He draws his thoughts from visits to special museum exhibits on selected works by these painters, one photographer (Stieglitz) and one sculptor (Nadelman). Some paintings that I have previously seen and enjoyed now have greater meaning to me due to the insights conveyed by Mr. Updike on the life and work of the responsible artist. Two good examples being the art of Childe Hassam and that of Edward Hopper. Non-experts (like me) will be induced to go beyond this survey and more deeply explore the full range of work of some, if not all, of Mr. Updike's featured artists.

An Artist of Words Writes About Artists of Image

Though not widely known, brilliant American novelist John Updike has a life passion for the art of painting, even to the point of studying the making of art at the Ruskin School of Fine Art in England. It is this preoccupation with simply looking at art, especially American art, throughout his life that makes this short collection of essays so intriguing and so alive with the words of a writer instead of those of a scholar or critic. Some of these essays reference his published essays or art reviews from earlier years ('Just Looking') while the bulk of this book is composed of his very well observed paintings by his favorite artists and art topics: the study of the development of landscape in American painting, the comparison of Albert Pinkham Ryder with Jackson Pollock ('Americans, with their basically millennial expectations, admire holy fools, especially in the arts, and Ryder is our holy fool of painting'), his evaluations of Winslow Homer ('With Homer we feel no waste...He beautifully exploited his talent and his days...'), Thomas Eakins, Edward Hopper (his favorite American painter), Whistler, Childe Hassam, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz, Arthur Dove, and Andy Warhol. He rages against the period of Abstract Expressionism (!), comparing it to the parallel in American thought processes and mental needs of the time. Where Updike differs from other commentators on art is in his degree of passion. His obsession with painting informs all of his writing and while some of the essays go on a bit too long, they are never less than wholly felt. This book can be read as an Updike digression, as a scintillating book of art criticism, or as a look at American art history from the stance of a novelist. Whatever approach appeals to the reader, this is a fine, well written, and exceedingly entertaining book. Recommended. Grady Harp, November 05