How to Read Art: A Crash Course in Understanding and Interpreting Paintings

by Liz Rideal

This charmingly illustrated, highly informative field guide to understanding art history is small enough to fit in a pocket yet serious enough to provide real answers. This seventh entry in the hugely popular How to Read series is a one-stop guide to understanding the world’s great artworks. The book explains the aesthetics of schools of painting from the Renaissance masters and Impressionists to the Cubists and Modernists. It enables readers to develop swiftly an understanding of the vocabulary of painting and to discover how to look at diverse paintings in detail.In the first part of the book, the author reveals how to read paintings by considering five key shape and support, style and medium, compositional devices, genre, and the meaning of recurring motifs and symbols. The second part explores fifty paintings through extracted details, accompanied by insightful commentary, training the reader and viewer to understand context and discover meaning within art. How to Read Art is the perfect companion for anyone interested in paintings and a book that no art lover’s home should be without.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 2015

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a quick read but a thought provoker. It is a great introduction about how to look at art. I was amazed at what all can be seen when you really look at the details of a painting. Much more than a quick overall assessment gives. Much appreciation gained for the artists and their work.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

My only problem with this book is how small the pictures are! But I suppose for something that's meant to be kind of a pocket introduction to analysing art, that's a necessary sacrifice.

[Jack Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, if you shine a light on the book, the paintings become alive. Simple explanations. But I do wish the pictures were bigger and the book could be bigger.

[Sangeetha · Rating 3 out of 5]

We're reading "Sirens & Muses" for book club, which is about these budding artists at school who primarily paint. There's a lot of hyperspecific language in the text, so I wanted to check out this pocket guide my roommate has to understand their world better. This guide is structured into two parts: "the grammar of paintings" and then a "review of 50 paintings". I appreciated that like how a song has a tempo, a key, a rhythm, a melody, there are similar structural qualities to a painting. And when you break those down, you can uncover the intent and message behind the work. The section with the paintings included several famous works from different time periods, but it only vaguely touches on the aesthetic or cultural differences of those times. It would have been nice to have a timeline breaking down the periods and movements. I hope that by reading this, I'll be able to better communicate about art, instead of just flippantly saying whether or not I like it.

[Talal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy, specific, and guides you how to approach interpretation of art

[Troy Farlow]

Art. Book about art. Can’t be bad!

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I'd read this book before going to the Louvre

[Santine Shan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book. Just want to get closer with artistic stuff. A helpful guide for how to understand a painting.

[Bhan13 · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was vague and didn't provide much information, interpretation or analysis of the paintings.