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How to Look at a Painting
Encompassing a review of important paintings worldwide—both classical and modern—this exploration assures that anyone can understand and admire art. The reader will find increased appreciation for paintings, greater knowledge of different artists, and improved confidence in this brilliant exposition of painting in all its forms. The keen art collector, serious student, and occasional gallery visitor can all benefit from this journey of exploration through the centuries and across the painted world. This enduringly popular guide was selected as the best art book of the year by national and international newspapers and magazines and awarded the 2006 Montana Book Award for Contemporary Culture.
- GenresArtNonfictionEssays
136 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
October 7, 2020
This little book by New Zealand art critic and curator Justin Paton is an excellent guide to critical thinking. It is easy to read, engaging and thought provoking at the same time. It has the ability to send you looking for some art works, whilst providing illustrations for a good few.
Paton begins by talking about the art room that used to exist in his parent’s house – the place where his grandmother’s self-taught daubs used to hang and where all the unwanted items used to end up. The conclusion he draws from this reminiscence is that what matters most is the art room in the mind, where you hang the paintings that change you. “Looking at paintings, then, is not a matter of finding something to impress the guests, or match the curtains or increase in value at 18 percent per annum, it’s a search for things worth hanging on the walls in your imagination.” So simple and so profound.
What I love most about this book are the snippets which make you think. For example “In life, looking is often a prelude to touching, and it is usually an unconscious compliment when someone reaches out to touch a painting.”
“In the flesh, a painting will always tell you things a photograph of it won’t. Has the paint been slabbed on like icing? Or soaked in, like dye? Does it absorb the light or bounce it back? Does it stop neatly where the canvass wraps around the stretcher, or has it drooled over the edge? What’s the painting’s attitude to its frame: does it occupy it neatly, or want out?”
“No paintings are harder to see for what they are than ‘great works’ that have been shrunk onto postcards, tea towels, shower curtains, jumbo pencils … Museums – once you’re through their gift shops – are places where we get to pull paintings back from the flat land of reproduction.” He goes on to talk about John Constable on his grandparents’ good place mats, how damp and dull these places were when marooned between the main and dessert. And how different the actual painting, when encountered in real life.
“A museum addresses an audience, and a painting addresses a person.”
The Las Vegas art historian Libby Lumpkin said that “the authority of a work of art resides in the richness and complexity of our responses to it.” And that is a perfect description of why art or literature is all about the viewer or the reader.
We go on to explore some of the people who engage with art. In the 1986 book The Art of the Novel, Czech novelist Milan Kundera coined a word for them: misomusists (miso = hate; muse = art). ‘To be without a feeling for art is no disaster,’ he wrote. ‘A person can live in peace without reading Proust or listening to Schubert. But the misomusist does not live in peace. He feels humiliated by the existence of something that is beyond him, and he hates it.’
Paton goes on to explain this concept further. “You don’t put a new CD on the stereo and sit grimly wondering what it means. Nor should paintings be subjected to this trial-by-interpretation. They’re to be experienced, explored and returned to over time, not solved and abandoned.”
A few pages later he explains how some people encounter a new painting. “Paintings are governed by what we could grandly call The Rule of the Third Impression. The first encounter with a painting establishes terms: What kind of work is this? What set of rules is it playing by? The second steadies or unsettles those terms: How are those rules opened out and adapted? How subtle, how distinctive, are its plays? By the third impression it’s usually clear whether the engagement is going to last: Does the painting have the necessary patience and stamina? Is there something in it that refuses to be explained away and keeps you coming back? Does it hold on to some of its secrets?”
“We gallery-goers can be arrayed between two extremes, according to the time we take. At one extreme are the Slowlys, lets call them. At the other, the Suddenlys.
The Suddenlys want an experience that’s total, instant – an epiphany that hits like a freight train. … The Slowlys, meanwhile, hold on to the view that art has to be waited on with patience and some cunning.”
Philosopher and art writer Richard Wollheim describes spending two hours in front of one painting, making the other gallery goers suspicious of him and the painting. International travellers and their already pulverised national currency will see two hours on one painting in one gallery in one city as simply a preposterous luxury.
“Is this where the long march of Isms has brought us: Impressionism, Surrealism, Minimalism, and now … Tourism? “
And a few pages later after noting several of the isms that dominated twentieth century art, Paton notes that there is no particular ism to hitch your wagon to any more. I wonder of someone will invent a new one at some point in the future to cover the current times.
I loved the irreverent one liner that sculpture is something you bump into when backing up to get a better look at a painting.
Towards the end of the book, Paton lists his favourite ten paintings. Almost all have a picture of the work in the central pages of illustrations, except for my favourite. I loved the story about Mathew Sawyer’s “Someone to Share My Life With” “…because sometimes a painting that disappears ends up staying in the mind longest. Late one night in 2002, artist Mathew Sawyer took the shoes from his neighbour’s front step, painted an exquisite bird (a swallow) on the sole of each, took a photo and then put them back. In the morning his neighbour laced on the shoes and walked out into the streets of London.”
Luckily a quick check on Google and I was able to source the photo that Sawyer took. It is a lovely story on many levels, not least of which being that the if it were a wet day the painting could be gone by the time the shies got home again. It was a story that set me off writing one of my own.
Paton begins by talking about the art room that used to exist in his parent’s house – the place where his grandmother’s self-taught daubs used to hang and where all the unwanted items used to end up. The conclusion he draws from this reminiscence is that what matters most is the art room in the mind, where you hang the paintings that change you. “Looking at paintings, then, is not a matter of finding something to impress the guests, or match the curtains or increase in value at 18 percent per annum, it’s a search for things worth hanging on the walls in your imagination.” So simple and so profound.
What I love most about this book are the snippets which make you think. For example “In life, looking is often a prelude to touching, and it is usually an unconscious compliment when someone reaches out to touch a painting.”
“In the flesh, a painting will always tell you things a photograph of it won’t. Has the paint been slabbed on like icing? Or soaked in, like dye? Does it absorb the light or bounce it back? Does it stop neatly where the canvass wraps around the stretcher, or has it drooled over the edge? What’s the painting’s attitude to its frame: does it occupy it neatly, or want out?”
“No paintings are harder to see for what they are than ‘great works’ that have been shrunk onto postcards, tea towels, shower curtains, jumbo pencils … Museums – once you’re through their gift shops – are places where we get to pull paintings back from the flat land of reproduction.” He goes on to talk about John Constable on his grandparents’ good place mats, how damp and dull these places were when marooned between the main and dessert. And how different the actual painting, when encountered in real life.
“A museum addresses an audience, and a painting addresses a person.”
The Las Vegas art historian Libby Lumpkin said that “the authority of a work of art resides in the richness and complexity of our responses to it.” And that is a perfect description of why art or literature is all about the viewer or the reader.
We go on to explore some of the people who engage with art. In the 1986 book The Art of the Novel, Czech novelist Milan Kundera coined a word for them: misomusists (miso = hate; muse = art). ‘To be without a feeling for art is no disaster,’ he wrote. ‘A person can live in peace without reading Proust or listening to Schubert. But the misomusist does not live in peace. He feels humiliated by the existence of something that is beyond him, and he hates it.’
Paton goes on to explain this concept further. “You don’t put a new CD on the stereo and sit grimly wondering what it means. Nor should paintings be subjected to this trial-by-interpretation. They’re to be experienced, explored and returned to over time, not solved and abandoned.”
A few pages later he explains how some people encounter a new painting. “Paintings are governed by what we could grandly call The Rule of the Third Impression. The first encounter with a painting establishes terms: What kind of work is this? What set of rules is it playing by? The second steadies or unsettles those terms: How are those rules opened out and adapted? How subtle, how distinctive, are its plays? By the third impression it’s usually clear whether the engagement is going to last: Does the painting have the necessary patience and stamina? Is there something in it that refuses to be explained away and keeps you coming back? Does it hold on to some of its secrets?”
“We gallery-goers can be arrayed between two extremes, according to the time we take. At one extreme are the Slowlys, lets call them. At the other, the Suddenlys.
The Suddenlys want an experience that’s total, instant – an epiphany that hits like a freight train. … The Slowlys, meanwhile, hold on to the view that art has to be waited on with patience and some cunning.”
Philosopher and art writer Richard Wollheim describes spending two hours in front of one painting, making the other gallery goers suspicious of him and the painting. International travellers and their already pulverised national currency will see two hours on one painting in one gallery in one city as simply a preposterous luxury.
“Is this where the long march of Isms has brought us: Impressionism, Surrealism, Minimalism, and now … Tourism? “
And a few pages later after noting several of the isms that dominated twentieth century art, Paton notes that there is no particular ism to hitch your wagon to any more. I wonder of someone will invent a new one at some point in the future to cover the current times.
I loved the irreverent one liner that sculpture is something you bump into when backing up to get a better look at a painting.
Towards the end of the book, Paton lists his favourite ten paintings. Almost all have a picture of the work in the central pages of illustrations, except for my favourite. I loved the story about Mathew Sawyer’s “Someone to Share My Life With” “…because sometimes a painting that disappears ends up staying in the mind longest. Late one night in 2002, artist Mathew Sawyer took the shoes from his neighbour’s front step, painted an exquisite bird (a swallow) on the sole of each, took a photo and then put them back. In the morning his neighbour laced on the shoes and walked out into the streets of London.”
Luckily a quick check on Google and I was able to source the photo that Sawyer took. It is a lovely story on many levels, not least of which being that the if it were a wet day the painting could be gone by the time the shies got home again. It was a story that set me off writing one of my own.
December 3, 2023
4.5 Stars!
It often seems that painting and snobbery are destined to go hand in hand forever locking out the masses and hiding beneath obscure jargon and secret codes, revelling in its smug superiority, but as Paton so simply points out, it really doesn’t have to be that way at all.
His refreshingly down to earth approach makes this a lot of fun to engage with. I was also pleasantly surprised to come across the full coloured reprints of the works discussed, which were actually of a decent quality too.
Clearly a lot of time, thought and effort has gone into this, and like many others, I’ve come across plenty of books which discuss art in non-pretentious terms whether it be John Berger, Alain de Botton or Grayson Perry, and this sits comfortably among the best of them. This is easily the most enjoyable of the titles I’ve read in the Ginger series so far.
It often seems that painting and snobbery are destined to go hand in hand forever locking out the masses and hiding beneath obscure jargon and secret codes, revelling in its smug superiority, but as Paton so simply points out, it really doesn’t have to be that way at all.
His refreshingly down to earth approach makes this a lot of fun to engage with. I was also pleasantly surprised to come across the full coloured reprints of the works discussed, which were actually of a decent quality too.
Clearly a lot of time, thought and effort has gone into this, and like many others, I’ve come across plenty of books which discuss art in non-pretentious terms whether it be John Berger, Alain de Botton or Grayson Perry, and this sits comfortably among the best of them. This is easily the most enjoyable of the titles I’ve read in the Ginger series so far.
February 26, 2008
Catching up on some books I bought during my last trip to New Zealand as I prep for my next trip to New Zealand in the coming weeks.
This is a 'beginner's' series specific to New Zealand (and w/o an offensive name, like 'Dummy's' or 'Idiot's' Guide). I'll make this brief and say that it definitely convinced me I should include Dunedin in this trip to include, while there, a trip to Dunedin's Art Gallery as part of my trip to the South Island.
This is a 'beginner's' series specific to New Zealand (and w/o an offensive name, like 'Dummy's' or 'Idiot's' Guide). I'll make this brief and say that it definitely convinced me I should include Dunedin in this trip to include, while there, a trip to Dunedin's Art Gallery as part of my trip to the South Island.
March 13, 2011
I was just rather startled to discover, setting up this review for Justin Paton's 'How to Look at a Painting', that I don't have a "shelf" for art - short stories, science, history, biography, fiction, yup - not not art.
This seems weird, given how much of a part art plays in my life. I live surrounded by it, to start with - the room I am writing this in has 20 pieces hanging on its walls, and another dozen at least loitering on shelves or leaning against things. I look at a lot of art - most weeks I'd see at least one, sometimes more shows. I blog about art - often, the art world and the way it works and the things it makes more than exhibitions or artworks. And every second week I do a small spot on National Radio talking about art.
And yet I don't read about art. I haven't bought an art book in - gods knows, a couple of years? I go to less and less floortalks and lectures. I read articles about the art world voraciously, but reviews more occasionally. I am less and less interested in what the art world has to tell me about artworks.
I am somewhat spoiled, of course. My husband is an art curator, and I have a Masters in art history (which has set me up with a very satisfying hobby thankyouverymuch). We make our own discourse. But art catalogues - no. Short of when I'm commissioned to write something, I steer clear of them.
This is because I think the vast majority of New Zealand art writing is shitty. It tends to be written for an inner circle - jargon and theorists' names are sprinkled throughout, smoke-signals to the like-minded. It also tends to be sloppily written and ill-edited, with bugger-all fact-checking. And most of all, it by and large ignores the needs and interests of the audience.
Paton's book is a welcome exception. I re-read it this weekend because this week on the radio I want to talk about the tv series of the same name that he is currently fronting (recorded two years ago, it's finally made it off the shelves and onto the air). It's an interesting experience, comparing the two - cracking open the book again to find entire paragraphs have been lifted as narration for the show is a little bit like going to study for an exam, and realising your lecturer has been reading verbatim from the textbook all semester.
I find the tv series a little silly - Paton is a smart guy, very good company, and has a definite way with words. In seeking to avoid the talking head in front of a painting scenario, the director goes for a lot of camera tricks, huge music (Zadok the Priest, a personal favourite, got a rather unnecessary blasting in the first episode), and some set-ups that a frankly a bit daft (Paton tucking into a bloody steak underneath a Seraphine Pick to drive the 'fleshy' nature of her painted surfaces home).
The book is a bit more nuanced. It's less a dummy's guide to looking at art than a cross between a memoir and a vade mecum; we learn about how Paton came to art, and we learn about how he looks at it. Paton's enthusiasm is palpable - he delights in painting, and wants to help us reach that delight to. He is an art writer in the poetic style:
What I have yet to figure out is whether Paton really believes that painting is a thing apart - that it can do things other art forms can't - or that the combination of its long history, ubiquity and familiarity made it a better topic for the commissioning editor than, say, sculpture, or art in general. As paintings move out of the frame and become three-dimensional or performance works, it becomes harder and harder to decide where to draw the line. If, that is, you feel one needs to be drawn.
What Paton obviously does believe is that in the image-soaked 21st century, where the role that painting once played as cultural memory, information transmitter and source of aesthetic, intellectual and erotic pleasure, is under threat from myriad forces (including big bad advertising), painting still deserves our time and attention. And at the end of that attentive time, we can decide if it deserves our respect, admiration - even love.
This seems weird, given how much of a part art plays in my life. I live surrounded by it, to start with - the room I am writing this in has 20 pieces hanging on its walls, and another dozen at least loitering on shelves or leaning against things. I look at a lot of art - most weeks I'd see at least one, sometimes more shows. I blog about art - often, the art world and the way it works and the things it makes more than exhibitions or artworks. And every second week I do a small spot on National Radio talking about art.
And yet I don't read about art. I haven't bought an art book in - gods knows, a couple of years? I go to less and less floortalks and lectures. I read articles about the art world voraciously, but reviews more occasionally. I am less and less interested in what the art world has to tell me about artworks.
I am somewhat spoiled, of course. My husband is an art curator, and I have a Masters in art history (which has set me up with a very satisfying hobby thankyouverymuch). We make our own discourse. But art catalogues - no. Short of when I'm commissioned to write something, I steer clear of them.
This is because I think the vast majority of New Zealand art writing is shitty. It tends to be written for an inner circle - jargon and theorists' names are sprinkled throughout, smoke-signals to the like-minded. It also tends to be sloppily written and ill-edited, with bugger-all fact-checking. And most of all, it by and large ignores the needs and interests of the audience.
Paton's book is a welcome exception. I re-read it this weekend because this week on the radio I want to talk about the tv series of the same name that he is currently fronting (recorded two years ago, it's finally made it off the shelves and onto the air). It's an interesting experience, comparing the two - cracking open the book again to find entire paragraphs have been lifted as narration for the show is a little bit like going to study for an exam, and realising your lecturer has been reading verbatim from the textbook all semester.
I find the tv series a little silly - Paton is a smart guy, very good company, and has a definite way with words. In seeking to avoid the talking head in front of a painting scenario, the director goes for a lot of camera tricks, huge music (Zadok the Priest, a personal favourite, got a rather unnecessary blasting in the first episode), and some set-ups that a frankly a bit daft (Paton tucking into a bloody steak underneath a Seraphine Pick to drive the 'fleshy' nature of her painted surfaces home).
The book is a bit more nuanced. It's less a dummy's guide to looking at art than a cross between a memoir and a vade mecum; we learn about how Paton came to art, and we learn about how he looks at it. Paton's enthusiasm is palpable - he delights in painting, and wants to help us reach that delight to. He is an art writer in the poetic style:
For a long time I harboured an irrational dislike for the landscape painter John Constable, based mostly on the fact that his paintings appeared on my grandparents’ “good” place mats. To a kid inside on a hot day, marooned between the main and the dessert, Constable’s rivers and hedgerows looked damp, boringly British, and disappointingly free of bandits. Years later I turned a corner in the National Gallery on London to encounter one of those paintings and nearly reeled back with its force: a terrific, seething, paint-heavy things – clouds like curds, peaty blacks, and a glitter hanging over it all.
What I have yet to figure out is whether Paton really believes that painting is a thing apart - that it can do things other art forms can't - or that the combination of its long history, ubiquity and familiarity made it a better topic for the commissioning editor than, say, sculpture, or art in general. As paintings move out of the frame and become three-dimensional or performance works, it becomes harder and harder to decide where to draw the line. If, that is, you feel one needs to be drawn.
What Paton obviously does believe is that in the image-soaked 21st century, where the role that painting once played as cultural memory, information transmitter and source of aesthetic, intellectual and erotic pleasure, is under threat from myriad forces (including big bad advertising), painting still deserves our time and attention. And at the end of that attentive time, we can decide if it deserves our respect, admiration - even love.
December 26, 2012
What are we doing when we look at art? What should we be doing? Read and find out! A great read.
August 17, 2020
Like all art forms our reaction to any of it is entirely subjective. You like it, you don't, you feel drawn to it but you can't explain why, it is mesmerising, it does nothing. In this gorgeous little treat of a book - A5 size, 125 pages, nicely printed, nice paper, and coloured glossy illustrations - one art writer/art curator has given us his views. Even he admits part way through that his favourite paintings at any one time may well be different from what they were a short time previously. And this may well be why looking at paintings, going to art galleries, standing around with people who give the illusion of being art experts is all such a negative experience - we are supposed to like or judge a work by what those around us think.
This book is completely without judgement, snobbery, pretence, arty-ness. Gently he takes us through the process of looking at a painting, not just glancing at it, but really looking at it - the texture, the elements that first catch the attention, perhaps starting from the left hand side of the painting, and following across, the sense of mystery or discovery that may be in the picture. He has included paintings in the illustrations to help us with this process. He talks about museums and art galleries that we all feel obligated to visit when we go to famous galleries, whereas in fact we really don't know what we should be looking at, while we are surrounded by many others who probably feel the same way. He trails around the art dealerships in Auckland, although this may be a bit out of date seeing the book was published in 2005, but it helps if you are looking at getting into purchasing art for your home or office. He writes about a huge painting by NZ art icon Colin McCahon, analysing its message and how McCahon has portrayed that message. I have never really got Colin McCahon's art, but I did learn from this, and will look at his works with a different eye, even if I still don't get it or like it! He lists his 10 favourite paintings and why they move him so much, and there is an extensive list of books about art at the end. Plus so much more.
I learnt so much about art appreciation from this little book, and it helps enormously that the author is a writer - not just an enthusiast or expert asked to write about his subject. The man knows how to communicate with the non-arty among us, not treating us like philistines or cultural retards; the result being that after reading this, you actually feel equipped to be able to look at art with a different type of eye.
This book is completely without judgement, snobbery, pretence, arty-ness. Gently he takes us through the process of looking at a painting, not just glancing at it, but really looking at it - the texture, the elements that first catch the attention, perhaps starting from the left hand side of the painting, and following across, the sense of mystery or discovery that may be in the picture. He has included paintings in the illustrations to help us with this process. He talks about museums and art galleries that we all feel obligated to visit when we go to famous galleries, whereas in fact we really don't know what we should be looking at, while we are surrounded by many others who probably feel the same way. He trails around the art dealerships in Auckland, although this may be a bit out of date seeing the book was published in 2005, but it helps if you are looking at getting into purchasing art for your home or office. He writes about a huge painting by NZ art icon Colin McCahon, analysing its message and how McCahon has portrayed that message. I have never really got Colin McCahon's art, but I did learn from this, and will look at his works with a different eye, even if I still don't get it or like it! He lists his 10 favourite paintings and why they move him so much, and there is an extensive list of books about art at the end. Plus so much more.
I learnt so much about art appreciation from this little book, and it helps enormously that the author is a writer - not just an enthusiast or expert asked to write about his subject. The man knows how to communicate with the non-arty among us, not treating us like philistines or cultural retards; the result being that after reading this, you actually feel equipped to be able to look at art with a different type of eye.
June 14, 2020
At once both reverent and iconoclastic, Justin Paton's book is a fun and illuminating read. His love of painting shines through on every page, and his enthusiasm took me along with him into this love of the painting and paintings. You don't have to be a complete newcomer to find it interesting and helpful - there will be something here for most amateur art-lovers: something that will deepen your appreciation of art and improve your enjoyment.
March 31, 2018
personal book about how to look and think about art. especially useful are sections on how to look at a painting (short but very insightful) and his top 10 list of paintings. chp 10&12
Read
November 20, 2019Good approach to art
January 23, 2022
A refreshing read through the critic's perspective of a wide range of art disciplines.
December 30, 2025
Seems even more relevant now than it was when it was written 20 years ago!
July 18, 2011
i didn't realise there were two versions of this book, hopefully it will be good.
Apparently it was the right book. It really is about how to look at a painting, there isn't a lot of technical stuff in here (light, colour, shapes etc), actually its more how to _think_ about a painting, like what is in it (or not) and why.
I went to an exhibition in the NewDowse art gallery the other day, which was an exhibition of Asian artists, and thought of this book while I was there. I'd love to go to an art gallery and stand in front of one painting and just _look_ at it for an hour (maybe talk to someone, one of my favorite memories is sitting on the floor of an art gallery with my sister, and looking at this huge painting for maybe 30-45 minutes, just seeing what we could get out of it).
So yeah, this is a good book if you want the basics of learning to think about paintings.
Apparently it was the right book. It really is about how to look at a painting, there isn't a lot of technical stuff in here (light, colour, shapes etc), actually its more how to _think_ about a painting, like what is in it (or not) and why.
I went to an exhibition in the NewDowse art gallery the other day, which was an exhibition of Asian artists, and thought of this book while I was there. I'd love to go to an art gallery and stand in front of one painting and just _look_ at it for an hour (maybe talk to someone, one of my favorite memories is sitting on the floor of an art gallery with my sister, and looking at this huge painting for maybe 30-45 minutes, just seeing what we could get out of it).
So yeah, this is a good book if you want the basics of learning to think about paintings.
March 13, 2016
I really enjoyed this book because it gave me an insight not art and the art world. Now in an art gallery I can engaged so much more and appreciate the art so much more. Not only did this book affect me in that regard it was also very ineteresting and intriguing. There was never a moment where nothing was happening.
February 4, 2013
Brilliant. If you've ever wanted to understand art but had to study other things you should read this book. So interesting! So readable!
May 24, 2014
I really liked his tv show. So I hope to like this.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews