Čtení obrazů

by Alberto Manguel, Marek Sečkař (translator)

Reading Pictures looks at the work of great artists–from the intensely familiar to the undiscovered–and examines the stories behind them, tracing the passage of life into art. Pablo Picasso torments his mistress Dora Maar and then paints brilliant studies of her grief-crumpled face; these evolve into the weeping woman in his great indictment of fascism, Guernica . Manguel untangles what this story, and countless others, shows us of our twin impulses toward creation and destruction. A tour of the psyche more than of the museum, this book dares to ponder, with contagious wonder, why we create.Not since John Berger’s influential Ways of Seeing has an essayist so eloquently examined what happens when we are moved by profound works of art and how we decode a wordless language that touches us so intimately. Richly illustrated, Reading Pictures shows us that there is no limit to the stories we may find if we look with care and delight.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Essays, History, Criticism, Literature

450 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2008

About the author

Alberto Manguel (born 1948 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (co-written with Gianni Guadalupi in 1980) and A History of Reading (1996) The Library at Night (2007) and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (2008), and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came (1991).

Manguel believes in the central importance of the book in societies of the written word where, in recent times, the intellectual act has lost most of its prestige. Libraries (the reservoirs of collective memory) should be our essential symbol, not banks. Humans can be defined as reading animals, come into the world to decipher it and themselves.

Reviews

[Argos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alberto Manguel yıllarca katmanlaşan bilgilerinin altında gittikçe dilini de eziyor, son yazdığı kitaplardan biri olan elimizdeki bu kitap tipik bir örnek. Akademik-popüler-yazın dilini bir arada ilgisiz yerlerde hamanlıyor bu ise okumayı zorlaştırıyor. Neyse ki Armağan Ekici’nin titiz çevirisiyle durum biraz kurtarılmış.

Manguel oniki ayrı bölümde verdiği örneklerle resim, heykel, fotoğraf, yapı gibi sanat eserlerini inceliyor, yorumluyor. Kitabın başlığı “Resimleri Okumak” fazla kapsayıcı geldi bana, Hepi-topu 12 örnek ile “Resimleri Okurken Düşündüklerimiz Neler Olabilir” daha açıklayıcı olurdu. Robert Campin, Lavinia Fontana, Philoksenos ve Aleijadinho’ya ait bölümler çok ilgi çekici geldi. İmgeleri “Manguelce” bakış ile hikayeleştiren A. Manguel incelikleri yakalamamızı sağlıyor.

Sanat ve sanat tarihi ile ilgilenen dostlara öneririm.

[Eylül Görmüş · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alberto Manguel külliyatı yolculuğum sürüyor, sondan bir önceki duraktayım, vay canına. Edebiyata dair denemeleriyle tanıdığımız yazar bu defa resim ve heykele dair denemeleriyle karşımızda. Ancak elbette ki edebiyata sıklıkla başvuruyor ve tıpkı bir kitabı okur gibi sanat eserlerini “okuyor” bu kitabında.

Genelde bir sanatçının spesifik birkaç eserine odaklandığı bölümlerin “idrak olarak imge”, “şiddet olarak imge”, “bilmece olarak imge” gibi alt başlıkları var. Kendine çizdiği bu çerçeve dahilinde eserleri anlamaya çalışıyor. Biraz kişisel olarak kendisindeki yansımasını aktarıyor, biraz da sanat tarihinde neye karşılık geldiğini, neyi değiştirdiğini anlatıyor.

Açıkçası büyük bir müzeyi kendisinin rehberliğinde gezmek gibi bir deneyimdi, ben çok zevk aldım. Son zamanlarda okuduğum Manguellerde biraz hayal kırıklığıma uğramıştım malum, tekrar barıştık diyebiliriz bu kitapla beraber. Yaptığı işin bildiğimiz sanat eseri okumalarından oldukça farklı ve özgün olduğunu söylemek lazım. Kendisinin ön sözdeki ifadelerini burada hatırlatmak iyi olabilir: “Bu kitabı yazmaya başladığımda, duygularımız hakkında yazacağımı, duygularımızın sanat eserlerini okumamızı nasıl etkilediği (ve okumamızın duygularımızı nasıl etkilediği) üzerine yazacağımı sanıyordum. Kendimi, hayal ettiğim bu hedefin çok, çok uzağında bir yerde bulmuş gibi görünüyorum. Ne yapalım, Laurence Sterne hem de ne güzel demişti: ‘Bu işin içinde kaderin bir parmağı olmalı: çünkü benim yola çıkıp da dosdoğru önceden tasarladığım yere gittiğim nadiren görülmüştür.’ Bir yazar (ve okur) olarak, inanıyorum ki, bu, her nasılsa, hayatım boyunca şiarım olmuş olsa gerek.”

Vardığın yeri çok sevdiğim valla ben sevgili Manguel. Hem bildiğim eserlere senin gözünle bakmaktan, hem bilmediğim türlü eseri öğrenmekten, hem de bildiğimi sandığım sanatçılar ve eserlerle ilgili yepyeni şeyler işitmekten (Picasso ve Caravaggio bölümleri özellikle) büyük memnuniyet duydum. 🤍

[Nadia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I will always rate anything Manguel writes 5 stars. He has the rare talent of being able to write about many things with great clarity, exhibiting his seemingly endless knowledge, while making you fascinated rather than overwhelmed. I walk away from every Manguel book not thinking "Wow, I feel stupid for not knowing any of this", but rather "Wow, I feel smarter for having read this." I didn't understand every reference, and I never will, but you don't have to get everything to appreciate it as a whole. This book is no different.

[Pat T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this installment of Manguel's essays on art and history. This book reads just like one of the curated video-lectures of National Gallery of London which I love watching and teaching. Least to say, I think Manguel's writing shines the brightest when he's analysing the Renaissance and pre-Modern Art with all of his fun anecdotes that he's uncovered. In this sense, I think his masterful point of view and the best of his writing is when he was analysing the Virgin and the Child painting. This being said, I don't think the architecture is Manguel's strong suit and I felt a bit disengaged towards the end of the book when he focused on the Colonial Baroque of Brazil and the philo-utopian French architecture. I really liked the discussion between art and memory and Manguel's arguments on the Holocaust memorials. And the ending got me right back in when we took a full dive into the theatrics of Caravaggio. I would love to come back to this book at a future time when I'm not as stressed. I am tempted to say that I loved 'Reading Pictures' more than 'Packing my Library', but they're both great and I would be comparing an apple pie to an apple strudel if I made that unforgivable blunder.

[sevdah]

A history of art. A maddening collection of essays so rich in detail and literature they are almost difficult to read, but Manguel writes with so much care about things he loves that they can't feel heavy. Absolutely great, most of them.

[Micha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just really get along with Manguel's approach to writing and thinking about beautiful creations. I feel highly simpatico with the way he connects diverse concepts, seeking out that secret and invisible thread that binds them. I enjoyed The Library at Night so much that I purchased myself a copy when I came across an affordable one. I found this book on the Book Swap cart outside of our graduate library and once I picked it up and started paging through, seeing these beautiful colour images scattered throughout, there was no question that I'd be taking it home. Once I read the epigraphs, there was no question that I was keeping it.

Manguel is very fluent in the Western canon, which white male writers and artists obviously dominate. It's a reference-rich language that I understand. I know the personas and I know the shorthand, but I also know who is left out by it. It's why I was so glad to see Manguel highlight so many female artists from the present and the past, and I was also excited to see how often Canadian artists and galleries were mentioned. Manguel is a man with many national affiliations, Canada among them, but it's nice to see us accounted for in a book with a broad scope like this one.

The essays are thought-provoking, the subjects of analysis always interesting, and the writing style quite accessible. I've got to read his A History of Reading next, not to mention The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: The Newly Updated and Expanded Classic. I'm just enchanted.

[Abroerman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Understand what this book is before reading.

I went in expecting some kind of methodology to reading art that could be carried over to new pieces and mediums--of course, such a thing is, by the nature of art, virtually impossible (or if it is, it's worthless without data to fill in such a framework).

Recognizing this, Manguel's book is a series of case studies of Western art and architecture, and, if you're into that, each one is utterly fascinating. Christian symbology abounds (to suggest it should be otherwise is to ignore the impact of Christianity on Western art). All these caveats aside, this is highly enjoyable reading and Manguel is fantastic at managing and presenting the staggering amounts of relevant data for each piece.

[Mintaka Amaranta · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book first in French to improve my language skills, thinking that If I read someone I love I can keep going. and indeed, even though the languge was above my level, it did help improve both my comprehension skills and knowledge of the things of art.

When I first bought the book I was expecting something more about painting, drawings etc. As I am not a native speaker of English, first thing comes to my mind is something along the lines of a painting, photograhps..

I was so happ to see chapters about theatre and architecture.

Hopefully one day, a Turkish translation will come out, this one should be translate it and be appreciated by wider audience.

[Sophy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining read in the rambling yet conversational style of Manguel on the human fascination with art in whichever guise it may appear.

This book is littered with quality colour photographs of works of art that have provoked meaning and reaction over the millennia.

Manguel opens up a dialogue about story in pictorial form and how it has influenced humans.

A thought provoking and interesting read.

[Ben bi kitap okudum]

Kelime dağarcığı gibi görsel bir dağarcığımız da var. Şimdiye kadar gördüklerimizin çeşitliliği, bunlara dair meraklarımız, meraklarımızın bizi götürdüğü yerde edindiğimiz bilgiler dünyayı görüşümüzü ve algılayışımızı etkiliyor. Bir görsel sanat eserinin karşısına geçtiğimizde onunla ilgili çıkarım yapmakta zorlanıyorsak kullanabileceğimiz bazı teknikler var.
Alberto Manguel, kendisi bir eserin karşısına geçtiğinde onu değerlendirirken nasıl süreçler izlediğini belli eserler üzerinden paylaşmış. Benim anladığım kadarıyla izlediği teknikler kabaca şöyle:
İlk başvurabileceğimiz yöntemlerden biri yazarın biyografisini okumak. Hayatının hangi aşamasındaymış, hangi akımla beraber anılırmış, takıldığı diğer sanatçılar kimlermiş. Yazarla elde ettiğimiz yakınlık, eserle ilgili çıkarım yaratmamıza destek olabilir.
İkinci yöntem, eğer varsa kullanılan imge ve sembolleri anlamlandırmaya çalışmak olabilir. Hem bize ne hatırlattığı hem toplumsal hafızadaki yeri üzerine düşünebiliriz. Kullanılan renk ve dokular da bu kategoride değerlendirilebilir.
Son olarak da eserde sizi huzursuz eden, rahatsız hissettiren bir öge varsa bunun üzerine eğilebilirsiniz. Rahatsız olmanız eseri anlamadığınız anlamına gelmez; belki de bu tekinsizlik hissi kurgulanmıştır.

[Ricardo Baptista · Rating 4 out of 5]

Estava à procura de um guia para a leitura de imagens - interessa-me particularmente por causa da banda desenhada.
Não foi o que encontrei. Manguel diz-se leigo mas a forma como aborda cada um dos artistas escolhidos é multidimensional e fascinante.

[Gregor Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy bueno,aunque esperaba mas

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

"But in the very beginning, there was nothing but the picture itself. That fixed point in space is where we start." (p.12)

"And since they cared nothing for the works of humankind and everything for financial profit and the encouragement of greed, Ruskin told them that they had become creatures who ‘despise compassion,’ dullards incapable of caring for other human beings. Since they were unable to read the images art had to offer them, he accused his contemporaries of being morally illiterate as well. Ruskin had high hopes for the uses of art." (p.17)

"Pollack and his colleagues found in these techniques a solution to their dilemma: how to respond emotionally to the world, not to copy of improve it, or to communicate anything about it, but purely to share its creative impulse, bringing artist and viewer into the painting itself." (p.26)

"Between the idea/ And the reality/ Between the motion/ And the act." (quoting T.S. Eliot, p.31)

"Painted and not empty, painted is the house,/ The colour of all great passions and misfortunes." (quoting Miguel Hernandez, p.31)

"‘I cannot, as you once proposed to me- ‘solve the problem of life by losing myself in the problem of art.’ In my case, life is always struggling to predominate and art naturally suffers.’ Eerily echoing Oscar Wilde’s tragic dictum that he had put his talent in his work but his genius in his life, she concluded: ‘I have put too much art in my life…and consequently I have not much left to give to art.’" (quoting Tina Modotti, p.77)

"Sister, a world advances to the place you are going, /The songs from your mouth spring forward every day/ From the mouths of the wonderful people you loved./ Your heart was brave." (quoting Pablo Neruda, p.85)

"The freak need not hide, the social being need not pretend, lit side and dark side can both be lived out in the open." (p.116)

"Throughout his life, Picasso kept odds and ends like a miser: pencil stubs, boxes, bits of metal and wood…He was a paradox: a clearly evolving artist for whom time stood still. Picasso advanced in one same, fixed place." (p.181)

"Curiously, for someone who so forcefully depicted suffering, Picasso lacked all understanding of what a sufferer requires: the presence of another human being capable of recognizing the pain and of lending an ear and a shoulder, not merely a talented eye." (p.194)

"Stones are neutral; they belong to a place where they are set up; from quietly becoming a monument they return quietly to being merely stones; their construction barely requires a human gesture. This essential simplicity allows for a vaster resonance, the simple monstrosity of one man’s death brought to mind by the simple piling up of a handful of stones." (p.251)

"How can we find something to represent the memory of evil- evil without purpose, without reason, without boundaries? How can we contain in the framework of a work of art a representation of something that, in its very essence, refuses to be contained?" (p.254)

"We live with the illusion of being creatures of action; it may be wiser to consider ourselves, as the Hindu philosophy of Samkhya suggests, spectators of an eternal display of images." (p.291)

[Guilherme Smee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ao propor a leitura de imagens o escritor argentino Alberto Manguel não propõe a análise apenas das suas mensagens explícitas ou implícitas, nem mesmo das suas mensagens simbólicas ou subconscientes, ele traz uma visão histórico-cultural de cada tipo de representação. Para além de tipos de imagens como o autorretrato, a escultura, a arquitetura, o desenho, ele cria ambientes para elas, como o reflexo, o pesadelo, a violência... Assim, a partir de um produtor artístico traçar correlações histórico-culturais entre estas temáticas e formas de expressão. Além disso, o primeiro capítulo que aborda o espectador comum é bastante válido para os estudiosos da imagem, seja ela cinemática ou estática, pois aborda o fator da recepção das mesmas. Um livro fluido e que enche o leitor de conhecimentos e vontades de conhecer mais sobre o universo imagético.

[Rosie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating romp through the meaning of art by way of profiles of 11 artists (most not very well known, at least to me). Manguel takes on the image as story, as absence, as riddle, as witness, as understanding, as nightmare, as reflection, as violence, as subversion, as philosophy, as memory, and (with Caravaggio) as theatre. Manguel's command of the English language, for someone to whom it is not native, is phenomenal, as is the breadth of his knowledge. This book is something akin to James Burke's Connections but with its main focus being art.

[Chazzbot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Manguel explores several mediums and genres within the visual arts--abstract expressionism, architecture, sculpture, photography--and, using a single artist's work as a starting point, develops essays that explore the literary, historical, and artistic significance of the form. Manguel's style, though intellectual, never fails to be approachable and engaging. As someone with little formal background in art history, I found Manguel's essays informative and compelling, and amazingly rich with allusions and references. There is much to explore here.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll admit that I was one of those people that considered art pretty boring, but after reading this book I developed a new found interest. Manguel teaches that pictures are really another way to tell a story and this book has plenty of good examples of how it does that. Unfortunately I found this book less easy to read than others Manguel has written (History of Reading was outstanding) but I still got a lot out of it. Certainly it has enriched my appreciation and enjoyment of visiting museums and galleries.

[Sevim Tezel Aydın · Rating 3 out of 5]

Çok sevdiğim Alberto Manguel bu sefer kitapları değil, Batı kültüründen görsel sanat örneklerini okumuş… Resim, heykel, mimariden örneklerle imgeleri, bunların arkasındaki hikayeleri ve çağrıştırdıklarını anlatmış… Keyifli ve zengin bir okuma oldu, Manguel bana yine bilmediğim şeyler öğretti, bildiklerime farklı bir gözle bakmamı sağladı… Kitapla ilgili tek şikayetim görseller, muhtemelen fiyat artacağı için renkli değil siyah-beyaz basılmışlar.

[jennifer]

also from bookhaven. i was sold by the piece on campin's 'merode alterpiece' (which you can see at the cloisters in new york if you haven't before) and the opening full-page reprint of campin's 'virgin and child before a firescreen' from the national gallery london, which is one of the only paintings that makes me start to cry when i see it.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of his examples were completely fascinating, while others seemed like basics from an Art History class. Worth reading for the good parts due to some of his impressive examples. Found myself quickly leafing through many of the chapters until something struck my attention. Art History was my major, so maybe better-appreciated by one who hasn't already been exposed to a lot of it.

[Hayri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harika bir kitabı mükemmele yakın bir çeviriyle okumak iyi geldi doğrusu. Resimleri ya da daha geniş bir ifadeyle imgeleri nasıl okumak gerekir? Bu kitap size yardımcı olabilir. Tüm dönem resimlerini açıklamak gibi bir amacı yok; fakat temel ilkeleri örnekler üzerinden anlatması farklı bir bakış açısı kazanmamızda faydalı olacaktır.

[Sümeyye Yıldız]

"Önce bul, sonra ara."
Resimleri Okumak, Manguel'in kitaplardan sonra özellikle plastik sanatlar üzerine okumalarından oluşuyor. Giriş epigrafları ve görselleriyle bölümlere giriş yapıyor. Her bir bölüm bir imge anlatısına ayrılmış. Özel detaylar, çağrışımlar ve yorumlarla etkileyici bir metin okuyoruz.

[reading is my hustle · Rating 3 out of 5]

What do you think about when you stand in front a work of art?

[Raúl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una serie de lecturas muy personales, dispersas, y que apuntan al lugar de la cultura y la intratextualidad en esa subjetividad que lee imágenes.

[Pedro Gomes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Manguel portrays art in a very elegant manner. This book is a delight.

[João Cruz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alberto Manguel é um excelente contador de histórias, mas não fiquei encantado pela sua faceta de interpretador de imagens.

[Andrés · Rating 2 out of 5]

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Tampoco dice nada nuevo