Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.

See What You're Missing

New Ways of Looking at the World Through Art

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Taking us into the minds of artists—from contemporary stars to old masters—See What You're Missing shows us how to look and experience the world with their heightened awareness.
Artists are expert lookers: they have learned to pay attention. The rest of us spend most of our time on autopilot, rushing from place to place, our overfamiliarity blinding us to the marvelous, life-affirming phenomena of our world. But that doesn't have to be the case.
In his inimitable engaging style, Will Gompertz takes us into the minds of artists—from contemporary stars to old masters, the well-known to the lesser-so, and from around the world—to show us how to look and experience the world with their heightened awareness.
In See What You're Missing we learn, for example, how Hasegawa Tohaku can help us to see beauty, how David Hockney helps us to see color, and how Frida Kahlo can help us see pain. In doing so we come to know the exhilarating feeling of being truly alive. See What You're Missing is at once entertaining and enlightening art history while delivering empowering new insights to its listener.
  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

  • Formats

  • Languages

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 20, 2023
      In this stimulating entry, Gompertz (What Are You Looking At?), the artistic director of London’s Barbican Centre, examines the ways artists use their powers of perception to “see the world afresh” and help others do the same. Nineteenth-century English landscape painter John Constable used an “empirical” attention to nature to paint meticulously detailed, six-foot-tall cloudscapes that let viewers “see what was in plain sight but routinely overlooked.” And after Frida Kahlo was injured in a streetcar accident at 18 that left her with lifelong health problems, she harnessed her pain in dramatic self portraits that “bar her soul with brushstrokes rather than a pen.” Meanwhile, after contemporary painter Jennifer Packer observed the conspicuous absence of Black people in paintings in contemporary museums, she took it as an “intellectual provocation” to weave a recurring theme of partial disappearance into her own work (she depicts figures that “fade in and out of view like a small boat on a high sea”). Gompertz combines accessible discussions of artistic technique with an appealing enthusiasm, rendering entries vivid and thought-provoking. Artists and art lovers alike will be delighted.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Former BBC art editor Will Gompertz examines a diverse selection of paintings and sculpture to explain aspects of the art that most people overlook. He says we get more from both art and life when we approach what we encounter more consciously and with more curiosity. This richly detailed art lesson is delivered by British narrator Matt Addis in a relaxed and highly inviting performance. With genuine wonder and a touch of irony, his friendly performance softens the formality we associate with British accents and esoteric subject matter like this. Using the author's priceless insights about art to enhance people's experience of life works well as a concept, and Addis's laid- back performance also makes it a fun listening experience. T.W. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

Languages

  • English

Loading
The Beehive Library Consortium is a consortium of member libraries and the Utah State Library Division.Funds for this program were made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Parents should be aware that children have access to all materials in the online library. The Beehive Library Consortium does not monitor or restrict your child's selections. It is your responsibility as a parent to be aware of what your child is checking out and viewing.