The Sight of Death

The Sight of Death An Experiment in Art Writing

Hardback (23 Jun 2006)

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Publisher's Synopsis

Why do we find ourselves returning to certain pictures time and again? What is it we are looking for? How does our understanding of an image change over time? In his latest book T. J. Clark addresses these questions—and many more—in ways that steer art writing into new territory.

In early 2000 two extraordinary paintings by Poussin hung in the Getty Museum in a single room, Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake (National Gallery, London) and the Getty's own Landscape with a Calm. Clark found himself returning to the gallery to look at these paintings morning after morning, and almost involuntarily he began to record his shifting responses in a notebook. The result is a riveting analysis of the two landscapes and their different views of life and death, but more, a chronicle of an investigation into the very nature of visual complexity. Clark's meditations—sometimes directly personal, sometimes speaking to the wider politics of our present image-world—track the experience of viewing art through all its real-life twists and turns.

Book information

ISBN: 9780300117264
Publisher: Yale University Press
Imprint: Yale University Press
Pub date:
DEWEY: 759.4
DEWEY edition: 22
Number of pages: 260
Weight: 830g
Height: 210mm
Width: 150mm
Spine width: 25mm