{"product_id":"9780307957306","title":"Always Looking: Essays on Art","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this posthumous collection of John Updike’s art writings, a companion volume to the acclaimed \u003ci\u003eJust Looking \u003c\/i\u003e(1989) and \u003ci\u003eStill Looking\u003c\/i\u003e (2005), readers are again treated to “remarkably elegant essays” (\u003ci\u003eNewsday\u003c\/i\u003e) in which “the psychological concerns of the novelist drive the eye from work to work until a deep understanding of the art emerges” (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e). \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003ci\u003e Always Looking \u003c\/i\u003eopens with “The Clarity of Things,” the Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities for 2008. Here, in looking closely at individual works by Copley, Homer, Eakins, Norman Rockwell, and others, the author teases out what is characteristically “American” in American art. This talk is followed by fourteen essays, most of them written for \u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e, on certain highlights in Western art of the last two hundred years: the iconic portraits of Gilbert Stuart and the sublime landscapes of Frederic Edwin Church, the series paintings of Monet and the monotypes of Degas, the richly patterned canvases of Vuillard and the golden extravagances of Klimt, the cryptic triptychs of Beckmann, the personal graffiti of Miró, the verbal-visual puzzles of Magritte, and the monumental Pop of Oldenburg and Lichtenstein. The book ends with a consideration of recent works by a living American master, the steely sculptural environments of Richard Serra. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e John Updike was a gallery-goer of genius. \u003ci\u003eAlways Looking\u003c\/i\u003e is, like everything else he wrote, an invitation to look, to \u003ci\u003esee,\u003c\/i\u003e to apprehend the visual world through the eyes of a connoisseur.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47046356074736,"sku":"9780307957306","price":45.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780307957306_p0.jpg?v=1763673617","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780307957306","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}