Description
Book SynopsisThe making of pictures has a history going back perhaps 100,000 years to an African shell used as a paint palette. In this book, each chapter addresses an important question: What happens when we try to express reality in two dimensions? Why is the 'Mona Lisa' beautiful and why are shadows so rarely found in Chinese, Japanese and Persian painting?
Trade Review'I won’t read a more interesting book all year ... utterly fascinating' - A. N. Wilson, Sunday Times
'Hockney asks big questions about the nature of picture-making and the relationship between painters and photography in a way that no other contemporary artist seems to do … Enormously good-humoured and entertaining … On almost every page, there is an interesting provocation' - Andrew Marr, New Statesman
'An eloquent conversational testimony to the vividness of life lived through intelligent looking. You will see Caravaggio and Citizen Kane with fresh eyes' - Daily Telegraph
'A magic flight of a book … It’s a measure of Hockney’s vividness of perception that he can always put a cap on Gayford’s knowledge … Fabulous!' - Clive James, Guardian
'Crisps up perceptions and help readers to look anew' - The Times
Table of Contents1. Pictures, Art and History • 2. Pictures and Reality • 3. Making Marks • 4. Shadows • 5. Picturing Space and Time • 6. Brunelleschi’s Window and Alberti’s Mirror • 7. Mirrors and Reflections • 8. Paper, Paint and Multiplying Pictures • 9. Painting the Stage and Staging Paintings • 10. Caravaggio and the Academy of the Lynx-Eyed • 11. Vermeer and Rembrandt: the Hand, the Lens and the Heart • 12. Truth and Beauty in the Age of Reason • 13. The Camera Before and After 1839 • 14. Photography, Truth and Painting • 15. Painting with and without Photography • 16. Snapshots and Moving Pictures • 17. Movies and Stills • 18. The Unending History of Pictures
