Description
Book SynopsisThis comic, serious inquiry into the nature of art takes its technical vocabulary from
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and
Through the Looking-Glass. It is ridiculous to think of poems, paintings, or films as distinct from other things in the world, including people. Talking about art should be contiguous with talking about other relevant matters.
Trade ReviewMiguel Tamen's
What Art Is Like admirably opens up both the risks and rewards of stepping through the looking glass. No reader of this book will come out unscathed: it is both the most rigorous application of 'Alice-logic' and the most idiosyncratic work of 'Alice-philosophy' ever to have been attempted. It is also, in parts, extremely funny. -- Peter de Bolla, author of
Art MattersMiguel Tamen's wonderful book—compact, highly original, lucid, and utterly attractive in style and tone—is most impressive for the care, depth and acuity with which it discerns, articulates, and scrutinizes both leading and misleading analogies that exert explicit or implicit influence on our thinking about art and aesthetic experience. If, as Tamen shows in
What Art Is Like, we place art next to other experiences that can profoundly change us and then work through the telling similarities and differences, we come to see a good deal about what kind of thing art actually is for us. An engaging book, sparkling with life, brilliantly preserving a special lightness of touch while acutely investigating some matters of deep human concern. -- Garry Hagberg, author of
Describing Ourselves: Wittgenstein and Autobiographical Consciousness
