Book of the Week: "Better to Look Again" - How and Why to Understand Art

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

To understand the meaning of a work of art, you have to strain your brain. But it's worth it.

Content Manager at Lisson Gallery (London / New York) Ossian Ward dedicated his first book to contemporary art. In it, he told why there is nothing shameful in looking at one canvas for hours. He also presented the TABULA method, which helps to understand the meaning of a work of art: T - patience, A - associations, B - background, U - assimilation, L - it is better to look again, A - analysis.

Ward devoted his second book to the penultimate point of this method - “Better to look again. How to love the art of the past”. This time he talks about earlier works created before the 20th century, and talks not only about how to understand them, but also about where to look in order to get to the bottom of it.

Ward urges you to stop, not chase the flow of people, and not try to walk around an entire gallery or museum in two hours. The artist thoughtfully placed clues and keys on his canvas, which an attentive viewer will certainly find and see the work in a completely different light. For example, Jan Vermeer's painting The Milkmaid (1660) depicts a girl pouring milk. And in order to understand what the Dutch painter wanted to say, you need to know that the representatives of this profession at that time had a certain reputation:

Is this not hinted at by the wide neck of the jug with its dark depth, or by the tiny figure of a Cupid on one of the Delft tiles running along the lower edge of the wall?

Ossian Ward "Better Watch Again"

Each chapter of the book invites you to look at art from a different angle. For Ward, it can be honesty, philosophy, drama, beauty, honor, paradox, recklessness, or insight. And the author devotes a separate discussion to each of these hypostases.

If you see in artistic beauty not just an opportunity to admire and enjoy, but something precious, elusive, incomprehensible, depth will be revealed in it and it will open the way for you to miracles that are not striking, being in some way hidden under layers of paint.

Ossian Ward "Better Watch Again"

No prior preparation is required to read this book - Ossian Ward specially wrote a guide for those who are just starting to take their first steps in understanding art. The author is presented to the reader as a guide who prompts thought and points out the details. But he refrains from direct explanation, giving everyone the opportunity to guess for himself what the artist was up to.