What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

BBC arts editor and former Tate director Gompertz sees a paradox in the contemporary “love affair” with modern art: while people increasingly visit museums such as MOMA and the Pompidou, they often do not fully comprehend what they’re looking at. Gompertz’s aim is to demystify modern art, to provide a basic history of each of its “isms,” and show how these movements are interconnected. Gompertz’s highly lucid, lively, and buoyantly composed history begins with Duchamp’s omnipresent influence on the history of modern art and then chronicles movements that led up to and followed Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), from pre-Impressionist artists Manet and Courbet to contemporary artists Banksy and Ai Weiwei. Gompertz devotes a chapter each to 20 artistic movements, and while his tone is breezy and conversational, he astutely and often wittily describes the core of every movement and its key artists. The result is an entertaining and elucidating guide to modern art, refreshing in its approach and intentions, that will interest the general reader and art enthusiast. B&w art throughout, 8-page color insert. (Oct.)