Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Summary:
This straightforward guide prepares students/readers to describe, interpret, and write about works of art in meaningful and lasting terms. Designed as a supplement to Art History survey and period texts, this efficient book features a step-by-step approach to writing—from choosing a work to write about, to essay organization, to research techniques, to footnote form, to preparing the final essay. For beginners as well as more advanced students/readers.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
A Very Useful Handbook
Customer Rating:
It's beyond cliché to say that a book has changed your life, but this little handbook - a supplemental art history text, of all things - ranks with scripture and great literature as one of the most personally beneficial books I've ever read. This may say more about me than the book, of course, but if you are the sort of person who finds it difficult to think about art, let alone talk or write about it, then perhaps this will give you hope.
Professor Sayre starts this handbook with a simple thesis: everyone could write about art, if only they knew where to start. To prove his point, Sayre chooses pieces that most laypeople would consider indescribable (like the abstractions of Jackson Pollock) and teaches the reader, slowly but surely, how to really look at the work. With subsequent lessons on choice, composition, and color, even the most "non-artistic" thinkers will begin to see things in a different light... and then Professor Sayre will then teach you how to put those thoughts into words.
If you are privileged enough to attend a school where the humanities are still actively taught, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of this book - your papers and grades will doubtlessly improve. But even if your chances of ever taking an art appreciation class are slim, if you have any interest in the subject at all, then I highly recommend this book.
Excellent for Homework
Customer Rating:
Although I am not an Art History Major, I found this book to be very helpful when writing a paper about particular artwork!
Select button not working? 
