Collects 100 key writings by Peter Schjeldahl spanning thirty years, his last twenty as the art critic of the "New Yorker." In this unfailingly lucid guide to an art world in constant, dramatic flux, Schjeldahl addresses new artists and Old Masters with the same pitch of acuity, empathy, and wit. No other writer enhances the reader's experience of art in precise, jargon-free prose as he does, with reviews that are as much essay a criticism. Implicit...

"Guiding our eye to the minutiae of subject and symbolism, Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen help us become detectives of details, solving the mysteries of a masterpiece through its most small and subtle elements. Is the bride pregnant? Why is just one candle burning in the chandelier? And what does the mirror in the background reveal? As they address these and many more intricacies in some of art's most celebrated scenes, the authors not only offer us...

What makes great art great? Why do some works pulse in the imagination generation after generation, century after century? From Botticelli's Birth of Venus to Picasso's Guernica, some paintings and sculptures have become so famous, so much a part of who we are, we no longer really look at them. We take their greatness for granted; our eyes have become near-obsolete. We need a new way of seeing. Unsatisfied with traditional, hand-me-down interpretations...

"From the bestselling author of Just Like You, High Fidelity, and Fever Pitch, a short, warm, and entertaining book about art, creativity, and the unlikely similarities between Victorian novelist Charles Dickens and modern American rock star Prince Everyso often, a pairing comes along that seems completely unlikely-until it's not. Peanut butter and jelly, Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un, ducks and puppies, and now: Dickens and Prince. Equipped with...

"Enjoying art is all about responding to what you are seeing. Parents often lack confidence about how to look at art with children, however, there is no magic secret and there are no right or wrong answers. Old Masters Rock: How to Look at Art with Children demystifies western art and demonstrates that it is accessible to all of us ? adults and children alike. Old Masters Rock is a book for parents and children to look at together. It introduces the...

"A protégé of Leonard Bernstein--his colleague for eighteen years--and an eminent conductor who has toured and recorded all over the world, John Mauceri helps us to reap the joys and pleasures classical music has to offer. Briefly, we learn the way a musical tradition born in ancient Greece, embraced by the Roman Empire, and subsequently nurtured by influences from across the globe, gave shape to the classical music that came to be embraced by cultures...

Bloom leads readers through the labyrinthine paths which link the writers and critics who have informed and inspired him for so many years.