Mary Acton

An accessible guide to the study and appraisal of paintings, drawings, and prints, this book shows how to learn to look at and understand an image by analyzing how it works, what its pictorial elements are, and how they relate to each other. Illustrated with over 90 images, including works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, and Rothko.

Learning to Look at Paintings

Pam Meecham

Mary Acton shows how you can learn to look at and understand an image by analysing how it works, what its pictorial elements are and how they relate to each other. She describes the ingredients of composition, space, form, tone and colour which make up a picture, and discusses the importance of subject matter and the original function and setting of a picture in appreciating its visual meanings.

Learning to Look at Sculpture is an accessible guide to the study and understanding of three dimensional art. Sculpture is all around us: in public parks, squares, gardens and railway stations, as part of the architecture of buildings, or when used in commemoration and memorials and can even be considered in relation to furniture and industrial design. This book encourages you to consider the multiple forms and everyday guises sculpture can take. Exploring Western sculpture with examples from antiquity through to the present day, Mary Acton shows you how to analyse and fully experience sculpture, asking you to consider questions such as What do we mean by the sculptural vision? What qualities do we look for when viewing sculpture? How important is the influence of the Classical Tradition and what changed in the modern period? What difference does the scale and context make to our visual understanding? With chapters on different types of sculpture, such as free-standing figures, group sculpture and reliefs, and addressing how the experience of sculpture is fundamentally different due to the nature of its relationship to the space of its setting, the book also explores related themes, such as sculpture¿s connection with architecture, drawing and design, and what difference changing techniques can make to the tactile and physical experience of sculpture. Richly illustrated with over 200 images, including multiple points of view of three dimensional works, examples include the Riace bronzes, Michelangelo¿s David, Canova¿s The Three Graces, medieval relief sculptures, war memorials and works from modern and contemporary artists, such as Henry Moore, Cornelia Parker and Richard Serra, and three-dimensional designers like Thomas Heatherwick. A glossary of critical and technical terms, further reading and questions for students, make this the ideal companion for all those studying, or simply interested in, sculpture.

Learning to Look at Sculpture

Mary (Oxford University Acton, UK)

Mary Acton suggests that the best way to understand modern art is to look closely at it, and to consider the different elements that make up each art work - composition, space and form, light and color and subject matter. Her engaging and beautifully-written guide to art of the modern and postmodern period covers key art movements including Expressionism, Constructivism, the Bauhaus, Surrealism, Pop Art, Conceptual Art and Young British Art, and artistic forms such as architecture and design, sculpture and installation as well as works on canvas. The book is richly illustrated with color and black and white images by the artists, designers and architects discussed, ranging from Picasso and Matisse to Le Corbusier, Andy Warhol and Rachel Whiteread.

Mary Acton

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