How Do We Look: The Body, the Divine, and the Question of Civilization
Written by Mary Beard
Narrated by Mary Beard
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
Mary Beard
Mary Beard is one of the most original and best-known classicists working today. She is Professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and the Classics editor of the TLS. She is a fellow of the British Academy and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her books include the Wolfson Prize-winning Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town (2008) and the best-selling SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (2015). Her popular TLS blog has been collected in the books It's a Don's Life and All in a Don's Day. Her latest book is Women & Power: A Manifesto (2017).
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Reviews for How Do We Look
53 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inteligent essay about what is art and how we, our look, makes the art. Beard offers a travel a long side the world and history. From Ancient Mexico to the Acropolis, from the Colossus of Memnon in the II sicle to the first temples in Ankor wat. What is art if not the way we look the objects.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5As a physical object, this book is a triumph: the cover shimmers, the paper is heavy and smooth, the art is well chosen and beautifully rendered. As a text, though, it has little to offer. Although the title (and to some extent, the layout) positions it as a revisit of John Berger's influential Ways of Seeing, the chapters are short, shallow, and overly simple. Interesting pieces of art—some well known, some not—are touched upon, Beard's main point about each is briefly stated, and then we move on. Other reviewers indicate that these chapters are actually transcriptions of the script for a television show I haven't seen, which would help explain this. But it left me disappointed in Beard, whom I had admired, especially when she seems to honestly believe that an ancient Greek man (almost certainly fictional, too) who masturbated onto a statue was guilty of rape—of the statue. This bizarre opinion is not just tossed off, but actually returned to later. It's one of those things that can leave a reader wondering about the author's sanity.So I'd recommend this book as a tiny coffee table book and as an introduction to works of art and architecture, many non-Western, that merit further investigation. As a work by a distinguished classicist and public intellectual, it's an embarrassment.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I was drawn to this book by Mary Beard, whose reputation proceeds her. I don't typically read a lot of art history or analysis, but this short volume was both interesting and highly readable. Looking at the role of the viewer in art and traveling around the world, this book manages to make a complex topic approachable. If you're interesting in art and the ancient world, this book is likely for you.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Some new insights into how Art reflects what was going on in society at the time. In depth look at faith and how the artist expresses one’s religious and political context at the time.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I picked How Do We Look off the New Arrivals shelf at my library without having seen the new Civilizations series (or, honestly, being much aware of it, except for a tweet from Tim Spalding asking about a cut-short episode), but I was aware of Mary Beard being popular amongst my friends who like to read about history and Classics. I mention all of this because I'm definitely reading the book from a different perspective than someone who is already very familiar with Beard's work or who found it because of the tv series.The book is glossy with comfortably-large type and lots of pictures - every artwork discussed in the pages has at least one photo (often multiple angles or close-ups!), and there are other photos to add a bit of contrast or comparison of similar themes. They all have explanatory captions. It's fairly short at 240 pages because of the size of the text and the numerous pictures, many of which are fully one or two pages, but these pages are used to put a lot of detail about the works represented, rather than cramming a new object for discussion on every page.From the title and a brief skimming, I had hoped for more philosophical/sociological discussion of the act of looking at art and how the viewer imbues artwork with meaning and context as much as the artwork has on its own. I don't mean to say this isn't the theme of the book - it certainly is! - but I wanted more. Several times, Beard backs away from an artwork without fully exploring what this means, or else leaves it unspoken for the reader to determine. Perhaps in a few examples it's because we can't know the original contexts to really have a deep conversation about the artwork, but most of the time the pages skitter away to the next work, it reminded me that the book is based on the tv show, and of scenes skipping ahead for time.But on the whole, I did find the book interesting. Its emphasis is that artwork is made for the viewer and for specific societal purposes as much as it is made for the artist's skill or identity. Modern viewers of ancient art bring their own contexts and interpretations, which may skew the understanding of the past, as much as only seeing bleached-white marble or giant wall murals cut into vignettes for books might do. Or even as much as artwork in sterile museum displays, far from the point of origin.I am likely to seek out more of Mary Beard's work now, probably even her Civilizations series, but what I really want is more detailed discussion of the context of ancient art and a broader view towards societies that are not touched on here (particularly Indigenous American and Pacific work).