Reading

Ossian Ward (2014) ‘Ways of Looking – How to experience contemporary art’, Lawrence King, London

Michael Archer (2015) ‘Art since 1960’, Third Edition, Thames Hudson, London

I have finished Ossian Ward’s ‘Ways of Looking’. That provides a short, pretty engaging overview of some key themes in contemporary art, illustrated with a number of examples. The examples mainly seemed to be installations along with some performance art. I am not sure how much that will help with developing my drawing, but I enjoyed reading it, and I think it must be useful to get this background.

What I did find helpful about his book was his tabula rasa method as a way in to appreciating contemporary art. He presents a mnemonic – ‘tabula’ with each letter of that word being the start of a key word for a technique to help unpack what a piece of artwork might mean to the viewer – here’s the mnemonic:

T – Time – give the artwork time – contemplate it – try to stay with it for more than 30 seconds anyway!

A – Association – how does what you see / experience relate to you

B – Background – what’s the context / read the brochure / notes on the wall

U – Understand – What’s the message of the piece of artwork (I had trouble differentiating this from association – but perhaps this is more the ‘therefore’ stage – so take the associations and background together -> therefore what do you get / what sort of message emerges?)

L – Look again – Is there anything you have missed, or does something new emerge in the light of considering everything so far.

A – Assessment – Does the artwork achieve what it sets out to do successfully?

Michael Archer’s book feels weightier in tone and is what I assume a typical art history book would be like – a lot more academic and provides a historical sweep focusing on what various artists within particular art movements from the 60’s onwards were trying to do. Still only part way through. It is heavier, but I am still enjoying the book – again useful background and this time a bit more on 2-dimensional works of art such as painting – interesting to see the different thinking around painting and composition.