Synopses & Reviews
A collection of essays which offers a delightful range of views on the role of art in our psychic, social, and political lives. Contributors include Dorothy Allison, Alfred Kazin, Mary Gordon, Dave Hickey and more.
Synopsis
Drawing Us In is essential reading for art lovers: the only anthology on why we need visual art.
In this unique collection, some of our finest writers explore the place of visual art in their lives. Dorothy Allison explains how a painting in a Baptist church taught her as a child that art connects people from disparate backgrounds. Alfred Kazin reflects on his wanderings through New York's museums as a teenager. Mary Gordon finds that Bonnard's still lifes put in perspective her mother's struggle with illness and aging. For these and other contributors, visual art makes us see what we haven't seen before; it surprises, transforms, and comforts us. There are other perspectives too: critic Dave Hickey claims that art has no deep moral purpose and that the artist shouldn't have to work under this burden. Art, he writes, is just a whole lot of fun and therein lies its revolutionary potential.
Table of Contents
A theft in Norway / Peter Schjeldahl -- On Romare Bearden / August Wilson -- This is our world / Dorothy Allison -- The art city our fathers built / Alfred Kazin -- Still life : notes on Pierre Bonnard and my mother's ninetieth birthday / Mary Gordon -- Portraits and dreams : photographs and stories by children of the Appalachians / Wendy Ewald -- The art of seeing / Jed Perl -- Why abstract painting still matters / Laurie Fendrich -- Doubletake : the diary of a relationship with an image / Lucy R. Lippard -- Art and the discourse of nations / Arthur C. Danto -- Art is for everybody / bell hooks -- Y : the art critic / Jennifer Belle -- Frivolity and unction / Dave Hickey -- To take paper, to draw : a world through lines / John Berger -- The Panorama Mesdag / Mark Doty