The Power of Art

The Power of Art
By:Simon Schama
Published on 2006-11-07 by Harper Collins

|Great art has dreadful manners,| Simon Schama observes wryly at the start of his epic and explosive exploration of the power, and whole point, of art. |The hushed reverence of the gallery can fool you into believing masterpieces are polite things; visions that soothe, charm and beguile, but actually they are thugs. Merciless and wily, the greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your sense of reality. . . .| With the same disarming force, The Power of Art propels us on an eye-opening, breathtaking odyssey, zooming in on eight extraordinary masterpieces, from Caravaggio's David and Goliath to Picasso's Guernica. Jolting us far from the comfort zone of the hushed art gallery, Schama closes in on intense make-or-break turning points in the lives of eight great artists who, under extreme stress, created something unprecedented, altering the course of art forever. The embattled heroes—Caravaggio, Bernini, Rembrandt, David, Turner, Van Gogh, Picasso and Rothko—each in his own resolute way, faced crisis with steadfast defiance, pitting passion and conviction against scorn and short-sightedness. The masterpieces they created challenged convention, shattered complacency, shifted awareness and changed the way we look at the world. With vivid storytelling and powerfully evocative descriptive passages, Schama explores the dynamic personalities of the artists and the spirit of the times they lived through, capturing the flamboyant theatre of bourgeois life in Amsterdam, the passion and paranoia of Revolutionary Paris, and the carnage and pathos of Civil War Spain. Most compelling of all, The Power of Art traces the extraordinary evolution of eight |eye-popping| world-class works of art. Created in a bolt of illumination, such works |tell us something about how the world is, how it is to be inside our skins, that no more prosaic source of wisdom can deliver. And when they do that, they answer, irrefutably and majestically, the nagging question of every reluctant art-conscript . . . 'OK, OK, but what's art really for?'|

This Book was ranked at 15 by Google Books for keyword manga art easel does it.

Book ID of The Power of Art's Books is Eetl7759gSkC, Book which was written bySimon Schamahave ETAG "l8hNOgdUfas"

Book which was published by Harper Collins since 2006-11-07 have ISBNs, ISBN 13 Code is 9780061176104 and ISBN 10 Code is 0061176109

Reading Mode in Text Status is false and Reading Mode in Image Status is false

Book which have "448 Pages" is Printed at BOOK under CategoryArt

This Book was rated by 4 Raters and have average rate at "4.5"

This eBook Maturity (Adult Book) status is NOT_MATURE

Book was written in en

eBook Version Availability Status at PDF is falseand in ePub is false

Book Preview