What Are You Looking At?

Will Gompertz is the best teacher you never had * Guardian *
Gompertz has written an energetic and comprehensive romp through modern art -- Independent
Gompertz flicks through a mental Rolodex of the world's most famous images and describes them with a freshness and vividity that brings them to life * The Times *
Robert Hughes's The Shock of the New redone a la Bill Bryson ... few are the histories of modern art that name check Beyonce, David Foster Wallace and Susan Boyle, or describe the saturnine Paul Cezanne as the 'Cool Hand Luke of the Parisian avant garde' ... Filters out all jargon and pretension and filters in plenty of fun ... A richly detailed and highly entertaining history from Delacroix to Damien Hirst **** * Telegraph *
Gompertz writes about difficult things - the birth of conceptualism, the link between the pyramidal compositions of Gericault's Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People - without letting on that they are difficult ... this romp through art from the 1860s to now is both hugely accessible and old-fashionedly educative * Independent on Sunday *
A lively train-ride through the art movements of the modern period ...While he doesn't dumb down the subject, he does take a fresh, energetic approach ... He explains movements and "isms" with clarity and humour * Scotsman *