Customer Reviews

Understanding Abstract Art

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Many art lovers have no entry point to abstract modern art. It is bad enough to see a canvas filled with rising black lady fingers, or crowded with primary color matchsticks which look as if a child had drawn them. Even worse, if a huge, plain white canvas, or a black one, or a purple one is put in a frame, hung in a museum, and sold for thousands of dollars, we have no idea why. Frank Whitford finds a simple path through history, and through the evolving types of abstract art, to lead us by the hand into the thicket, show us what is going on in there and what it means, and bring us safely to the other side, educated and ready to go look at some pictures - more importantly, ready to look at the abstract pictures with new appreciation and understanding.

Whitford uses traditional pictures we all appreciate and understand to provide a strong starting point for the journey into the abstract.

Whitford's writing style is at once clear, erudite, educated, not without humor and irony, and always entertaining. He is never cynical or sarcastic, no matter how much this subject would seem to set up easy targets. Abstract art is serious business for those in the know, and this book gives us lay readers a chance to count ourselves in that group.

It performs a valuable service.