Skip to main content

Distributed for Reaktion Books

Looking at the Overlooked

Four Essays on Still Life Painting

In this, the only up-to-date critical work on still life painting in any language, Norman Bryson analyzes the origins, history and logic of still life, one of the most enduring forms of Western painting. The first essay is devoted to Roman wall-painting while in the second the author surveys a major segment in the history of still life, from seventeenth-century Spanish painting to Cubism. The third essay tackles the controversial field of seventeenth-century Dutch still life. Bryson concludes in the final essay that the persisting tendency to downgrade the genre of still life is profoundly rooted in the historical oppression of women.

In Looking at the Overlooked, Norman Bryson is at his most brilliant. These superbly written essays will stimulate us to look at the entire tradition of still life with new and critical eyes.

Distribution by the University of Chicago Press only to customers in the USA and Canada. Customers elsewhere should visit the UK website of Reaktion Books.


192 pages | 76 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2004

Art: Art Criticism, Art--General Studies


Reaktion Books image

View all books from Reaktion Books

Table of Contents

Foreword
Xenia
Rhopography
Abundance
Still Life and ’Feminine’ Space
References
List of Illustrations

Be the first to know

Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!

Sign up here for updates about the Press