Great Works : Encounters with Art

This fully illustrated book offers a highly enjoyable and intelligently-written tour through art history, with the renowned art critic and poet Michael Glover. Every Saturday for the best part of a decade, thousands of people have been turning to the pages of the British newspaper The Independent to read Michael Glover’s thoughts about a particular piece of art. Pithy, astute, erudite, often humorous, and always engaging, these enormously popular essays are filled with compelling and entertaining observations as well as trenchant commentary about art, history, culture, and humanity. Collected for the first time in book form, this selection of 50 essays―a number of which have been exclusively written for this volume―is organized in an unexpected manner, allowing readers to see connections and juxtapositions between works. Their subjects cover an enormous span in terms of style, era, and geography―from Rembrandt’s Bathsheba with King David’s Letter and El Greco’s The Vision of St. John to Ai Wei Wei’s Iron Tree and Georgia O’Keeffe’s Single Lily with Red. All the texts are accompanied by full-color illustrations of the work in focus. With its compact format, this book is the perfect companion to a day at the museum, but also lends itself to leisurely dipping in-and-out of, either at home or as part of a daily commute. A great gift for art lovers, this book will also introduce Michael Glover to a host of new readers eager to learn about art from a charming and knowledgeable teacher.