How to Look at and Understand Great Art

Featuring masterpieces from 250+ of the world's greatest artists, this in-depth guide to the practical skill of viewing art will help you reach new levels of appreciation.

• By This Professor
• 01: The Importance of First Impressions
• 02: Where Am I? Point of View and Focal Point
• 03: Color—Description, Symbol, and More
• 04: Line—Description and Expression
• 05: Space, Shape, Shade, and Shadow
• 06: Seeing the Big Picture—Composition
• 07: The Illusion—Getting the Right Perspective
• 08: Art That Moves Us—Time and Motion
• 09: Feeling with Our Eyes—Texture and Light
• 10: Drawing—Dry, Liquid, and Modern Media
• 11: Printmaking—Relief and Intaglio
• 12: Modern Printmaking—Planographic
• 13: Sculpture—Salt Cellars to Monuments
• 14: Development of Painting—Tempera and Oils
• 15: Modern Painting—Acrylics and Assemblages
• 16: Subject Matters
• 17: Signs—Symbols, Icons, and Indexes in Art
• 18: Portraits—How Artists See Others
• 19: Self-Portraits—How Artists See Themselves
• 20: Landscapes—Art of the Great Outdoors
• 21: Putting It All Together
• 22: Early Renaissance—Humanism Emergent
• 23: Northern Renaissance—Devil in the Details
• 24: High Renaissance—Humanism Perfected
• 25: Mannerism and Baroque—Distortion and Drama
• 26: Going Baroque—North versus South
• 27: 18th-Century Reality and Decorative Rococo
• 28: Revolutions—Neoclassicism and Romanticism
• 29: From Realism to Impressionism
• 30: Postimpressionism—Form and Content Re-Viewed
• 31: Expressionism—Empathy and Emotion
• 32: Cubism—An Experiment in Form
• 33: Abstraction/Modernism—New Visual Language
• 34: Dada Found Objects/Surreal Doodles and Dreams
• 35: Postmodernism—Focus on the Viewer
• 36: Your Next Museum Visit—Do It Yourself!