As the preface points out, this book doesn’t actually provide any easy methodologies for interpreting modern art. What it presents is a personal tour of art professor Jon Thompson’s favourite paintings from Gustave Courbet’s ‘The Artist’s Studio’ of 1855 to Andy Warhol’s ‘Camouflage Self-Portrait’ of 1986 – via, among others, Manet’s ‘Olympia’, Degas’s ‘In a Café (Absinthe)’, Bridget Riley’s ‘Punjab’ and Philip Guston’s ‘Painting, Smoking, Eating’.
Providing a bit of artist’s biog, a piece of historical background to each work and a bit about the process and ideas, this is modern art made accessible – rather like a museum audio guide or a collection of five-minute gallery talks with illustrations.
