150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye

What Are You Looking At?

What is modern art? Why do we either love it or loathe it? And why is it worth so much damn money? Join Will Gompertz on a dazzling tour that will change the way you look at modern art forever. From Monet's water lilies to Van Gogh's sunflowers, from Warhol's soup cans to Hirst's pickled shark, hear the stories behind the masterpieces, meet the artists as they really were, and discover the real point of modern art. 
 
You will learn: not all conceptual art is bollocks; Picasso is king (but Cézanne is better); Pollock is no drip; Dali painted with his moustache; a urinal changed the course of art, why your five year-old really couldn't do it. Refreshing, irreverent and always straightforward, What Are You Looking At? asks all the basic questions that you were too afraid to ask. Your next gallery trip is going to be a little less intimidating and a lot more interesting.

Will Gompertz is the best teacher you never had

Gompertz has written an energetic and comprehensive romp through modern art

Gompertz flicks through a mental Rolodex of the world's most famous images and describes them with a freshness and vividity that brings them to life

Robert Hughes's The Shock of the New redone à la Bill Bryson ... few are the histories of modern art that name check Beyonce, David Foster Wallace and Susan Boyle, or describe the saturnine Paul Cezanne as the 'Cool Hand Luke of the Parisian avant garde' ... Filters out all jargon and pretension and filters in plenty of fun ... A richly detailed and highly entertaining history from Delacroix to Damien Hirst ****

Gompertz writes about difficult things - the birth of conceptualism, the link between the pyramidal compositions of Géricault's Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People - without letting on that they are difficult ...  this romp through art from the 1860s to now is both hugely accessible and old-fashionedly educative

A lively train-ride through the art movements of the modern period ...While he doesn't dumb down the subject, he does take a fresh, energetic approach ... He explains movements and "isms" with clarity and humour

Will Gompertz is a world-leading expert in, and champion of, the arts. Having spent seven years as a Director of the Tate Galleries followed by eleven years as the BBC’s Arts Editor and two years as Artistic Director at the Barbican, he is now the director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum. Gompertz has interviewed and observed many of the world’s leading artists, actors, writers, musicians, directors and designers. Creativity magazine in New York ranked him as one of the 50 most original thinkers in the world. He is the author of the internationally bestselling What Are You Looking At? and Think Like an Artist, both translated into more than twenty languages.

What is modern art? Why do we either love it or loathe it? And why is it worth so much damn money? Join Will Gompertz on a dazzling tour that will change the way you look at modern art forever. You will learn: not all conceptual art is bollocks; Picasso is king (but Cézanne is better); Pollock is no drip; Dali painted with his moustache; a urinal changed the course of art; why your five year-old really couldn't do it. Refreshing, irreverent and always straightforward, What Are You Looking At? asks the basic questions that you were too afraid to ask.

. . . and Lead a More Creative, Productive Life

Think Like an Artist

Think Like an Artist by BBC Arts editor Will Gompertz - wisdom and smart thinking from Da Vinci to Ai Weiwei 
 
Why do some people seem to find it easy to come up with fresh, brilliant ideas? And how do they turn them into something worthwhile? 
 
After spending years getting up close and personal with some of the world's greatest creative thinkers, the BBC's Arts Editor Will Gompertz has discovered a handful of traits that are common to them all. Basic practices and processes that allow their talents to flourish, and which we can adopt - no matter what we do - to help us achieve extraordinary things too. It's time to Think Like An Artist and ... 
 
Become Seriously Curious 
(Caravaggio's discovery of optical lenses changed art for ever.) 
 
Think Big Picture and Fine Detail 
(Turner transformed a masterpiece with a tiny dab of red paint.) 
 
And realize ... It's Nearly Always Plan B 
(Mondrian spent years painting trees before becoming a master of abstraction.) 
 
'Will Gompertz is the best teacher you never had' Guardian

Will Gompertz is the best teacher you never had

The Shock of the New redone a la Bill Bryson . . . richly detailed and highly entertaining

Daily Telegraph on What Are You Looking At?

Hugely accessible . . . writes about difficult things without letting on that they are difficult

Independent on Sunday on What Are You Looking At?

A romp through art history and the creative mind ... full of entertaining anecdote

Gompertz doesn't have it in him to be boring. He clearly loves art too much and his book ... succeeds as a short love letter to art. The pictures are wonderful

Why do some people seem to find it easy to come up with fresh, brilliant ideas? And how do they turn them into something worthwhile? 
 
After spending years getting up close and personal with some of the world's greatest creative thinkers, the BBC's Arts Editor Will Gompertz has discovered a handful of traits that are common to them all. Basic practices and processes that allow their talents to flourish, and which we can adopt - no matter what we do - to help us achieve extraordinary things too. It's time to Think Like an Artist and ... 
 
Become Seriously Curious 
(Caravaggio's discovery of optical lenses changed art for ever.) 
 
Think Big Picture and Fine Detail 
(Turner transformed a masterpiece with a tiny dab of red paint.) 
 
And realize ... It's Nearly Always Plan B 
(Mondrian spent years painting trees before becoming a master of abstraction.)

The Art Of Monarchy

The Royal Collection is one of the most wide-ranging collections of art and artefacts in the world and provides an intriguing insight into the minds of the monarchs who have assembled it

The Royal Collection is one of the most wide-ranging collections of art and artefacts in the world and provides an intriguing insight into the minds of the monarchs who have assembled it. In this series, BBC Arts Editor Will Gompertz examines dozens of these unique objects, in a quest to 'use the Collection as a prism through which to better understand the art of being a monarch'. From intimate portraits to epic tapestries, from the Coronation pen to the Investiture sword, from a treatise against Martin Luther to the first televised Christmas message, each has an absorbing history. Famous objects such as the Gold State Coach and the Imperial State Crown rub shoulders with lesser-known but still fascinating artefacts such as the Exeter Salt and the Wriothesley Garter Book. With the help of historians, academics and Royal Collection curators, Gompertz selects choice items to find out what secrets they reveal about the art of monarchy.

Will Gompertz

31 Ways Artists Notice the World – and How You Can Too

Artists have learnt to pay attention. The rest of us spend most of our time on auto-pilot, rushing from place to place, our overfamiliarity blinding us to the marvellous, life-affirming phenomena of our world. But that doesn't have to be the case. 
 
In his typical engaging style, Will Gompertz takes us into the minds of artists - from contemporary stars to old masters, the well-known to the lesser-so, and from around the world - to show us how to look and experience the world with their heightened awareness. 
 
In See What You're Missing we learn, for example, how Hasegawa Tohaku can help us to see beauty, how David Hockney helps us to see colour, and how Frida Kahlo can help us see pain. In doing so we come to know the exhilarating feeling of being truly alive.

Will Gompertz

Books by Will Gompertz

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