The World Through Blunted Sight


Book Description

How did faulty or failing eyesight affect the style and technique of writers and artists. How did it affect the way they convey their visual impressions. In a classic study, first published in 1970 and thoroughly revised in 1988, Patrick Trevor-Roper combines his professional knowledge of ophthalmology with his extensive familiarity with art and literature to fascinatingly examine the work of painters, sculptors, poets and prose writers. Looking at the effects of myopia, cataracts, colour blindness, squints and total blindness he speculates on what the impact would have been on artists had they worn glasses. Illustrated with colour reproductions and a wealth of black and white photos, this was a true labour of love from a highly cultured man, erudite and stimulating.




The World Through Blunted Sight


Book Description

How did faulty or failing eyesight affect the style and technique of writers and artists. How did it affect the way they convey their visual impressions. In a classic study, first published in 1970 and thoroughly revised in 1988, Patrick Trevor-Roper combines his professional knowledge of ophthalmology with his extensive familiarity with art and literature to fascinatingly examine the work of painters, sculptors, poets and prose writers. Looking at the effects of myopia, cataracts, colour blindness, squints and total blindness he speculates on what the impact would have been on artists had they worn glasses. Illustrated with colour reproductions and a wealth of black and white photos, this was a true labour of love from a highly cultured man, erudite and stimulating.













Color and Meaning


Book Description

"John Gage's Color and Meaning is full of ideas. . .He is one of the best writers on art now alive."--A. S. Byatt, Booker Prize winner




Bluets


Book Description

Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color . . . A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists. Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts.




Splendors and Miseries of the Brain


Book Description

Splendors and Miseries of the Brain examines the elegant and efficient machinery of the brain, showing that by studying music, art, literature, and love, we can reach important conclusions about how the brain functions. discusses creativity and the search for perfection in the brain examines the power of the unfinished and why it has such a powerful hold on the imagination discusses Platonic concepts in light of the brain shows that aesthetic theories are best understood in terms of the brain discusses the inherited concept of unity-in-love using evidence derived from the world literature of love addresses the role of the synthetic concept in the brain (the synthesis of many experiences) in relation to art, using examples taken from the work of Michelangelo, Cézanne, Balzac, Dante, and others




The World Through Blunted Sight


Book Description




The Sense of an Ending


Book Description

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.