The Art of Writing about Art

The art of writing about art.

By Published on October 15, 2015

The British painter Howard Hodgkin came to the Frick Collection some years ago to lecture. After pained attempts to deliver a prepared talk, he abandoned his notes for a monologue. Zig-zagging through art in general, his own work, and the historical canon, he came to that curious contemporary genre: art writing. Hodgkin dismissed legions of contemporary art writers with one sentence: “Too many people think they can write without ever having had to read.” It was a nimble curtsy to his longtime friend Julian Barnes.

Booker-winning novelist and decorated Francophile, Barnes is a keen, absorbent reader. His writing is a measure of the breadth and pitch of his reading. And he said as much in Through the Window:

I have lived in books, for books, by and with books. . . . And it was through books that I first . . . encountered that deeply intimate bond made when a writer’s voice gets inside a reader’s head.

Read the article “The Art of Writing about Art” on weeklystandard.com.

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