See What You're Missing
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  • Published: 2 February 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241994900
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $26.00

See What You're Missing

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

Formats & editions
Paperback
11 Jun 2024
EBook
2 Feb 2023
Audiobook
2 Feb 2023
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The internationally-bestselling author on how art can help us appreciate life

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.
  • Published: 2 February 2023
  • ISBN: 9780241994900
  • Imprint: Penguin Audio
  • Format: Audio Download
  • RRP: $26.00
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About the author

Will Gompertz

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, he is now Artistic Director at the Barbican. Will 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 20 languages.

Also by Will Gompertz

Think Like an Artist
What Are You Looking At?
See all

Praise for See What You're Missing

Gompertz insightfully explores the processes and personalities of a remarkable roster of artists . . . effortless prose and laser focus on the communicative potential of art make this a worthwhile read

James Woods Marshall, Library Journal

Thorough and diverse . . . Gompertz's illuminations of artists' lives and minds are accessible and full of valuable information. This is an exhilarating resource for personal growth, a consciousness-raising exploration for artists and art lovers, and an asset for anyone interested in the who, what, and why of great artworks

Booklist

Art can amaze us into changing our minds. This remarkable book teaches us how

Es Devlin

Highly engaging and thought-provoking

Philip Hook, author of Breakfast at Sotheby’s

By going straight to the essence of each one's work, Will Gompertz provides a fluent and refreshing introduction to the way art can enable us, in the most unexpected ways, to see the world anew

Michael Peppiatt

Offers a tidy lesson in not just getting more from art, but more from life itself . . . lucid and revealing . . . Gompertz is at his best

Michael Prodger, The Times

Will Gompertz is the best teacher you never had

Guardian

He is a natural communicator whose passion for art is expressed with wit and verve

Sir Nicholas Serota, Chair of Arts Council England

Gompertz doesn't have it in him to be boring

The Times

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

Independent on Sunday on What Are You Looking At?

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

Daily Telegraph on What Are You Looking At?

Lively, fresh, energetic . . . He explains movements and "isms" with clarity and humour

Scotsman on What Are You Looking At?