I've only had time to read one chapter --on Gilbert Stuart-- before returning this to the library, and I've enjoyed it so far.

It's a lovely glimpse (with great writing and interesting details) of exhibitions I've been unable to see in person.

Most of the compiled essays here are mostly discussions by the late John Updike on exhibits that no longer exist. Therefore, that can be frustrating at times.

I wished I had been at one exhibit (featuring Gilbert Stuart, shown at the Met in NYC from 2004-2005) where Updike stepped in a room and saw "Fourteen portraits of the Father of Our Country in one great custard-yellow room -- a herd? a flock? a bevy? of George Washingtons! Such a concentration has its comedy as well as a surreal grandeur. The image is so familiar as to leave an art reviewer wordless. Even the chirping children were momentarily hushed" (p. 33).

When discussing Klimt and Schiele's drawings, Updike had this to say: "Together, the two men restored genitals to the non-pornographic nude, and sketched sex in something like its melancholy complexity. Vienna in the first decades of the twentieth century was the capital of sexual realism, as Freud, paper by paper, carefully placed the sex drive at the center of the human psyche" (p. 118).

What many don't realize about artists is that if they're prolific, it is most likely that they have assistants. I personally worked briefly some years ago sewing on pieces for a fiber artist who displayed/sold "her" works all over the country in galleries and some art museums. Dale Chihuly the glass artist employs assistants to create his fabulous glass art. So it was interesting, but not a shock, when Updike tells us Lichtenstein used assistants for his work; his technique was as follows: "Lichtenstein's defining stroke of genius was to enlarge Benday dots into a motif. At first they were dabbed on by brush; then the bristles of a dog brush were dipped in paint and canvas, pressed against the canvas...by 1963, Lichtenstein had developed a method whereby manufactured stencils were employed by assistants" (p. 172). I certainly will look more closely at the Benday dots next time I view a Lichtenstein.

Of course, some of the essays captured my interest more than others -- I wasn't much entranced by the last essay discussing Richard Serra's show covering forty years of his sculptures -- even when Updike exulted that "this show is a triumph, the biggest interactive art event in Manhattan since Christo's saffron flags fluttered in a wintry Central Park over two years ago" (p. 181).

The discussed artwork are well-reproduced in color here, and I appreciated that; it's the next best thing to actually being there. ( )