Why did I love this book?
T.J. Clark’s diary explorations of two Poussin paintings in The Sight of Death integrates an acuity of seeing with a searching intelligence that is simultaneously content, historical, personal, and linguistic.
He puzzles through a visceral sense of revelatory permanence in Poussin, a discovery of form in the details of painting: “Aren’t there plenty of moments in life that, whether they last or not, have enough of permanence about them to stand for things as they are, things as the mind conceives them –and not just to stand for them notionally, but have them be visible on their face?” He reveals this face.
An everyday poem is this kind of face.
1 author picked The Sight of Death as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
A renowned art historian confronts the specific powers of painting, and the hold of the visual image on the viewer's imagination
Why do we find ourselves returning to certain pictures time and again? What is it we are looking for? How does our understanding of an image change over time? In his latest book T. J. Clark addresses these questions-and many more-in ways that steer art writing into new territory.
In early 2000 two extraordinary paintings by Poussin hung in the Getty Museum in a single room, Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake (National Gallery, London) and the…