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Book Donatien Grau  Living Museums

    Book Details:
  • Author : Donatien Grau
  • Publisher : Hatje Cantz Verlag
  • Release : 2020-07-15
  • ISBN : 3775747982
  • Pages : 370 pages

Download or read book Donatien Grau Living Museums written by Donatien Grau and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As places to enjoy art, as well as institutions that have become historic, museums can also be examined through the question of who exactly heads up these temples of art. What kinds of personalities have guided the fates of these large, traditional institutions? How have they done so, and what has motivated them? What galvanizes international curators or museum employees, and how have they risen to the challenge of opening their organizations to increasingly large numbers of visitors? Donatien Grau has conducted impressive conversations with influential museum operators. We have him to thank for these personal, art historical, cultural-political, and timely insights into museum operations, the histories of various institutions, and their leaders' very personal attitudes toward art. This volume reads like a detective story about the mediation efforts of museums and the personal motives behind them. Interviews with MICHEL LACLOTTE, Director of the Louvre, Paris, 1987–1995; SIR ALAN BOWNESS, Director of the Tate, London, 1980–1988; SIR TIMOTHY CLIFFORD, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1984–2006; PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1977–2009; IRINA ANTONOVA, Director of the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, 1961–2013; PETER-KLAUS SCHUSTER, General Director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1998–2008; SIR MARK JONES, Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London 2001–2011; TOM KRENS, Director of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Venice, and Bilbao, 1988–2008; WILFRIED SEIPEL, General Director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1998–2008; HENRI LOYRETTE, Director of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (1994–2001), and the Louvre, Paris (2001–2013). DONATIEN GRAU is a newspaper art critic, a museum curator, and a university teacher. His lively and clever voice has a firm place in the field of art.

Book Donatien Grau  Living Museums

    Book Details:
  • Author : Donatien Grau
  • Publisher : Hatje Cantz Verlag
  • Release : 2020-07-15
  • ISBN : 3775748326
  • Pages : 316 pages

Download or read book Donatien Grau Living Museums written by Donatien Grau and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As places to enjoy art, as well as institutions that have become historic, museums can also be examined through the question of who exactly heads up these temples of art. What kinds of personalities have guided the fates of these large, traditional institutions? How have they done so, and what has motivated them? What galvanizes international curators or museum employees, and how have they risen to the challenge of opening their organizations to increasingly large numbers of visitors? Donatien Grau has conducted impressive conversations with influential museum operators. We have him to thank for these personal, art historical, cultural-political, and timely insights into museum operations, the histories of various institutions, and their leaders' very personal attitudes toward art. This volume reads like a detective story about the mediation efforts of museums and the personal motives behind them. Interviews with MICHEL LACLOTTE, Director of the Louvre, Paris, 1987–1995; SIR ALAN BOWNESS, Director of the Tate, London, 1980–1988; SIR TIMOTHY CLIFFORD, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 1984–2006; PHILIPPE DE MONTEBELLO, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1977–2009; IRINA ANTONOVA, Director of the Pushkin Museum, Moscow, 1961–2013; PETER-KLAUS SCHUSTER, General Director of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 1998–2008; SIR MARK JONES, Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London 2001–2011; TOM KRENS, Director of the Guggenheim Museum, New York, Venice, and Bilbao, 1988–2008; WILFRIED SEIPEL, General Director of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1998–2008; HENRI LOYRETTE, Director of the Musée d'Orsay, Paris (1994–2001), and the Louvre, Paris (2001–2013). DONATIEN GRAU is a newspaper art critic, a museum curator, and a university teacher. His lively and clever voice has a firm place in the field of art.

Book Donatien Grau  Living Museums

    Book Details:
  • Author : Donatien Grau
  • Publisher : Hatje Cantz
  • Release : 2020-08-24
  • ISBN : 9783775747530
  • Pages : 320 pages

Download or read book Donatien Grau Living Museums written by Donatien Grau and published by Hatje Cantz. This book was released on 2020-08-24 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A modern history of the world's greatest museums, as told by the people who know the institutions most intimately In his new book, French art critic Donatien Grau (born 1987) presents a case for the reconsideration of art museums as historical institutions and political forums, each one with its own rich biography. For this ambitious inquiry, Grau traveled to Williamstown, New York City, Vienna, Oxford, Ampthill, Moscow, Berlin and London to speak to the people working behind the scenes in the Western world's greatest museums. Focusing on the 1960s to the 2000s, Grau details the stories of these cultural institutions from the perspectives of those who know them best: architect Frank Gehry explains his inspiration for the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain while Irina Aleksandrovna Antonova reminisces on the five decades she spent as Director of Moscow's Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Grau's incisive research is a testament to the influence of art museums as cultural touchstones throughout history.

Book After the Crisis

    Book Details:
  • Author : Donatien Grau
  • Publisher : Diaphanes
  • Release : 2019
  • ISBN : 9783035802023
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book After the Crisis written by Donatien Grau and published by Diaphanes. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the Crisis offers a platform for discussions between some of today's leading artists, writers, theorists, curators, and historians aimed at questioning the very status of photography today. Contributors come from the realms of critical theory, fiction, performance art, fashion photography, and museums, as well as film and design, and their conversations bring together history and the contemporary. Comparing the current situation of photographic images with the crisis experienced by representation at the time of the birth of photography, they set our relationship with photographic images in the digital era in perspective. Through these discussions, we come to sense the existential burden of being surrounded by images, while also beginning to grasp the historical depth of a questioning of images that started long before the current generation and engages with crucial political and cultural issues of our time.

Book Under Discussion

    Book Details:
  • Author : Donatien Grau
  • Publisher : Getty Publications
  • Release : 2021-04-28
  • ISBN : 1606067206
  • Pages : 258 pages

Download or read book Under Discussion written by Donatien Grau and published by Getty Publications. This book was released on 2021-04-28 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In almost thirty interviews, Donatien Grau probes some of the world’s most prominent thinkers and preeminent arts leaders on the past, present, and future of the encyclopedic museum. Over the last two decades, the encyclopedic museum has been criticized and praised, constantly discussed, and often in the news. Encyclopedic museums are a phenomenon of Europe and the United States, and their locations and mostly Eurocentric collections have in more recent years drawn attention to what many see as bias. Debates on provenance in general, cultural origins, and restitutions of African heritage have exerted pressure on encyclopedic museums, and indeed on all manner of museums. Is there still a place for an institution dedicated to gathering, preserving, and showcasing all the world’s cultures? Donatien Grau’s conversations with international arts officials, museum leaders, artists, architects, and journalists go beyond the history of the encyclopedic format and the last decades’ issues that have burdened existing institutions. Are encyclopedic museums still relevant? What can they contribute when the Internet now seems to offer the greater encyclopedia? How important is it for us to have in-person access to objects from all over the world that can directly articulate something to us about humanity? The fresh ideas and nuances of new voices on the core principles important to museums in Dakar, Abu Dhabi, and Mumbai complement some of the world’s arts leaders from European and American institutions—resulting in some revealing and unexpected answers. Every interviewee offers differing views, making for exciting, stimulating reading. Includes interviews with George Abungu, National Museums of Kenya; Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York University; Homi K. Bhabha, Harvard University; Hamady Bocoum, Musée des Civilisationes Noires, Dakar; Irina Bokova, UNESCO; Partha Chatterjee, Columbia University; Thomas Campbell, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; James Cuno, J. Paul Getty Trust; Philippe de Montebello, New York University; Bachir Souleymane Diagne, Columbia University; Kaywin Feldman, National Gallery of Art; Marc Fumaroli, Collège de France; Massimiliano Gioni, New Museum; Michael Govan, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Camille Henrot, artist; Max Hollein, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Henri Loyrette, Musée du Louvre; Jean Nouvel, architect; Zaki Nusseibeh, United Arab Emirates; Mikhail Piotrovsky, State Hermitage Museum; Grayson Perry, artist; Krzysztof Pomian, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; Mari Carmen Ramírez, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Fiammetta Rocco, The Economist; Sabyasachi Mukherjee, CSMVS Mumbai; Bénédicte Savoy; Collège de France; Kavita Singh, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; Amit Sood, Google Arts & Culture.

Book Eden Eden Eden

    Book Details:
  • Author : Pierre Guyotat
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 2009-01-31
  • ISBN : 9780979984747
  • Pages : 190 pages

Download or read book Eden Eden Eden written by Pierre Guyotat and published by . This book was released on 2009-01-31 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eden Eden Eden is Pierre Guyotat's legendary novel of atrocity and obscenity. It is a masterpiece of literary innovation, which is taught on numerous university courses. In Guyotat's native France, the novel is highly esteemed, being hailed as 'a new landmark and starting-point for new writing' by the renowned philosopher Roland Barthes, who also writes the novel's preface. Introduced by Stephen Barber, the Eden Eden Eden is one of the most graphic accounts of queer sex ever written, and will therefore cross over into this market.

Book Literature is a Voyage of Discovery

Download or read book Literature is a Voyage of Discovery written by Tom Bishop and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A blend of theory and stories from an extraordinary life by a leading cultural figure. Tom Bishop has, for over sixty years, helped shape the literary, philosophical, cultural, artistic, and political conversation between Paris and New York. As professor and director of the Center for French Civilization and Culture at New York University, he made the Washington Square institution one of the great bridges between French innovation and a New York scene in full transformation. Bishop was close to Beckett, championed Robbe-Grillet in the United States, befriended Marguerite Duras and Hélène Cixous, and organized historic public encounters—such as the one between James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. He was also a scholar, a recognized specialist in the avant-garde, notably the Nouveau Roman and the Nouveau Théâtre. In 2012, Bishop invited Donatien Grau to give a talk at NYU. This invitation led to conversations—many of which are presented in this book—and a friendship. Literature Is a Voyage of Discovery gathers their dialogues, retracing Bishop’s career, his own history, his departure from Vienna, his studies, his meetings, his choices, his conception of literature and life, his relationship to the political and economic world, and the way he helped define the profession of “curator” as it is practiced today, offering a thought-provoking look into one of the leading minds of our time."--

Book Cl  mentine Deliss

    Book Details:
  • Author : Clémentine Deliss
  • Publisher : Hatje Cantz Verlag
  • Release : 2020-07-15
  • ISBN : 3775748016
  • Pages : 153 pages

Download or read book Cl mentine Deliss written by Clémentine Deliss and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. This book was released on 2020-07-15 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For quite some time now, ethnographic museums in Europe have been compelled to legitimate themselves. Their exhibition-making has become a topic of discussion, as has the contentious history of their collections, which have come about through colonial appropriation. Clearly, this cannot continue. That the situation can be different is something that Clémentine Deliss explores in her current publication. She offers an intriguing mix of autobiographically-informed novel and conceptual thesis on contemporary art and anthropology. Reflections on her own work while she was Director of Frankfurt's Weltkulturen Museum (Museum of World Cultures) are interwoven with the explorations of influential filmmakers, artists and writers. She introduces the Metabolic Museum as an interventionist laboratory for remediating ethnographic collections for future generations. CLÉMENTINE DELISS has achieved international renown as a curator, cultural historian and publisher of artist's books. In her role as Director of the Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, as a curator, and as a professor and researcher at eminent institutes and academies, she focuses on transdisciplinary and transcultural exchanges. She is Associate Curator of KW Berlin and Guest Professor at the Academy of Arts, Hamburg.

Book Andr  s Sz  nt    The Future of the Museum

Download or read book Andr s Sz nt The Future of the Museum written by András Szánto and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. This book was released on 2020-11-18 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As museums worldwide shuttered in 2020 because of the coronavirus, New York-based cultural strategist András Szántó conducted a series of interviews with an international group of museum leaders. In a moment when economic, political, and cultural shifts are signaling the start of a new era, the directors speak candidly about the historical limitations and untapped potential of art museums. Each of the twenty-eight conversations in this book explores a particular topic of relevance to art institutions today and tomorrow. What emerges from the series of in-depth conversations is a composite portrait of a generation of museum leaders working to make institutions more open, democratic, inclusive, experimental and experiential, technologically savvy, culturally polyphonic, attuned to the needs of their visitors and communities, and concerned with addressing the defining issues of the societies around them. The dialogues offer glimpses of how museums around the globe are undergoing an accelerated phase of reappraisal and reinvention. Conversation Partners: Marion Ackermann, Cecilia Alemani, Anton Belov, Meriem Berrada, Daniel Birnbaum, Thomas P. Campbell, Tania Coen-Uzzielli, Rhana Devenport, María Mercedes González, Max Hollein, Sandra Jackson-Dumont, Mami Kataoka, Brian Kennedy, Koyo Kouoh, Sonia Lawson, Adam Levine, Victoria Noorthoorn, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Anne Pasternak, Adriano Pedrosa, Suhanya Raffel, Axel Rüger, Katrina Sedgwick, Franklin Sirmans, Eugene Tan, Philip Tinari, Marc-Olivier Wahler, Marie-Cécile Zinsou

Book Ramblings of a Wannabe Painter

Download or read book Ramblings of a Wannabe Painter written by Paul Gauguin and published by David Zwirner Books. This book was released on 2016-11-22 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Criticism is our censorship . . .” So begins one of the greatest invectives against criticism ever written by an artist. Paul Gauguin wrote “Racontars de rapin” only months before he died in 1903, but the essay remained unpublished until 1951. Through discussions of numerous artists, both his contemporaries and predecessors, Gauguin unpacks what he viewed as the mistakes and misjudgments behind much of art criticism, revealing not only how wrong critics’ interpretations have been, but also what it would mean to approach art properly—to really look. Long out of print, this new translation by Donatien Grau includes an introduction that situates the essay within Gauguin’s written oeuvre, as well as explanatory notes. This text sheds light on Gauguin’s conception of art—widely considered a predecessor to Duchamp—and engages with many issues still relevant today: history, novelty, criticism, and the market. His voice feels as fresh, lively, sharp in English now as it did in French over one hundred years ago. Through Gauguin’s final piece of writing, we see the artist in the full throes of passion—for his work, for his art, for the art of others, and against anyone who would stand in his way. As the inaugural publication in David Zwirner Books’s new ekphrasis reader series, Ramblings of a Wannabe Painter sets a perfect tone for the books to come. Poised between writing, art, and criticism, Gauguin brings together many different worlds, all of which should have a seat at the table during any meaningful discussion of art. With the express hope of encouraging open exchange between the world of writing and that of the visual arts, David Zwirner Books is proud to present this new edition of a lost masterpiece.

Book Tal Sterngast  Twelve Paintings

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Eissenhauer
  • Publisher : Hatje Cantz Verlag
  • Release : 2020-12-04
  • ISBN : 3775749098
  • Pages : 114 pages

Download or read book Tal Sterngast Twelve Paintings written by Michael Eissenhauer and published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. This book was released on 2020-12-04 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Berlin's Gemäldegalerie is known for its outstanding collection of European paintings from the thirteenth to eighteenth century. Each chapter in this book is dedicated to one painting from the collection. In the breadth of this idiosyncratic selection, painting, as it discovers itself becomes a medium for the formulation of modern subjectivity. Each painting in focus unfolds its own making and its artistic concerns as they reflect contemporary issues, today. What are the paradoxes within which art is made by women? How does the primordial drive to destroy works of art affect today's art discourse? Where did the modern struggle of painting against the picture begin? Why does the Wild Man from early German Renaissance still haunt us? And why doesn't it matter whether Jan Vermeer used an optical device for his paintings? Twelve Paintings highlights the currentness of the Old Masters.

Book Taking Time

    Book Details:
  • Author : Azzedine Alaïa
  • Publisher : Rizzoli Publications
  • Release : 2020-03-31
  • ISBN : 0847861554
  • Pages : 194 pages

Download or read book Taking Time written by Azzedine Alaïa and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of conversations on the subject of time between a legendary couturier and leaders in the worlds of art, design, and popular culture will inspire readers to take greater control over their life and develop their creativity. One of the characteristics of modern-day life seems to be that we are doing more and more at an ever-increasing rate. Uncompromising couturier Azzedine Alaïa hosted salon-style discussions between creative luminaries on this subject. The result is a collection of never-before-published conversations between some of the most famous minds of our generation about time--an increasingly valuable commodity in twenty-first-century society. Taking Time presents musings from some of the world's most respected figures in cinema, music, and design: Jonathan Ive and Marc Newson discuss time as the first ergonomic product; Julian Schnabel and Jean-Claude Carrière consider it in respect to art and film; and Robert Wilson and Isabelle Huppert speak about the importance of time in theater and acting. You will discover ways of appreciating and managing time that are helpful and will embolden you to manifest your creativity and enjoy life to the fullest...and truly to take your time.

Book Calder Now

    Book Details:
  • Author : Dieter Buchhart
  • Publisher : Lannoo Publishers
  • Release : 2022-02
  • ISBN : 9789401479677
  • Pages : 208 pages

Download or read book Calder Now written by Dieter Buchhart and published by Lannoo Publishers. This book was released on 2022-02 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: - A beautifully illustrated catalog documenting an exhibition that explores Alexander Calder's impact on contemporary art - The show at the Kunsthal Rotterdam runs from November 21, 2021 - May 29 2022 - Includes works by Calder, Olafur Eliasson, Zilvinas Kempinas, Simone Leigh, Ernesto Neto, Carston Nicolai, Aki Sasamoto, Roman Signer, Monica Sosnowska, Sarah Sze, and Rirkrit Tiravanija - The exhibition was created in cooperation with the Calder Foundation Calder Now documents an exhibition at the Kunsthal Rotterdam which explores the enduring influence of the work of Alexander Calder (1898-1976) on contemporary art. Shown alongside pieces by Calder himself are works by 10 contemporary artists, including Olafur Eliasson, Simone Leigh, Ernesto Neto, Rirkrit Tiravanija, and Sarah Sze. The text explores the way their work resonates with Calder's main artistic interests, such as the reflection of light and movement. Three noted art historians elaborate on themes such as the participatory and progressive nature of Calder's art.

Book Lucian Freud  Monumental

    Book Details:
  • Author : Michael Auping
  • Publisher : National Geographic Books
  • Release : 2019-04-23
  • ISBN : 084786684X
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book Lucian Freud Monumental written by Michael Auping and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intimate portraits from one of the most innovative figurative artists of the twentieth century and the master of painted flesh. Curated by the artist's longtime studio assistant and friend, David Dawson, this important volume features twenty major and rarely seen paintings by Lucian Freud (1922-2011). The book begins with works from 1990, when Freud began painting the performance artist Leigh Bowery: these large-scale portraits of Bowery ushered in a new sense of monumentality in the artist's oeuvre. Inspired by Bowery's impressive physique, Freud began working on a larger scale, which emphasized the physical presence of his subjects. Despite their grand scale, Freud's subjects are still depicted with a sense of intimacy, penetrating honesty, and psychological depth. The naked body is a subject that has special significance in Freud's oeuvre. Nakedness was a way for Freud to get a more truthful portrait. Freud's probing oils get fresh consideration in this monograph and Dawson provides insights and stories about Freud working on these portraits, giving an intriguing behind-the-scenes look at the life of a contemporary master of representational art.

Book The Life of Plants

    Book Details:
  • Author : Emanuele Coccia
  • Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
  • Release : 2019-01-16
  • ISBN : 1509531548
  • Pages : 176 pages

Download or read book The Life of Plants written by Emanuele Coccia and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-01-16 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We barely talk about them and seldom know their names. Philosophy has always overlooked them; even biology considers them as mere decoration on the tree of life. And yet plants give life to the Earth: they produce the atmosphere that surrounds us, they are the origin of the oxygen that animates us. Plants embody the most direct, elementary connection that life can establish with the world. In this highly original book, Emanuele Coccia argues that, as the very creator of atmosphere, plants occupy the fundamental position from which we should analyze all elements of life. From this standpoint, we can no longer perceive the world as a simple collection of objects or as a universal space containing all things, but as the site of a veritable metaphysical mixture. Since our atmosphere is rendered possible through plants alone, life only perpetuates itself through the very circle of consumption undertaken by plants. In other words, life exists only insofar as it consumes other life, removing any moral or ethical considerations from the equation. In contrast to trends of thought that discuss nature and the cosmos in general terms, Coccia’s account brings the infinitely small together with the infinitely big, offering a radical redefinition of the place of humanity within the realm of life.

Book Richard Shiff  Sensuous Thoughts

Download or read book Richard Shiff Sensuous Thoughts written by Richard Shiff and published by Hatje Cantz. This book was released on 2020-03-09 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twenty years of thinking about Judd: authoritative meditations on the epochal minimalist from renowned American art historian Richard Shiff This important new publication collects more than 20 years of sustained thinking about Donald Judd from one of today's most respected art historians and theorists. In Sensuous Thoughts, Richard Shiff draws on Judd's own writing, on the work of the pragmatist philosophers Charles Sander Pierce and William James, and on interviews with many of Judd's contemporaries and close relations, to dramatically enhance the act of looking at Judd's work. Across nearly 300 pages, Shiff closely explicates such topics as Judd's dialogues with artists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Lee Bontecou and Claes Oldenburg, among others; while other essays examine the impact that Judd's writings, such as "Specific Objects," had on his own work. Sensuous Thoughtsalso includes 140 color images as both reference throughout and in a dedicated plate section in the back of the book. Richard Shiff(born 1943) is the author of Doubt: Theories of Modernism and Postmodernismand Writing after Art: Essays on Modern and Contemporary Artists, and is the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art and director of the Center for the Study of Modernism at the University of Texas at Austin.

Book Chardin and Rembrandt

    Book Details:
  • Author : Marcel Proust
  • Publisher : Simon and Schuster
  • Release : 2016-11-22
  • ISBN : 1941701507
  • Pages : 63 pages

Download or read book Chardin and Rembrandt written by Marcel Proust and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-11-22 with total page 63 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chardin and Rembrandt is an unfinished essay written around 1895 by Marcel Proust. Oft overlooked in Prousts illustrious writing career, this book is a newly translated version by David Zwirner Books as one of the first two entries in its ekphrasis series. This essay is a literary experiment in which an unnamed narrator gives advice to a young man suffering from melancholy, taking him on an imaginary tour through the Louvre where his readings of Chardin imbue the everyday world with new meaning, and his ruminations on Rembrandt take his melancholic pupil beyond the realm of mere objects.