The heatwave has reached muggy London and this week it’s been hard to focus. But there’s nothing like a book to cool down the mood - and to warm up the soul. 🙂
I am currently reading ‘A History of Pictures’, (been reading it since May - it’s a big book!) by David Hockney and Martin Gayford. I got it immediately after devouring ‘Spring Cannot Be Cancelled’ by the same authors. I swear I’ll buy each and every single book these two have ever published and will ever publish together.
In ‘A History of Pictures’, the golden duo presents an alternative view of art history: it is not about the history of art, it’s about the history of pictures. And pictures don’t follow that straight timeline of artistic progress we’ve been taught in school. This is a continuous and interlinked history of pictures. Pictures have encountered similar problems at different times and places across the history of humankind: how to depict a person, how to make a mark, how to illustrate space and time… In general, how to represent a three-dimensional world in a two-dimensional format.
I strongly recommend this book to visual artists and designers. Reading and listening to Hockney is learning to see. To see beyond the surface of things, the world, life.
Learning to see is also learning to live.
Early in June I also read ‘Los Diarios de la Anguila’, the sketch journals and notes that Paula Bonet developed during her travels to Marrakech and Santiago de Chile.
I always enjoy reading Bonet’s essays and articles. She has this pictorial quality in her written words, one can read the hand of an artist. She’s bold, pure, and visual.
She is not afraid of writing.
It is truly a delight to read her words, the way they are composed, and how strongly they touch your soul (especially if you are a woman). She writes about universal issues in a very, very intimate way.
The other book I read - in, literally, two days - was ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig. I won’t reveal too much of it. I bought it because it had thousands of good reviews on Amazon and, interestingly, it ended up re-affirming the importance of perspective, of the way we look at our own lives.
Learning to see is, indeed, learning to live.
Happy sketching! 💫✏️
Ana
What are you reading at the moment? What do you recommend? Leave a comment down below :)