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Listening to What You See

Selected Contributions on Dutch Art

Art historian Peter Hecht shares his philosophy and methods of interpreting art.

Listening to What You See brings together more than twenty-five scholarly essays, reviews, and shorter contributions by Peter Hecht, preceded by an introduction on what he thinks his life in art history has taught him. The title indicates what his collected papers have in common: together they represent an attitude of listening to what you see. Hecht is very suspicious of applying a method and believes that looking at an image until it speaks is essential to understanding it. Apart from a few scholarly reviews, Listening to What You See also contains a sample of Hecht’s writings for the public at large, and some of his best-known critical papers are included here. It covers a range of different topics, including defending public art collections, showing what art can mean in times of crisis when it is not accessible (as was the case when Covid forced the museums to shut down), and talking about what art may do for us–provided that we listen.

326 pages | 210 color plates | 8.5 x 10.24 | © 2024

Art: European Art


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Reviews

"A personal but scholarly tour d’horizon of the greats of Dutch painting..."

The New Criterion

"A specialist of the Dutch Golden Age, this collection ... reveal[s] the evolution of his thought for 50 years."

Apollo, Off the Shelf

"This is an important book for art historians and not only specialists in the Dutch school."

Country Life

"A gentleman to the end, Hecht is provocative all the same. 'Listening to what you see' is a tonic."

The New York Sun

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