Essential Reading

We have 5 senses unless you are Spiderman you will have an additional spidey sense.

It's more apparent between good auditory sense and bad auditory sense. You can easily tell when some one is tone deaf and at the other extreme, you will be amazed by people with music synesthesia where the person is pitch perfect and can see the music in colours.

So for visual art, the visual senses come into play. And those that have better visual perception can appreciate art better. And another problem of colour perception is colour blindness which is a wide spectrum or has many varieties . And even if it's not colour blindness, some people perceive colours wrongly, I tend to get into conflict with many people who have a problem defining certain colours, for example pink versus purple, they have a problem with blue, as white/red is pink and adding a tinge of blue will make it purple. (remember the black/blue, gold/white dress Fiasco? Simple way to solve that is to cover one colour and don't let the other colour interfere.)  That's why it's very important to Spyder your computer screens to know that you are seeing accurate colours on the computer screen. So what's my point? My point is that you have to hone your visual perception, just like tennis player honing his skills (proprioception and vision). 

So you should read :

1) Art and Visual Perception by Rudolf Arnheim 

It's not an art book, but a psychology book. It looks into how our mind perceives visually. And by no means is it an easy book to read, for me and PQ (Pizza Queen), you can at most read 5-10 pages at a go then your mind gets clogged and you get a headache... Not literally but you know what I mean. It's like a medical student reading Last's Anatomy (especially the earlier editions).  

Next you'll be lost by all the jibber jabber of art, all the pompousness, the conceptual stuff or to some people B.S. So you should next read

2) Conceptual Art by Tony Godfrey.

Very clear history and understanding what the conceptual artists are about. And gives you a better perspective to view the new conceptual art that the younger / current artists are churning out. Not to say that there aren't other books, like Terry Smith. But this is easier (not easy) to read and Tony Godfrey is a clever and well exposed chap. If you could, you should go to his talks.

If you are into collecting art, (which is a really addictive hobby) then you should read

3) The Value of Art by Michael Findlay.

Very easy read. Puts alot of things in perspective without being too biased and his commercial experience is great.

And when you have decided to buy some art, you should read
4) The Art of Buying Art: How to buy and evaluate art like a professional collector by Alan Bamberger. It's a good easy read for the beginner, covers everything one should know to prevent yourself from being 'scammed'. Just read it recently in 2019, nothing I didn't know but that was learnt after many years of reading, research and real life experiences so this book helps you to scale the learning curve faster. And even if you knew things, it phrases your thoughts and gives you a different perspective. He also runs the website Art business which also has loads of articles to read. 

So far these are the books that make it into the Paintings at the Exhibitions Reading List. And with the knowledge that these books impart, you should be on your way to becoming an art aficionado and should be able to talk with artists, curators, collectors and galleries intelligently without needing to bluff your way through with pretentious jargon.

Note: We are currently going through Ng Woon Lam's new book "Practical Applications of Colour Theory and Design Concepts". Will let you know if it qualifies as essential reading.