Eyes to See

Inviting you to explore and contemplate the great art of the worldSomewhere, sometime in the course of casual encounters with art, an icon may emerge and claim its person: an image that startles and calls to you, that separates from its setting to inhabit your mind and heart. With these words Roger Lipsey introduces the theme, and sparkling challenge, of this book.With more than sixty full-page, full-color illustrations of the worlds great art, Eyes to See is a feast for eye and mindand heart. Through his selection of works and his enlightening, accessible commentaries, Lipsey renews for our time Andr Malrauxs museum without walls. What is the spiritual and how is it present in art? Allow this book to show you. It explores whole worlds of art, from ancient Egypt and the Mediterranean to medieval Europe and the Renaissance, India, the Far East, and the world of Islam. Lipseys approach encourages new understandingsfelt, contemplative, inquiringand offers readers a lasting orientation for their own future explorations.Icons emerge from the fog of things and make themselves known. You have no initial idea that you will cherish one work of art or anotheruntil the moment of recognition, when light flashes into some little known or vital corner of self. The encounter engages not just the mind but also feeling and body in a moment of knowing, of surprise and delight, of measuring both what one is today and ones sense of direction. The response is quite total, a memorable event. Adoption occurs: the image becomes part of oneself.