I have never taken an art history class so this book was very enlightening for me. It really teaches you how to look at art. I liked this quote on the cover: "Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak." There are seven essays which can be read in any order. Four of them are images and words and three of them uses only images.

Essay 1: We connect or disconnect art by looking at it. Art has become political. Art is reproducible.

Essay 2: Just images. Mostly, women are shown in the paintings and photographs.

Essay 3: Women have a presence in art. Women are often looked at.

Essay 4: Just images. They are mostly portraits (paintings).

Essay 5: Oil Paintings: "Oil paintings often depict things. Things which in reality are buyable. To have a thing painted and put on a canvas is not unlike buying it and putting it in your house. If you buy a painting you buy also the look of the thing it represents." Page 83 Some oil paintings showed what money could buy.

Essay 6: Images: Paintings of people and animals.

Essay 7: Publicity
Advertisements make us think that a product will make our life better. "The purpose of publicity is to make the spectator marginally dissatisfied with his present way of life. Not with the way of life of society, but with his own within it. It suggests that if he buys what it is offering, his life will become better. It offers him an alternative to what he is." Page 142 Publicity is culture.