The Restless Gaze

How to enjoy art with your own eyes

One of the moment’s most popular historians explains why art is for everyone

Eugenia Tenenbaum brings to life for us in this book historical periods from Antiquity to the 20th century, helping us to truly enjoy the works of art that appeared in those eras. Thanks to her accessible prose, the immense pleasure of art will be within our reach with no other requirement than our desire to look at it.

On this tour, however, we will be forced to look again and again to find something new. Because questioning what we know is the only way to better understand who we are, and to make art something of importance for everyone.

The way we understand medieval Islamic art affects the way we react to current migratory conflicts. Our disinterest in the works of Hilma af Klint, Maria Blanchard or Lee Krasner affects the way we treat our women colleagues at work, our mothers, our sisters, our partners. Herein resides the importance of the restless gaze, of seeing where others do not see, where injustice is disguised as knowledge.