Art has changed. Those reassuringly familiar styles and movements that characterised art production prior to the twenty-first century have all vanished. Traditional artistic media no longer do what we expect of them. This book provides a straightforward, six-step programme for understanding contemporary art based on the concept of the tabula rasa - a clean slate and a fresh mind. Since artists increasingly work across traditional media and genres, the author has also developed an alternative classification system - 'Art as Entertainment', 'Art as Confrontation', 'Art as Joke' - designed to help make sense of otherwise obscure-seeming works. Ways of Looking transforms a potentially intimidating encounter with cuttingedge contemporary art into a dramatic, sensually rewarding and thoughtprovoking experience.
