I fell in love with this art book and may buy a copy for our homeschool. It's divided into sections that each have a theme, like exploring religion or boundaries or a different relationship with the subject. Each one tells you the artist's country, birth-death, who else to look at for similar works and more, plus goes into several paragraphs about the artist and the piece. I appreciate that the author is female and includes a ton of female artists and one famous non-binary artist I had never heard of, and she gives a decidedly progressive take on the history of the artists and their work. It's easy to read, frequently fascinating, and filled with honestly great art. It does have more European art than art from elsewhere, but there's still great diversity. You'll find many of the "greats" here but also some new artists to look up. I really enjoyed it.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book via NetGalley.

Look At This If You Love Great Art is an engaging and accessible examination of 100 works of art presented by Chloë Ashby. Due out 6th April 2021 from Quarto on their Ivy Press imprint, it's 224 pages and will be available in hardcover and ebook formats.

This is such a well written and erudite book of art criticism. Despite never having had much formal art education (music was my groove), I had no trouble understanding and following the salient points made by the author. Many of the works are so well known they've become a part of the collective consciousness. The commentary invites the reader to take a new look at them as the artists likely intended (as artworks and not as a vehicle to sell tea or cars to consumers). Additionally many of these works were previously unfamiliar to me and I enjoyed being exposed to new artists and works to follow.

The entries for each work contain the artist's name, the title of the work, the date (of completion?), and a description and commentary. Additionally, each of the entries contains further resources for a deeper look at allied artists' works, the physical collection in which the artwork resides, and books/films/podcasts which will provide further enhancing information with which to experience the artwork. The entries also include a color photo of each work which is high enough definition to get a good idea about the piece and examine general details.

The book's chapters are arranged thematically: works with strong emotional responses, nudes, revolutionary works, religion & myth, dreams & fantasy, ordinary objects, nature, political and social commentary, relational works, and land-/city-scapes.

This would make a superlative selection for library acquisition, maker's spaces, artist's studios, classroom, and home use.

Five stars. Not at all dry or inaccessible.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

This is probably my new favourite book - very informative and essential for anyone who loves art and even those who don’t. A brilliant introduction to an eclectic mix of artworks, some famous, some less so. It would make a fabulous gift for anyone who appreciates art or even the perfect coffee table book. I particularly like the suggested reading links, lists of other artists and places to visit associated with each artist featured in the different chapters. Highly recommend and will be ordering a hard copy for my collection of art books.

Thanks for the opportunity to review this book! I read the other two in this collection: photography and music. This series looks at collections of 100-item curated lists designed to display the best of art — now that’s a hard task. To only have 100? I recognized the challenge primarily when reading the music list. Everybody is going to have an opinion on this stuff. Everyone is going to say, well, I would’ve chose X and not Y. It’s just the nature of these things.

Out of the three books I’ve read in this collection, I like this one and the music one the best. I think that the range of art work showed in this book was interesting, vibrant, and educational. I like art and I have been to the museums around the world, and yet know very little about it all. I appreciate the beauty and the talent, but I’ve never been able to match artists to paintings (outside of the famous ones) or date something by a glance. It’s something I’ve always been interested in, so I actually found it pretty valuable to see a collection like this as a primer to the subject. I am curious to see how a seasoned aficionado would like this book. I know a loooot about music and music history, so I nitpicked the music book; I wonder if artists would do the same!

In all seriousness, I liked this book a lot. I think that it provides some really great details about art and its impacts, as well as its versatility and importance.

This book would make an excellent coffee table book and a nice book to keep on hand at homes as it will make such an inspiring conversation starter. I enjoy the book's design, it is easy to read, and the additional information (read, visit etc.) is fun to explore.

Look At This If You Love Great Art is a brilliant selection of 100 pieces of famous and not so famous pieces of art. I loved looking at the pictures and then reading the extra information provided. There were so many links and suggestions for further reading and investigation. My favourite painting was by Frida Kahlo and I really appreciated all the background information provided by the author. I spent ages browsing through the book and will definitely be ordering a hard copy for my coffee table.

I was excited to be given a proof copy of this book, but I found it quite a dull read and not sure about the art work chosen. Not for me.

I love the chapter titles in this book. Here are just a few: You Can’t Leave Your Hat On; Troubled Dreams; To the Barricades and Natural Wonders. There is wit here too, as, for example, the section with leaving one’s hat on is actually about nudes. There are ten chapters in all and 100 artworks discussed.

The author’s goal was to include both well and lesser known artists. She also wanted to cover a wide time period. Both the selections and commentary held my interest.

A feature of this book that I very much liked was about links. These include the topics “see this, visit this, read this, watch this, listen to this and like this? try these.” These greatly add to what readers can get from the book itself.

I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to know a bit more about history. It is very well done.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this title. All opinions are my own.

Well I took to this a lot more than I did its sister volume, concerning a hundred albums you should try and like (I tried, I didn't). Here our journalist and novelist guide takes us through a hundred artworks, forming a new option of a canon, meaning there are not always the usual and expected masterpieces (the van Gogh is especially an unexpected choice), but definitely a wide range that does manage to include some out-and-out classics. So for every birth of Venus we get a Hockney, ugly modernist ideas of nudes or pastry cooks sit alongside our waitress friend whose reflection is on the wonk, and so on. I certainly appreciated being brought to Girodet's "Endymion", one of the finest works I've so belatedly come to know.

For all the erudite discussion of the works, what they mean and wherefrom they came, though, we get the usual bordering-on-useless box-outs and infobanks to go with the style of the series. So we're often told where the pieces can be see in real life, as well as what and who else we should feel in the mood to explore further. These links away, when they leave painted and sculpted art behind, to bring in anything from novels to Arcade Fire tracks, seem rather too spurious to trouble with ("like Gaugain? Then read Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness'!!"). What would have been much more useful is an indication of size – I think a Hepworth is lessened without knowing the dimension, and she's not alone. The Picasso here demands us knowing the medium, but it's not even mentioned.

Design-wise, the art works are presented well – only the curse of the centrefold struggling to get them across, and my digital copy avoiding that problem, of course. Script-wise, the plaint about the lack of women's prominence in art history comes across as a bit too 'woke' and of the moment, and could have been served with one grandstanding mention and not the many it gets. You don't get anything like a history of art here – there is no way you would piece together this person with that movement and that precedent. But the melange of different creations does provide for some kind of canon, and as far as a tasting menu can go to showing off a master chef, so this book can most suitably show off some of the most beautiful, distinctive, notorious or just pointless artworks that curators and art viewers alike can possibly hold dear. But... no Dali??

Thank you to the publishers and netgalley for a free ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I liked the thematic nature of this book and the variety of art shown.

No modern or trendy artworks but a nice collection not all well known works with some female and minority artists. The chapter titles are fun. Feels as it is grouped to help write an essays.

If you like a variety of art including modern, then this is a great coffee table book to pick up and review in short bursts. Or read it from cover to cover and mark the pages to go back to . Good references for further research and bio on artist. Informative and varied. Thank you #Netgalley for the advance copy

I liked this a lot even though it was different than I expected. This is a brilliant series of very brief info on many paintings grouped together with a little whimsy. It is a jumping-off point for art and these pieces, and doesn't have any depth. It will be great for those new to art or just curious, and not for anyone with much knowledge of art. Recommended.

I really appreciate the ARC for review!!

Pros: As someone who wished she had majored in Art History, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. From the digital copy I read, I assume that the printed copy of this book will be lovely with full-page photos of the artwork discussed. When reading the author's note at the beginning of the book, I was thrilled to read her intention to feature artists who were not all white and male. This book features 100 pieces of art and connects pieces that may not at first glance seem to have anything in common. This book is fantastic for readers who appreciate further learning--it offers suggestions of podcasts and music to listen to, articles and books (fiction and nonfiction) to read, museums to visit, and additional artists and artworks to explore. After reading this book once, I went back through to make a note of all the fiction books suggested as further reading because I love reading about art and artists.

Cons: None except that this book reminded me how much I miss travel and museums/galleries during the pandemic.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quatro Publishing Group - Ivy Press for the opportunity to read this book!

I can't imagine loving a book of art criticism more than I loved this book. From the beginning, its erudition and warmth and enthusiasm reminded me of another one of my favorite authors of historical, artistic, and literary history, Simon Schama. Then I saw on the page I was reading, at the time, that Ashby happened to be recommending one of Schama's books to me as a way to increase my understanding of her theme. It's a book I'd not known about before: Rembrandt's Eyes--and I immediately requested from my library.

Such lovely synergies kept happening as I read on. This book is such a treasure trove of thoughtful art criticism, history, and suggestions for further study. Each page of Ashby's book provided new leaping-off points. I especially loved the literary tie-ins that Ashby suggests about the art she's critiquing. Some of her suggestions are directly relevant, like Schama's book about Rembrandt, on the page about Rembrandt's early self-portrait; others are marvelous leaps of thought, like when Ashby suggests I read Reni Eddo-Lodges's "Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People about Race" as a way to meditate more deeply on Manet's "Portrait of a Black Woman," or suggesting I read Elizabeth Strout's novel "Olive Kitteridge" after pondering the quiet strength of Vilhelm Hammershoi's painting "Rest".

Some of the art work here was familiar, but Ashby opened my eyes to see it in new ways--to ponder, for instance, the audacity of Courbet's "Desperate Man" self-portrait painted when he was only twenty-four. Other works were completely new to me. I enjoyed the ahistorical choices Ashby made, where works were arranged through loose themes rather than chronologically. It's a book that looks for human connections across the ages rather than emphasizing historical differences.

One of the delightful if vicarious pleasures, since I read this book in covid times, is imagining a time when I might be able to see some of these works for myself--and Ashby lets me know along the way where each of the works she critiques exists in the real world. It's the right book at the right time for me. It's one of the most pleasurable times I've ever spent with a book.

I'm reviewing this book as an e-ARC thanks to the publisher but it's a keeper for me--I plan to buy it as soon as I can.

Art is one of the most personal things in life. To postulate a “100 essential art” is an individual”s view, if not a preposterous undertaking. Add to it the author’s statement: “I set my sights beyond the mostly white, mostly male canon.” To squeeze magnificent art into a tiny woke drawer irks me. The military style user guide “See this! Visit this! Listen to this!” did not do much for me either. The chapters (e.g. “You Can Leave Your Hat On” or “The Balance Of Power”) intrigued me more and made it possible to jump between styles and centuries, so that each work came as a surprise. Ashby eases us in with a Rembrandt self-portrait, a Courbet eye candy and a tranquil Hammerskøi, but do not relax yet. You get a Rothko - two blue squares on a maroon background - and It is supposed to “spark a potent response”. Nope, nothing for me.
I liked the proffered hand to walk me through paintings, with snippets of the artist’s life and their context in history, but often the tone was too coercive - you MUST feel what I, the author, feels.
In these lockdown days and months, I miss galleries enormously and this book gave me a long list of must-sees to look forward to.
One of my (lofty) ideas when reqesting an ARC of this book was to reallyreally try and understand more about abstract art. Alas, Twombly, Malevich, Rothko, Mondrian...nope, you have not convinced me of their worth. And to follow up a Pieter van Bruegel masterpiece on Icarus with the crime-scene outline of the same subject by Matisse is almost an insult.

Minus: too French-centric, too wimmin-centric, too “tick-boxy”, a fair share of what I call “p***-take art”
Plus: given me great enthusiasm to go out and seek art, dwell on viewing paintings, remember artists I’d forgotten about (Dorothea Tanning) and discover artists yet unknown to me (Caillebotte)

Typos: Bruegel (not Breugel), Akademie der Bildenden Künste (not Künst), cherubim (not cherubin)