“What we have are brief essays which never quite connect with one another to form what I imagined was the promise of the text: what is humanity about in its construction of image?”

This art book is beautifully rendered and offers a marvelous introductory tour to the history of image, written by an incisive and celebrated/denigrated author. Think of it as 20 or 30 5-page essays on selected works through the centuries, most in the last 150 years.

I was expecting a lot from it, I admit, since I have enjoyed/debated/wrestled with/hated upon Paglia’s various interviews and essays in the past. But, much like her book on poetry, Break, Blow, Burn, I was, to be honest, underwhelmed.

Outside of a few choice side passages and ironic asides, most of the book is fairly straightforward presentation of art history and brief biographies of the artists she has selected. Less time is spent on the works and the interpretations themselves. This was odd and frustrating to me since her stated premise for the book was to teach us how to “resee.” So, then, shouldn’t we be looking harder rather than wandering into the various cities Picasso lived? The occasional teasing comments throughout the book, such as “Penises have proved troublesome in Western art,” tell us there is so much more to see, if only she’d let us.

That discussion about the eras and periods of art, their premises, and their consequences, was far more interesting when it happened. But again, since she built the book around works of art rather than periods or movements, these passages often felt like side trails to the subject at hand rather than real illuminations. Had she built the book around the idea of movements as they relate to image, we might have fared better, perhaps.

As a result, what we have are brief essays which never quite connect with one another to form what I imagined was the promise of the text: what is humanity about in its construction of image? This broader, theoretical question might have been where Paglia could really step out and offer her take on what we’re up to, but she, far more safely, remains tucked into the background. In that case, what we have is a solid introductory art book, but little more.