In Pursuit of Art

The new book by English art historian and critic Martin Gayford (b. 1952), author of collections of interviews with David Hockney and Lucian Freud, studies on British painting of the 1960s-1980s, Van Gogh, and Michelangelo, is an engaging art-themed travelogue: it gathers stories of unique pilgrimages to the shrines of classical and contemporary art. Proving the thesis that any artwork, and especially a great one, can only be fully perceived and felt in person (not in reproduction), Gayford shares his impressions of trips to Dordogne to view the Paleolithic Lascaux cave, to Tiruvannamalai, the center of the Indian cult of Shiva, to the museum of minimalist sculpture in the town of Marfa (Texas), as well as encounters with artists - Anselm Kiefer, Marina Abramovich, Robert Rauschenberg, and others - in their studios.