Slow Looking: The Art of Nature is a unique celebration of the relationship between art and nature across millennia. Eschewing a linear narrative of art, this inspirational collection of artworks allows readers to make connections between the nature that surrounds them and the vision of a dazzling wide range of artists. Art historian Olivia Meehan has mixed paintings, drawings, sculpture, textiles, and decorative arts from across the globe in thought-provoking juxtapositions, inviting us to find something new in a familiar landscape and experiment in observing nature’s wonders.
Exploring the various intersections between artistic techniques and thematical elements across land, water, and sky, the pages reveal the deep-rooted connections between human beings and our natural world: the form and colors of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting of a shell echo a carved fossil from 500,000–300,000 BCE; Van Gogh’s olive trees (1889) are juxtaposed with ancient Egyptian carved limestone dated between 1353–1323 BCE; and while water lilies captivated Claude Monet, their allure also traveled to mid-18th century India in Hunhar II’s watercolor work.
Following nature’s patterns, Slow Looking: The Art of Nature takes readers on a journey from fields, mountains, forests, and glaciers to lakes, ponds, waterfalls, and rivers, and on to sunrises, rainbows, comets, clouds, constellations, and so much more. This guided observation of nature offers a whole new way of contemplating the world.
Reviews
This is a jewel of a book: an invitation for us to practice the essential art of looking, of slowing down. An animate celebration of nature and the myriad ways we have interpreted it across history.
— Edmund de Waal
The only way to see something is to look more slowly. That’s what this is book is showing us how to do.
— Jeanette Winterson
Olivia Meehan has gathered together an intoxicating world of images. Her book awakens the ecstatic potential in the encounter and contemplation of both nature and art.
— Sophie Fiennes
This beautiful collection of artworks and equally moving essays is the ideal guide for anyone wanting to adopt the ethos of slow-looking—a practice perfectly suited to viewing and experiencing art in nature. It will be a constant on my bookshelf, and I have no doubt I shall be regularly reaching for it.
— Maria Balshaw, Director of Tate
Contributors
Olivia Meehan
Author
Dr. Olivia Meehan is an art historian who makes connections between art, literature, nature, and gardens across continents and through centuries. Meehan’s gallery and museum experience is wide- ranging, from house museum collections to national and state collections, such as the Heide Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Victoria, National Gallery of Australia, and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection and Archivio Luigi Nono, both in Venice. She regularly contributes to The World of Interiors. Meehan has lectured art history at the University of Cambridge, Australian National University, and University of Melbourne.
Alice Vincent
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Lizzie Marx
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Miya Tokumitsu
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Harriet Baker
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