About the Author

As the BBC's Arts Editor, Will Gompertz has interviewed and observed many of the world's leading artists, directors, novelists, musicians, actors and designers. Creativity Magazine in New York ranked him as one of the 50 most original thinkers in the world. He is the author of the international bestselling art history book What Are You Looking At? which has been published in over 15 languages.

Reviews

Will Gompertz is the best teacher you never had
*Guardian*

He is a natural communicator whose passion for art is expressed with wit and verve
*Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate, on Will Gompertz*

Robert Hughes's The Shock of the New redone à la Bill Bryson ... few are the histories of modern art that name check Beyonce, David Foster Wallace and Susan Boyle, describe the saturnine Paul Cezanne as the 'Cool Hand Luke of the Parisian avant garde' ... Filter (s) out all jargon and pretension and filter (s) in plenty of fun ... A richly detailed and highly entertaining history from Delacroix to Damien Hirst ****
*Telegraph*

Gompertz flicks through a mental Rolodex of the world's most famous images and describes them with a freshness and vividity that brings them to life
*The Times*

Gompertz writes about difficult things - the birth of conceptualism, the link between the pyramidal compositions of Géricault's Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People - without letting on that they are difficult ... this romp through art from the 1860s to now is both hugely accessible and old-fashionedly educative
*Independent on Sunday*

A lively train-ride through the art movements of the modern period ...While he doesn't dumb down the subject, he does take a fresh, energetic approach ... He explains movements and "isms" with clarity and humour
*Scotsman*

Gompertz has written an energetic and comprehensive romp through modern art
*Independent*

Will Gompertz is a natural communicator whose passion for art is expressed with wit and verve
*Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate Gallery*