The first time I stepped into an art gallery I was lost. I didn’t know how to engage with the the works that were mounted and framed on the walls. I didn’t know how to read or find a narrative in the beautiful, sometimes disturbing pictures that I was seeing. Manguel’s book Reading Pictures: What We think About When Look At Art is not a how to book, it makes no pretentious claims about what the reader should have achieved after closing the back cover, instead what his book offers are few examples of how certain art works can be interpreted based on common understandings, iconography or image writing.

The above excerpt is from Kwame Slusher’s review of Reading Pictures: What We Think When We Look at Art by Alberto Manguel, this week’s addition to the Fresh Milk Books Tumblr – the online space inviting interaction with our collection in the Colleen Lewis Reading Room.

For new Critical. Creative. Fresh reviews every week, look out for our #CCF Weekly posts and see the great material we have available at Fresh Milk!