All the Pictures

All the pictures below are drawn from Looking At Pictures, a collection of Robert Walser’s joyful musings on art, which make most art criticism sound like highfalutin twaddle. A delicious line from each essay has been plucked to serve as a peephole into the piece.

Turn your eye on Cézanne, Fragonard, and Van Gogh and see what Walser saw. Never have essays on classical art been such a pleasure and delight to read, thanks in no small part to translators Susan Bernofsky, Lydia Davis, and Christopher Middleton.

Enjoy, slugabeds!