Encounters

People who know something about art also know how irritating talking about art can be. In this book, the art connoisseur Wolfgang Felten undertakes to reveal artworks as areas of experience outside of language. From a Khmer Buddha statue or an African mask to a drawing by Alberto Giacometti or a photograph by Dorothea Lange, the artist's commitment is to explain a phenomenon non-verbally: inviting us to experience how inanimate material can bring forth something that is alive. The artist appeals to our willingness to see: independently, intensively, and in a way that remains open to new experiences. In this unique and beautifully illustrated volume, Felten joins ranks with photographer Hubertus Hamm to show how great art refuses to surrender the visual to the argumentative. In a nutshell, as Ad Reinhardt once succinctly put it, "Art is art and everything else is everything else."