Will Gompertz’s story-driven survey of modern art - 150 years, Impressionism to now, written to read like a novel, not a textbook. Gompertz ran Tate’s media for seven years, then was the BBC’s first arts editor (now Director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum). This is the literacy base layer under all my single-artist dives: the map of the rooms, before the deep looking.
The title is its own quiet echo - What Are You Looking At? against RM × SFMOMA’s Between You and Me. Both about the act of looking, the charge between viewer and work. (See RM × SFMOMA, Between You and Me.)
Provenance - where he pointed
Pointed at by Namjoon.
RM’s @rkive Instagram story, 260303 (early Mar 2026) - the Korean edition on a coffee table beside Donald Judd: Furniture and a whiskey glass, hearts over the stack.
Why it matters - the door
I saw him reading it and I want to read it.
Editions
The one in his story is the Korean edition (yellow cover). For my own reading (per my prefs, I skip the Korean original):
- English: What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art - Dutton (Penguin USA), 2012, ISBN 9780525952671. (UK subtitle differs: 150 Years of Modern Art in the Blink of an Eye, Viking, 2012.)
- 繁中: 《現代藝術的故事》(舊題《看懂設計，你要懂的現代藝術》), 大是文化, 陳怡錚 譯 - 2024 EPUB ebook, ISBN 9786267448243. Check Readmoo. 大是 packaging is pop/marketing-loud; translation breezy and accessible.
- 简中: 《现代艺术150年：一个未完成的故事》, 广西师范大学出版社 / 理想国, 王烁・王同乐 譯, 2017, ISBN 9787549586646. Preface by 陈丹青. The more literary, carefully-produced edition.
- Translator note: 陳怡錚 (繁中, 大是 - breezy/popular) vs 王烁・王同乐 (简中, 理想国 - serious, with 陈丹青’s preface). Convenience → 繁中 Readmoo ebook; prestige packaging → 简中 理想国.
Grows into
Branches (my own reading)
- My read-through.
queued
Related seeds
- Donald Judd - same story, also legibly present (the Donald Judd: Furniture spine). A real second seed from the same frame. But Judd’s hard-edge minimalism is off my axis (the thing I said I’m not drawn to) - a spot where his eye and mine part. Plant it as a divergence, not a love.