'...visually stunning and mentally stimulating' - "Scientific American". 'the author of "What Painting Is" (1998) has written a fascinating new book filled with gorgeous illustrations that would inspire us 'to learn to see anything.' It's a tall order, to be sure, but one that the author pulls off admirably!. "How to Use Your Eyes" is a wondrous visual tour that Elkins hopes will help us 'learn to use our eyes more concertedly until the details of the world slowly reveal themselves.' Readers will be inspired to stop and smell - nay, see - the roses' - "Booklist".'Elkins invites his readers to extend perception beyond narrow specialties to see meaning in the mundane. He is ever curious, his mind seemingly in overdrive' - "Chicago Tribune Magazine". 'In that fascinating zone where creative imagination and scientific observation meet, Elkins shines a conceptual flashlight, aiming to illuminate in 32 short chapters a fraction of what we are missing daily. He asks us to use our eyes and our minds differently, to see the world as few of us bother to see it because we rarely make the effort' - "Library Journal".Grass, the night sky, a postage stamp, a crack in the sidewalk, a shoulder are ordinary objects of everyday life. But when we look at them - really look at them - what do we see? In the tradition of John Berger's bestselling "Ways of Seeing", James Elkins' "How to Use your Eyes" invites us to look at - and maybe see for the first time - the world around us, with breathtaking results. Here are the common artifacts of life, often misunderstood and largely ignored, brought into striking focus. A butterfly's wing pattern encodes its identity. A cloudless sky yields a precise sequence of colors at sunset. A bridge reveals the relationship of a population with its landscape. With the discerning eye of a painter and the zeal of a detective, Elkins also explores complicated things like mandalas, the periodic table, or a hieroglyph, remaking the world into a treasure box of observations - eccentric, ordinary, marvelous. "How to Use Your Eyes" will transform your view of nature and the mind.

詹姆斯.埃尔金斯，美国芝加哥美术学院美术史论与批评戏主任，爱尔兰科克大学学院美术史系主任，著有《绘画与泪水》、《身体的图象：痛苦与变形》、《图象之城》、《何为绘画》、《透视诗学》、《对象的反视：论看的本质》、《我们的图象为什么会令人迷惑不解》、《为什么艺术是不能教的？》、《批评怎么了？》、《艺术的种种故事》、《视觉研究：一种怀疑性的导论》以及《视觉品味-如何用你的眼睛》