Laura Noggle's Reviews > How Do We Look: The Body, the Divine, and the Question of Civilization

Renowned Cambridge classicist considers how we view art. Short and sweet.

"So much depends on who is looking, from ancient master or ancient slave to eighteenth-century connoisseur or twenty-first-century tourist. And so much depends on the context in which they look, whether ancient cemetery or temple, English stately home or modern museum. I am not sure that it is ever possible entirely to recreate the views of those who first saw classical art, and I am not sure that it is the be all and end all of our understanding anyway (the changing ways these objects have been seen through the centuries is an important part of their history too). But in *How Do We Look* I have tried to reflect the domestic ordinariness—and occasionally the flamboyance—of some ancient art, and I have tried to recapture something of 'the shock of the new.'"