Is there an audiobook of What Are You Looking At??

Yes. What Are You Looking At? has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Matthew Waterson.

How long is the What Are You Looking At? audiobook?

The What Are You Looking At? audiobook runs 13 hr 59 min.

Is What Are You Looking At? on Kindle Unlimited?

No. What Are You Looking At? was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 1, 2026.

What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art by Will Gompertz book cover for the Book of the Day art book review

Our score

4.4/ 5

Excellent

Listen to What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

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EDITION PUBLISHEDSeptember 2013

Genres

Non-Fiction Art Humor

Themes

Why modern art looks the way it doesRebellion as the engine of art historyDemystifying the avant-gardeThe gap between art and its audience

What Are You Looking At?The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

Name: What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art
Price: 10.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Will Gompertz

Will Gompertz

Will Gompertz's What Are You Looking At? is a witty, fast-moving tour through 150 years of modern art that finally makes the whole baffling parade make sense. It's the book for anyone who has stood before a blank canvas in a museum and thought, surely they're joking.

The Review

Our take

Modern art has a public-relations problem, and Gompertz knows exactly what it is. People suspect they're being had — that the urinal, the soup can, the unmade bed are an elaborate inside joke at the viewer's expense. His book is a sustained, good-humored answer to that suspicion. As a former director at the Tate, he has the credentials, but he writes like the friend who actually explains the punchline instead of smirking that you wouldn't get it.

He runs the story chronologically from the Impressionists to the present, and the chronology is the secret weapon. Each movement becomes a reaction to the one before, a deliberate rule-break in a conversation that's been running for over a century. Cubism makes sense once you see what it was rebelling against; Duchamp's readymades land once you understand the question he was needling. Gompertz is a gifted storyteller, full of vivid anecdotes — the rivalries, the manifestos, the stunts — and he uses them to humanize artists who can seem like remote brand names. The jokes are frequent and genuinely funny, never at the expense of the argument.

The accessibility comes at a cost, and Gompertz pays it knowingly. Specialists will find simplifications, and the breezy tone occasionally flattens artists into anecdotes about themselves. He's better on the famous turning points than on the quiet decades between them, and a reader who already knows this material may want more depth and fewer one-liners. The book is a doorway, not a destination, and it doesn't pretend otherwise.

What it does superbly is restore the reader's confidence. By the end you don't just know the names; you have a working theory of why modern art looks the way it does and what its makers were arguing about. That's a real gift, because the intimidation factor is precisely what keeps people out of the galleries Gompertz loves. He treats the reader as smart but uninitiated, and he initiates without condescension.

He's especially good at the connective tissue most surveys skip — the why between the what. Why a generation of painters suddenly cared about light rather than line; why photography forced art to stop competing for realism and go looking for something cameras couldn't do; how a single provocation could ripple forward for decades. Gompertz treats art history as a living argument rather than a sequence of masterpieces to be admired in silence, and that framing is genuinely clarifying. He wants you to see the reasoning, not just the result, and he trusts you to keep up once he's handed you the thread.

Why you should read

Anyone intimidated or baffled by modern art
Readers who like history delivered with jokes
Museumgoers who want to fake it less
Fans of accessible, anecdote-rich nonfiction

What to expect

A brisk, funny, conversational tour
Chronological storytelling movement by movement
Vivid anecdotes over scholarly depth
A confidence-building doorway, not a deep dive

I came away wanting to go back to museums I'd written off, which is the highest praise I can give a book like this. It turns a wall of bewilderment into a story with characters and stakes. You'll laugh more than you expect to, and you'll leave able to hold your own in front of a canvas that used to make you feel stupid — which, for most of us, is the whole point.

Reviewed by Ellis · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.4/ 5

Excellent

Listen to What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of What Are You Looking At??: Yes. What Are You Looking At? has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Matthew Waterson.
Listen to What Are You Looking At? free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the What Are You Looking At? audiobook?: The What Are You Looking At? audiobook runs 13 hr 59 min.
Is What Are You Looking At? on Kindle Unlimited?: No. What Are You Looking At? was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 1, 2026.
How much does What Are You Looking At? cost?: On Amazon: Kindle $10.99, Paperback $17.94, Hardcover $28.28. Prices as of August 27, 2026 at 3:45 AM EDT and may change.

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Common questions

What is What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art about?: Modern art has a public-relations problem, and Gompertz knows exactly what it is. People suspect they're being had — that the urinal, the soup can, the unmade bed are an elaborate inside joke at the viewer's expense. His book is a sustained, good-humored answer to that suspicion. As a former…
Is What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art worth reading?: We scored What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art 4.4 out of 5. Will Gompertz's What Are You Looking At? is a witty, fast-moving tour through 150 years of modern art that finally makes the whole baffling parade make sense. It's the book for anyone who has stood before a blank canvas in a museum and thought, surely they're joking.