Each year 11 million people trek to the Louvre to gawk at the Mona Lisa. Many visitors clutch guide books in hand describing the painting. For some, it's the experience of a lifetime, one they'll talk about with friends and family for decades. Yet some modern researchers say that the vast majority of people will never recognize the hidden messages in this painting. That's because those hidden messages are subliminal. Buried below the threshold of conscious awareness, Da Vinci used techniques people never notice. Not only don't people know what they're seeing, they would be shocked to find out. A surprisingly large number of famous paintings fall into the same category. That is, they employ subliminal techniques to enhance the effectiveness of the work or to encode messages within portraits and landscapes. No book, however, has ever attempted to provide an overview of the technical sophistication and arcane methods that artists worldwide have used to conceal secret meaning in their work. Every Picture Hides a Story is the first book to expose the subliminal content in the world's greatest paintings. Titillating, subversive, and building on the groundbreaking work of pioneers of art criticism, this book will enable readers to view art masterpieces with greater understanding. And their enjoyment of these works will be exponentially enhanced. This full-color book contains 90 images of the paintings and their details.
William Cane has lectured about the subliminal content in great paintings for three decades. A highly sought-after speaker on the college lecture circuit, he has appeared at more than 400 colleges and universities across the United States and Canada. A close personal friend of Dr.Wilson Bryan Key-the world's leading authority on subliminal advertising-Cane edited Key's final manuscript about the subliminal devices used in contemporary art. A former trial attorney, Cane is the author of a dozen books, including the international bestseller The Art Of Kissing (St. Martin's Press 1991, revised editions 1995, 2005), translated into twenty languages. With more than 200,000 copies sold in the United States, that title is a backlist staple for St. Martin's. Cane is also the author of a bestselling book about the Yankees, Clubhouse Confidential (with Luis Castillo, St. Martin's 2011), The New Testosterone Treatment (with Edward Friedman, Prometheus Books 2013), The Birth Order Book of Love (Da Capo 2008), Fiction Writing Master Class (Writer's Digest 2015), Sleeping Your Way to the Top (with W. David Brown and Terry Cralle, Sterling Publishing 2016) as well as six other nonfiction books. Cane has appeared on more than a hundred radio and television programs talking about his books. He has been a guest on almost every major television talk show, including Today (twice), The View (three times), Dr. Oz, and Good Morning America. Cane taught English and public speaking at the City University of New York from 2007 to 2019, and he taught English at Boston College from 1987 to 2000. He is also an image consultant at Manhattan Makeovers, specializing in helping attorneys and other professionals enhance their image through understanding the subliminal effect of color and other elements of their wardrobe. A former commercial pilot for a major airline, Athena Pettit was educated at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Harvard Extension School, and the Smithsonian Institution, where she earned a certificate in world art history. Combining work with an abiding love of art, she has traveled to every major city in the world to study paintings in leading museums and collections. She has examined firsthand the works of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Sargent, Eakins, and many others in Rome, Florence, Milan, Venice, Paris, London, Moscow, St.Petersburg, Beijing, Tokyo, Kyoto, Buenos Aires, Santiago, Athens, Reykjavik, New York, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. A native New Yorker, Ms. Pettit's mother is a physician who instilled a love of the arts in her from an early age.
Introduction Leonardo da Vinci Michelangelo Raphael Hans Holbein the Younger El Greco Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio Artemisia Gentileschi Diego Velazquez Rembrandt van Rijn Johannes Vermeer Thomas Gainsborough Francisco Goya Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Edgar Degas Winslow Homer Paul Cezanne Berthe Morisot Pierre-Auguste Renoir Mary Cassatt Thomas Eakins Vincent van Gogh John Singer Sargent Gustav Klimt Frida Kahlo Andrew Wyeth
A breath of fresh air in the analysis of classic art! I'm delighted to recommend Every Picture Hides a Story, which focuses on my favorite artists and is illustrated with prime examples of their paintings. In a breezy informal manner these up-and-coming New York Times bestselling authors examine 23 brilliantly chosen painters from the 16th to 20th century. Starting with the great luminaries Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael, and ending with the lesser-known Godward, Klimt, and Alma-Tadema, their book is a feast for the eyes--and mind!--a veritable banquet of aesthetic tastes with surprising revelations on every page.--Vern G. Swanson, author of J.W. Godward 1861-1922: The Eclipse of Classicism It's not so long ago that a doctrine known as 'Formalism' maintained that paintings could be reduced to arrangements of shape, color and formal arrangement, without bothering to consider other messages they might convey. Every Picture Tells a Story is a refreshing departure from this approach. Not only do paintings tell stories, this book demonstrates, but as is the way with good stories, they delve down into mysterious hidden secrets. Whether considering the gender-bending aspects of Leonardo's Mona Lisa or the anamorphic skull and inconsistent shadows of Holbein's The Ambassadors, this provocative book makes a good case that the things that are most interesting about paintings are the stories that lurk below the surface, just on the fringe of conscious awareness. In other words their secrets--often naughty secrets. After reading this book, you'll never look at paintings the same way again. It's not unlike getting a new set of eyes--ones which unlike the former pair are equipped with x-ray vision.--Henry Adams, Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Packed with intriguing insights, the kind that come from both close looking and careful research of the paintings' backstories. Beyond being entertaining, this book is a useful contribution to our understanding of these masterworks.--Peter Trippi, Editor-in-Chief, Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine One does not have to accept every single one of the authors' daring new ideas to recognise that they have looked at the works of art they discuss with passionate intensity, and - crucially - convey their inspiring enthusiasm with rare mastery.--David P.M. Ekserdjian, Professor of History of Art and Film at the University of Leicester, and a specialist in the art of the Italian Renaissance
