The Glass Age by Cole SwensenAlice James Books, 2007

A book about “what it is to see, and what it is to look through” (p 7). Swensen writes about window-glass and canvas: Pierre Bonnard’s paintings, Caillebotte’s “Young Man at His Window,” Alberti’s De Pictura, Hammershøi’s paintings of doors and light. Light and surfaces: where perspective draws the eye, or curiosity: a small object in the corner of the frame. Or what’s outside the window, how space stretches out. (Or what’s inside the window: the lit room from outside.) I like how smart this book is: it’s allusiveness is pleasing, always apt instead of showy.