menu
{ "item_title" : "How It Feels to Be Alive", "item_author" : [" Megan O'Grady "], "item_description" : "A vital testament to how art makes us who we are--and offers new ways of seeing our world and our lives.Barbara Kruger once defined art as the ability to show and tell, through a kind of eloquent shorthand, how it feels to be alive. Testing that claim, Megan O'Grady takes us on a journey to explore art's intimate effects and how it might help us find clarity in an uncertain world. When O'Grady was a teenager, she saw a photograph in a museum that changed her life. When she was at the end of an early marriage, art stoked new ways of thinking about connection and transformation. When she was a new parent, it guided her to confront vulnerability and shame. Whether she was seeking a home or contending with crises personal, political, and ecological, art was a critical lifeline, a source of beauty, solace, and provocation. Looking closely at five artworks and the context in which each was made--and often drawing on personal conversations with the artists--O'Grady traces the works' rippling impacts, suggesting sometimes unexpected lineages and genres. How does art expand and redirect our imagination and attention? When bottom-line or nihilistic thinking dominates our public sphere, what meanings and alternatives does art offer? A vital call to engage deeply, to see in new ways, and to consider all that we take for granted, How It Feels to Be Alive inspires and exhorts, providing a template for thinking through the knottiest problems in our culture and our selves, and the connections between the two.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers4.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/37/461/332/037461332X_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "29.00", "online_price" : "29.00", "our_price" : "29.00", "club_price" : "29.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "" } }
How It Feels to Be Alive|Megan O'Grady

How It Feels to Be Alive : Encounters with Art and Our Selves

local_shippingShip to Me
In Stock.
FREE Shipping for Club Members help

Overview

A vital testament to how art makes us who we are--and offers new ways of seeing our world and our lives.

Barbara Kruger once defined art as the ability "to show and tell, through a kind of eloquent shorthand, how it feels to be alive." Testing that claim, Megan O'Grady takes us on a journey to explore art's intimate effects and how it might help us find clarity in an uncertain world.

When O'Grady was a teenager, she saw a photograph in a museum that changed her life. When she was at the end of an early marriage, art stoked new ways of thinking about connection and transformation. When she was a new parent, it guided her to confront vulnerability and shame. Whether she was seeking a home or contending with crises personal, political, and ecological, art was a critical lifeline, a source of beauty, solace, and provocation.

Looking closely at five artworks and the context in which each was made--and often drawing on personal conversations with the artists--O'Grady traces the works' rippling impacts, suggesting sometimes unexpected lineages and genres. How does art expand and redirect our imagination and attention? When bottom-line or nihilistic thinking dominates our public sphere, what meanings and alternatives does art offer?

A vital call to engage deeply, to see in new ways, and to consider all that we take for granted, How It Feels to Be Alive inspires and exhorts, providing a template for thinking through the knottiest problems in our culture and our selves, and the connections between the two.

    1

Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780374613327
  • ISBN-10: 037461332X
  • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Publish Date: April 2026
  • Dimensions: 8.54 x 5.62 x 1.14 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 0.92 pounds
  • Page Count: 272

Related Categories

BAM Customer Reviews