Text by Fiona He

The first decade of the 21st century had barely passed when T.J. Clark released The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing, a book that records, in a diary-like form, his repeated viewing of two oil paintings by Nicolas Poussin, a representative figure of 17th-century French classicism: Landscape with a Calm and Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake. Clark's deeply personal inner experiences shaped the way he approached these works, and his belief that “painting is like a mirror” responding to contemporary viewpoints, combined with his attempt at an in-depth and meticulous study, made this experiment a successful one.