Tom Phillips has created a discourse based on seventeenth and eighteenth century masterpieces in the collection at the Dulwich Picture Gallery. Desmond Shawe-Taylor writes that Phillips is "the ideal creative commentator, an artist of bewildering range and imagination and a writer of elegance and insight. His text is full of surprises; or as he puts it 'chance and risk are at the heart of the artistic enterprise.' He opens up the experience of art, exploring the overlap between creating and responding. the clarity of the writing masks the complexity of the issues. Tom Phillips's questioning leads in a daunting variety of directions, but this is an essential journey of discovery for those who believe in life beyond the label."The alphabetical structure of the book, where each letter of the alphabet is drawn with poetry from "A Humument," involves the topics of Abstraction, Beauty, Conservation, Detail, Education, Frame, Grammar etc. as related to specific paintings in the Dulwich. It enables Tom Phillips to write about classical art in an engaging fashion while relying on his rich background knowledge of mythology, music, literature, history, the Bible, African art, and psychology, -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.