Eyes to See
Approaching the Spiritual in World Art
Roger Lipsey
Paperback
ISBN 9781966608097
$35.00 US
eBook available
February 24, 2026
Lushly illustrated reflections on the truth and meaning in great objects of art.
An innovative approach to the spiritual in world art. Roger Lipsey invites the reader to a contemplative look, to a look of the intelligence of the heart. In the silence of words, each art work speaks to the viewer and teaches a gesture, a posture, a meditation.
With “Eyes to See” a gaze is opened and discernment is refined as much as it allows itself to be touched, by truths eternally present at the heart of each work. “Eyes to See” then becomes a practical manual intended for the contemporary sensitized by the need to illuminate, within themselves, the chaotic world of art.
Through its remarkable eclecticism, this collection of “icons”—to use the author’s term here—takes the reader/viewer through eras and territories inspired by world history. The objective is not naively about knowledge but about seeing; because the eyes to see are those of the body and the soul as much as of the spirit which is not reduced to the intellect alone.
Roger Lipsey earned his PhD in art history from New York University in the 1960s, with a dissertation on Ananda Coomaraswamy. A biographer, art historian, and translator, Lipsey is the author of Coomaraswamy: His Life and Work; An Art of Our Own: The Spiritual in Twentieth-Century Art; Angelic Mistakes: The Art of Thomas Merton; Make Peace Before the Sun Goes Down: The Long Encounter of Thomas Merton and His Abbott, James Fox; and Hammarskjöld: A Life, which has been hailed as the definitive biography of Dag Hammarskjöld. He lives in Garrison, NY.
Blurbs for Lipsey’s previous books on art:
“An invaluable reminder of the purposes and possibilities of modern art. Exemplary.” —Kirkus
“It is not easy to write about the deeply wordless world from which these haunting images emerged, but at last the challenge to think out loud about this neglected side of Merton has been taken up by Roger Lipsey.” —Jim Forest, author, Living with Wisdom: A Life of Thomas Merton
“This astonishing book looks at an aspect of Merton’s life that has been almost ignored. Here we have access to that wordless, imageless experience that was nearer to him than life itself. It is a book to be read slowly, quietly, and repeatedly: a wonderful book.” —Sister Wendy Beckett, PBS host
