Author: Martin Gayford Publisher: Thames & Hudson ISBN: 0500774242 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 340
Book Description
Martin Gayford’s masterful account of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s, illustrated by documentary photographs and the works themselves The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s has never before been told before as a single narrative. R. B. Kitaj’s proposal, made in 1976, that there was a “substantial School of London” was essentially correct but it caused confusion because it implied that there was a movement or stylistic group at work, when in reality no one style could cover the likes of Francis Bacon and also Bridget Riley. Modernists and Mavericks explores this period based on an exceptionally deep well of firsthand interviews, often unpublished, with such artists as Victor Pasmore, John Craxton, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Allen Jones, R. B. Kitaj, Euan Uglow, Howard Hodgkin, Terry Frost, Gillian Ayres, Bridget Riley, David Hockney, Frank Bowling, Leon Kossoff, John Hoyland, and Patrick Caulfield. But Martin Gayford also teases out the thread weaving these individual lives together and demonstrates how and why, long after it was officially declared dead, painting lived and thrived in London. Simultaneously aware of the influences of Jackson Pollock, Giacometti, and (through the teaching passed down at the major art school) the traditions of Western art from Piero della Francesca to Picasso and Matisse, the postwar painters were bound by their confidence that this ancient medium could do fresh and marvelous things, and explored in their diverse ways, the possibilities of paint.
Author: Martin Gayford Publisher: Thames & Hudson ISBN: 9780500294703 Category : London (England) Languages : en Pages : 392
Book Description
Sunday Times Art Book of the Year 2018'If you are interested in modern British art, the book is unputdownable. If you are not, read it.' - Grey Gowrie, Financial Times 'All the good stories, and more, are here ... this is a genuinely encyclopaedic work, unlike anything else I have come across on the topic, informed by a deep love and understanding of modern painting. Everybody interested in the subject should read it.' - Andrew Marr, Sunday Times A masterfully narrated account of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s, illustrated throughout with documentary photographs and works of art The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s is the story of interlinking friendships, shared experiences and artistic concerns among a number of acclaimed artists, including Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, David Hockney, Bridget Riley, Gillian Ayres, Frank Bowling and Howard Hodgkin. Drawing on extensive first-hand interviews, many previously unpublished, with important witnesses and participants, the art critic Martin Gayford teases out the thread connecting these individual lives, and demonstrates how painting thrived in London against the backdrop of Soho bohemia in the 1940s and 1950s and 'Swinging London' in the 1960s. He shows how, influenced by such different teachers as David Bomberg and William Coldstream, and aware of the work of contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock as well as the traditions of Western art from Piero della Francesca to Picasso and Matisse, the postwar painters were allied in their confidence that this ancient medium, in opposition to photography and other media, could do fresh and marvellous things. They asked the question 'what can painting do?' and explored in their diverse ways, but with equal passion, the possibilities of paint.
Author: Martin Gayford Publisher: Thames & Hudson ISBN: 0500770794 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 189
Book Description
“An extraordinary record of a great artist in his studio, it also describes what it feels like to be transformed into a work of art.” —ARTnews Lucian Freud (1922-2011), widely regarded as the greatest figurative painter of our time, spent seven months painting a portrait of the art critic Martin Gayford. The daily narrative of their encounters takes the reader into that most private place, the artist’s studio, and to the heart of the working methods of this modern master—both technical and subtly psychological. From this emerges an understanding of what a portrait is, but something else is also created: a portrait, in words, of Freud himself. This is not a biography, but a series of close-ups: the artist at work and in conversation at restaurants, in taxis, and in his studio. It takes one into the company of the painter for whom Picasso, Giacometti, and Francis Bacon were friends and contemporaries, as were writers such as George Orwell and W. H. Auden. The book is illustrated with many of Lucian Freud’s other works, telling photographs taken by David Dawson of Freud in his studio, and images by such great artists of the past as van Gogh and Titian who are discussed by Freud and Gayford. Full of wry observations, the book reveals the inside story of how it feels to pose for a remarkable artist and become a work of art.
Author: David Hockney Publisher: ABRAMS ISBN: 9781419750281 Category : Languages : en Pages : 372
Book Description
A compact edition of Hockney and Gayford's brilliantly original book, with updated material and brand-new pieces of art Informed and energized by a lifetime of painting, drawing, and making images with cameras, David Hockney, in collaboration with art critic Martin Gayford, explores how and why pictures have been made across the millennia. Juxtaposing a rich variety of images--a still from a Disney cartoon with a Japanese woodblock print by Hiroshige, a scene from an Eisenstein film with a Velazquez paint-ing--the authors cross the normal boundaries between high culture and popular entertainment, and argue that film, photography, paint-ing, and drawing are deeply interconnected. Featuring a revised final chapter with some of Hockney's latest works, this new, compact edition of A History of Pictures remains a significant contribution to the discussion of how artists represent reality.
Author: Martin Gayford Publisher: Thames & Hudson ISBN: 0500774889 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 227
Book Description
In the course of a career thinking and writing about art, Martin Gayford has travelled all over the world both to see works of art and to meet artists. Gayfords journeys, often to fairly inaccessible places, involve frustrations and complications, but also serendipitous encounters and outcomes, which he makes as much a part of the story as the final destination. Entertaining and informative, Gayford includes trips to see Brancusis Endless Column in Romania, prehistoric cave art in France, the museum island of Naoshima in Japan, the Judd Foundation in Marfa, Texas, and a Roni Horn work in Iceland. Interwoven with these accounts are journeys to meet artists Robert Rauschenberg in New York, Marina Abramovic in Venice, Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris or travels with artists, such as a trip to Beijing with Gilbert & George. These encounters not only provide insights into the way artists approach and think about their art but also reveal the importance of their personal environments. And in the process, Gayford discusses how these meetings have impacted on his own evolving ideas and tastes.
Author: Martin Gayford Publisher: Thames & Hudson ISBN: 0500773408 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 331
Book Description
“Sumptuously illustrated, this radiant volume encapsulates what it truly means to be a visual artist.” —Booklist David Hockney’s exuberant work is highly praised and widely celebrated—he is perhaps the world’s most popular living painter. But he is also something else: an incisive and original thinker on art. This new edition includes a revised introduction and five new chapters which cover Hockney’s production since 2011, including preparations for the Bigger Picture exhibition held at the Royal Academy in 2012 and the making of Hockney’s iPad drawings and plans for the show. A difficult period followed the exhibition’s huge success, marked first by a stroke, which left Hockney unable to speak for a long period, followed by the vandalism of the artist’s Totem tree-trunk, and the tragic suicide of his assistant shortly thereafter. Escaping the gloom, in spring 2013 Hockney moved back to L.A. A few months later, Martin Gayford visited Hockney in the L.A. studio, where the fully-recovered artist was hard at work on his Comédie humaine, a series of full-length portraits painted in the studio. The conversations between Hockney and Gayford are punctuated by surprising and revealing observations on other artists—Van Gogh, Vermeer, and Picasso among them—and enlivened by shrewd insights into the contrasting social and physical landscapes of Yorkshire, Hockney’s birthplace, and California.
Author: Max Porter Publisher: Strange Light ISBN: 0771096372 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 81
Book Description
Madrid. Unfinished. Man dying. A great painter lies on his deathbed, synapses firing, writhing and reveling in pleasure and pain as a lifetime of chaotic and grotesque sense memories wash over and envelop him. In this bold and brilliant short work of experimental fiction by the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers and Lanny, Max Porter inhabits Francis Bacon in his final moments, translating into seven extraordinary written pictures the explosive final workings of the artist's mind. Writing as painting rather than about painting, Porter lets the images he conjures speak for themselves as they take their revenge on the subject who wielded them in life. The result is more than a biography: The Death of Francis Bacon is a physical, emotional, historical, sexual, and political bombardment--the measure of a man creative and compromised, erotic and masochistic, inexplicable and inspired.
Author: John Hockney Publisher: Legend Press Ltd ISBN: 1800316674 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 282
Book Description
‘The most charming... portrait of this ever-popular artist... so enormously appealing: good-natured, bluntly told, skimmed with Yorkshire humour... This is a story of sticky jam tarts, catching tadpoles in jars, torchlit conversations under the bedclothes, gossipy queues at the butcher’s and hikes among the hedgerows under swallow-strewn skies.’ The Telegraph‘Never worry what the neighbours think’ was the philosophy that Kenneth Hockney used to inspire his children – David Hockney, one of the world’s greatest living artists and siblings John, Paul, Philip and Margaret – to each choose their own route in life.The Hockney’s is a never before seen insight into the lives of the family by youngest brother John, from growing up in the Second World War in Bradford through to their diverse lives across three continents. Hardship, successes as well as close and complex relationships are poignantly illustrated with private photographs.With a rare and spirited look into the lives of an ordinary family with extraordinary stories, we begin to understand the creative freedom that led to their successful careers and the launchpad for an artist’s work that has inspired and continues to inspire generations across the world.
Author: Geordie Greig Publisher: Macmillan ISBN: 0374116482 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
"A memoir about the author's relationship with renowned painter Lucian Freud that includes interviews with many close friends and family members as well as critical analyses of Freud's art"--Provided by publisher.
Author: Clare Clark Publisher: Houghton Mifflin ISBN: 054414757X Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 437
Book Description
Berlin in the 1920s is a city of seedy night clubs and sumptuous art galleries, where nothing is quite what it seems. It is home to Emmeline, a young art student; Julius, an art expert who loves paintings more than people; and Frank, a Jewish lawyer looking for a way to protect both his family and his principles as the Nazis begin their rise to power. Rachmann, a mercurial art dealer-- and newly discovered paintings by Vincent van Gogh-- will provide a scandal that turns all their lives upside down. -- adapted from jacket