Month: November 2011
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Face to Face. British Self-Portraits in the Twentieth Century
By Philip Vann, Sansom & Company Bristol, 2004, £45, ISBN 1-904537-08-1Review published in the British Art Journal, V, 3, Winter 2004 This study of British 20th Century self-portraits, including the 100 works collected by Ruth Borchard between the late 1950’s and early to mid 1960’s, is an extremely interesting book written, on the whole, with…
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Graham Sutherland. Landscapes, War Scenes, Portraits 1924-1950; Bacon and Sutherland; Francis Bacon’s Studio
Graham Sutherland. Landscapes, War Scenes, Portraits 1924-1950 by Martin Hammer, Scala, 2005, ISBN 185759404 5Bacon and Sutherland by Martin Hammer, Yale University Press, 2005, £25. ISBN 0-300-10906-7Francis Bacon’s Studio by Margarita Cappock, Merrell, 2005, £35. ISBN 1 85894 276 4Published in the British Art Journal, VI, 3, Winter 2005 The Sutherland book accompanied an exhibition…
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Painter Pilgrim. The Art and Life of Tristram Hillier
Jenny Pery, Royal Academy of Arts, 2008, £25, ISBN 978-1-905711-18-5Review published in the British Art Journal, IX, 2, Autumn 2008 A short book on an individual artist who is probably not widely known beyond a narrow circle should try to sketch out the artist’s life; it should resist the temptation to be too hagiographic; and…
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Welsh Art patrons: Winifred Coombe Tennant and Gwendoline and Margaret Davies
Books such as these start to give us an opportunity to see the Welsh art world of the mid-century in greater detail. This is important – not, I hasten to add, because it will suddenly make us all think that the Welsh art scene was more ‘important’ than we had ever realised – but because…
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John Piper, Myfanwy Piper by Frances Spalding
Oxford, 2009, ISBN 978-0-19-956761-4 £25Review published in the British Art Journal, X, 2, Winter 2009 It is difficult to know where to begin when tackling John Piper. He lived a long and productive life, working successfully in a variety of styles and media. Although crudely categorised by some as a ‘traditional’ artist, in fact there…
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Sir Matthew Smith 1879-1959. A Survey of his life and work, drawn from the artist’s studio collection.
Exhibition at Guildhall Art Gallery, London, 4 November 2009-31 January 2010.Matthew Smith. Catalogue Raisonée of the Oil Paintingsby John Gledhill. Farnham, 2009, ISBN 978-0-85331-998-6. Leafing through the details of the catalogue section of the Matthew Smith book – and one has to do this manually because there is no index – reveals that most of…
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Review of 2009/10 Auerbach and Bacon exhibitions/books
Catalogue for Frank Auerbach London Building Sites‘Frank Auerbach. London Building Sites 1952-1962’Courtauld Gallery, Somerset House, 16 October 2009-17 January 2010. Accompanying catalogue with essays by Barnaby Wright, Margaret Garlake and Paul Moorhouse, London 2009 ISBN 978-1-90347-094-7Frank AuerbachWilliam Feaver, New York 2009 ISBN 978-0-8478-3058-9‘Francis Bacon. A terrible beauty’The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, 28 October 2009-7 March…
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LS Lowry. The Art and the Artist by TG Rosenthal
Norwich 2010, ISBN 978-1-906509-06-4. £45 Lowry (1887-1976) would be an excellent choice to illustrate a debate about the meaning of artistic reputation in the context of the 20th century British art world. Highly valued by the market (the author tells us that a picture has sold at auction for £3.77 million) and, correspondingly, by certain…
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‘John Craxton’ by Ian Collins
Farnham, 2011, £35, ISBN 978-1-84822-069-0Published in the British Art Journal, Volume XII No. 1, Summer 2011 This sumptuous book by John Craxton’s friend, Ian Collins, does great credit to both of them. Craxton was not always an easy person to engage with in the case of art critics and I think he would have approved…
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Women Artists between the Wars. ‘A fair field and no favour’ by Katy Deepwell
By Katy Deepwell, Manchester, 2010, ISBN 97807 190 80807 £65Review published in the British Art Journal, Volume XII No. 1, Summer 2011 This is an important and substantive work of social history. Its main thesis – that women artists working between the Wars were hard done by in not getting equal treatment to male artists…
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Evan Walters. Moments of Vision.
Edited by Barry Plummer. Bridgend, 2011, ISBN 978-1-85411-542-3. £12.99.Published in the British Art Journal, Volume XII No. 2, Autumn 2011 The 20th century Welsh art world can be described in a few sentences. But that is at least partly because it has not, until recently, had enough attention paid to it to enable a proper,…
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John Piper in Kent and Sussex – Exhibition at the Towner Gallery, Eastbourne
Curated by Nathaniel Hepburn. Catalogue with contributions from various authors: ISBN 978-0-9567676-0-8, Paddock Wood, 2011Published in the British Art Journal, Volume XII No. 2, Autumn 2011 Reviewing Frances Spalding’s biography of John and Myfanwy Piper in these pages I commented upon the extraordinary range of Piper’s achievements. This excellent exhibition provoked the same thought. The…