Category: Book Reviews
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Revisions: Francis Bacon in the act of painting
Martin Harrison and Sophie Pretorius, the Estate of Francis Bacon Publishing, supported by Francis Bacon MB Art Foundation Monaco, in association with Thames & Hudson, London, 2024. ISBN: 978-0-500-96628-0. 167 pages, profusely illustrated. Hardback. £50. Review by Adrian Clark, November 2024. This beautiful book has been bound in the same way, with the same page…
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The Snail that climbed the Eiffel Tower and other work by John Minton by Martin Salisbury
Martin Salisbury has produced a classic and he has been beautifully supported by the Mainstone Press. As an object alone, this book is a delight; knowing nothing about the artist, one could leaf through this production and gorge on its quality. There can be no better way to remind the art world that they diminish…
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Geoffrey Clarke Sculptor. Catalogue Raisonné.
Geoffrey Clarke had a very long career as a sculptor. This book lists 900 works spread over 63 years, from 1949-2012. Both the work and this catalogue represent substantial achievements and, like all books of this type, the contribution made to a proper understanding of the artist’s career is formidable.
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The Art of John Piper. David Fraser Jenkins and Hugh Fowler-Wright
Writing about the entirety of John Piper’s career presents a formidable challenge. It lasted a long time and encompassed a great variety of types of work. Describing it requires a very fine balance between detail and overview. The authors here on the whole make a good job of getting that balance right.
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Francis Bacon. Catalogue Raisonné.
Beautifully and meticulously produced, these five volumes are a magnificent work. Martin Harrison and Rebecca Daniels have laboured for many years to produce them: the result is surely a model of what a dedicated team can do if given sufficient time and resources. High quality catalogues of this type underpin the ability of scholars to…
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Stanley Spencer and the English Garden, Compton Verney/Exhibition at Kunsthal, Rotterdam
Stanley Spencer and the English Garden, edited by Steven Parissien, London, 2011. ISBN 978-1-907372 12 4. (First published in conjunction with an exhibition at Compton Verney, Warwickshire, 25 June-2 October 2011).Exhibition of Stanley Spencer at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam, 17 September 2011-15 January 2012. Compton Verney is really to be congratulated for putting on such…
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William Nicholson. Catalogue Raisonné of the Oil Paintings by Patricia Reed.
Anyone wishing to assess 20th century English artists objectively will recognise Sir William Nicholson as one of the greats. This book fully supports that status and is itself a great book.
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Rina Arya. “Francis Bacon. Painting in a Godless World”
Not all writers about Bacon have been able to write so clearly. But the interpretation of Bacon’s paintings is not a task where “success” is possible. The task facing the author of trying to analyse works created intuitively was never going to be easy. As ever with a great artist, we are left with the…
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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…