Cezanne, Caulfield, Turner, Reynolds & Bloomsbury

Cezanne in Provence by Denis Coutagne

In his brief text, Denis Coutagne considers Cezanne for the enigma he and his art may always remain, but within the most elucidating of all possible contexts: Provence, especially around Aix, where Cezanne was born in 1839 and where he died in 1906, virtually "with brush in hand." This was the richly colored, sun-drenched environment in which Cezanne grew up with his closest friend, the novelist Emile Zola, conceived his passion for painting, developed his unique aesthetic, and painted his late and greatest masterpieces - the paintings devoted to such local motifs as the Jas de Bouffan, the Chateau-Noir, the Bibemus quarry, the nude bathers, L'Estaque, and Mont Sainte-Victoire. No other place could provide the dramatic contrasts of light and dark, color and chiaroscuro that were so at one with the brooding soul and luminous vision of Paul Cezanne, or so consistent with his attempts to produce an art of clarity and calm by bringing into dynamic equilibrium a host of warring opposites: wild nature and orderly form, the momentary and the immutable, color and line, surface and depth, density and transparency, awkwardness and grace, and, not least, his own personal conflicts, among them a conservative, Provencal background and unruly, bohemian tendencies.
St. Martin's Press, 1996

Patrick Caulfield

This is the first major monograph to be published on the paintings of Patrick Caulfield, whose work has enjoyed widespread popular appeal and critical acclaim over the past four decades. When Patrick Caulfield established his reputation in the early 1960s, his deadpan handling and his reliance on vivid, flat colours encased in uniform black outlines led to him being hailed as one of the originators of Pop Art in England. Patrick Caulfield himself consistently denied an interest in popular culture, preferring instead to make timeless pictures that subtly and with great originality reconfigured such traditional subjects as interiors and still-lives. Marked by a graphic elegance, a finely tuned color sense and a sometimes melancholy air, these are among the most haunting paintings of the late twentieth century.
Illustrating over 150 works, this book reproduces almost all the paintings made by Patrick Caulfield since 1961, when he was still studying at the Royal College of Art alongside such painters as David Hockney and R. B. Kitaj. In so doing, it comprehensively charts the evolution of one of the most thoughtful and engaging painters of our time. It weaves together analytical and interpretative texts published over the past quarter century by Marco Livingstone, the foremost authority on Patrick Caulfield's work, with new material on different phases of the artist's career. Individual key paintings are awarded separate, in-depth attention.
The artist's own voice is heard in an interview with Marco Livingstone in which he reflects on his influences and concerns with the same articulate intelligence that he brings to bear on the making of his pictures. The significant events in his life and career are charted in a comprehensive chronology compiled by Richard Riley.
Patrick Caulfield: Paintings is a long overdue assessment of the work of one of Britain's most important painters, whose work has continued to prove extremely influential on subsequent generations. It will be welcomed by art specialists and enthusiasts alike.
Marco Livingstone is an art historian and independent curator who has written extensively on Pop Art and more widely on contemporary painting, sculpture and photography. The curator of Caulfield's first retrospective in 1981, he is the author of the acclaimed Pop Art: A Continuing History and of monographs and major exhibition catalogues on numerous artists including David Hockney, R.B. Kitaj, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, Jim Dine, Tom Wesselmann, George Segal and Duane Michals. Patrick Caulfield: Paintings by Marco Livingstone
ISBN: 0853319170

Turner by James Hamilton

J.M.W. Turner was a painter whose treatment of light put him squarely in the pantheon of the world's preeminent artists, but his character was a tangle of fascinating contradictions. While he could be coarse and rude, manipulative, ill-mannered, and inarticulate, he was also generous, questioning, and humane, and he displayed through his work a hitherto unrecognized optimism about the course of human progress. With two illegitimate daughters and several mistresses whom Turner made a career of not including in his public life, the painter was also known for his entrepreneurial cunning, demanding and receiving the highest prices for his work.
Over the course of sixty years, Turner traveled thousands of miles to seek out the landscapes of England and Europe. He was drawn overwhelmingly to coasts, to the electrifying rub of the land with the sea, and he regularly observed their union from the cliff, the beach, the pier, or from a small boat. Fueled by his prodigious talent, Turner revealed to himself and others the personality of the British and European landscapes and the moods of the surrounding seas. He kept no diary, but his many sketchbooks are intensely autobiographical, giving clues to his techniques, his itineraries, his income and expenditures, and his struggle to master the theories of perspective.
In Turner, James Hamilton takes advantage of new material discovered since the 1975 bicentennial celebration of the artist's birth, paying particular attention to the diary of sketches with which Turner narrated his life. Hamilton's textured portrait is fully complemented by a sixteen-page illustrations insert, including many color reproductions of Turner's most famous landscape paintings. Seamlessly blending vibrant biography with astute art criticism, Hamilton writes with energy, style, and erudition to address the contradictions of this great artist.
Turner by James Hamilton
Random House, 2003

Joshua Reynolds

Ian McIntyre traces Joshua Reynolds' journey, from his humble origins as the seventh child of the Reverend Samuel Reynolds in Devon, to the splendor and pomp of his funeral at St Paul's Cathedral in 1792. He examines in detail all aspects of his artistic and personal life, including his experimental history and fancy paintings as well as his better-known work as a portrait painter, and explains his thinking about art history in the context of his life in eighteenth century England. Joshua Reynolds was a central figure in the development of British art, and in this biography Ian McIntyre explores fully the nature and extent of his contribution.
Ian McIntyre read Modern Languages at Cambridge, where he was President of the Union. He worked for many years for the BBC: McIntyre was the first presenter of the program Analysis and is a former Controller of both Radio 3 and Radio 4. His earlier books include The Expense of Glory: A Life of John Reith and Dirt and Deity: A Life of Robert Burns.
Joshua Reynolds: The Life and Times of the First President of the Royal Academy by Ian McIntyre
ISBN 0140283242

Bloomsbury Canvas

A Bloomsbury Canvas brings together a selection of short essays from the leading commentators on the Bloomsbury Group - the association of artists and writers centred around the sisters Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell which had an important influence on cultural and intellectual life in Britain during the early decades of the twentieth century.
Essayists include Hermione Lee, noted biographer of Virginia Woolf; art historians Richard Shone and Frances Spalding; Nigel Nicolson, author of Portrait of a Marriage (a groundbreaking study of his parents Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson); and the last survivors of those closely connected to the Bloomsbury Group: Frances Partridge, Quentin Bell and Angelica Garnett.
The essays are edited and introduced by Tony Bradshaw, author of The Bloomsbury Artists: Prints and Book Design (Scolar Press 1999) and owner of The Bloomsbury Workshop, the internationally renowned art gallery and bookshop specializing in the work of the Group. Representing what is best and typical of Bloomsbury art, the book is excitingly illustrated with previously unpublished works.
A Bloomsbury Canvas: Reflections on the Bloomsbury Group by Tony Bradshaw
ISBN: 0853318395

Surrealism

Surrealism is a survey of the twentieth century's longest lasting and, arguably, most influential art movement. Championed and held together by André Breton for over forty years, Surrealism was France's major avant-garde artistic tendency from 1924 onwards, rapidly spreading around the globe to become an international phenomenon. During World War II Surrealism's exiled artists and writers had a major impact on American art and were a primary influence for the Abstract Expressionist generation. The official surrealist movement continued to the end of Breton's life in 1966, and its legacy is still pervasive today, in contemporary art as well as in numerous quotations from surrealist imagery in cinema, advertising and the media. The Survey essay by Mary Ann Caws - a distinguished scholar, translator and associate of the Surrealists - describes in clear, perceptive and lively prose the essential characteristics that define Surrealism, as well as tracing a concise path through the chronology of this prolific and wide-ranging movement. The text also demonstrates how surrealist art and writing are interdependent.
The Works section follows the movement from its beginnings in the 1920s up to the 1940s and 1950s. Its six sections trace the themes which predominated at different stages: Chance and Freedom - the earliest work, characterized by complete 'automatic' spontaneity; Poetics of Vision - the strategies of surrealist image-making, reflecting the mind's inner visions; Elusive Objects - the fascination with objects of all kinds from which emerged artworks such as Meret Oppenheim's celebrated fur-lined cup and saucer; Desire - the investigation of desire, eroticism and 'mad love' which is central and unique to the movement; Delirium - Surrealism's high-risk engagement with extreme mental states and disturbing, uncanny visions; and the Infinite Terrains of later Surrealism, ranging from Joseph Cornell's magical assemblages in box frames, like 'theatres of the mind', to the infinite fields and dynamic energy of late surrealist painting at the dawn of Abstract Expressionism.
The Documents section includes important rediscovered writings alongside the key texts by leading figures. Many of the texts have been specially translated for this volume by Mary Ann Caws and Jonathan Eburne.
Surrealism by Mary Ann Caws
ISBN: 0714842591

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