It may seem strange that the largest object in the Victoria and Albert Museum is not in the care of a curator. The building itself is a masterpiece of Victorian and Edwardian art and design, indeed, it is the most elaborate and complex museum building in Britain. Fortunately, many curators have fallen in love with […]
Category Archives: Book of the Week
Frank Lloyd Wright’s 150th anniversary celebrated in two publications from Lund Humphries In May 1939, the celebrated American architect Frank Lloyd Wright visited London and gave four lectures at the Royal Institute of British Architects. Each evening the newly completed Jarvis Lecture Hall was full and the meetings were hailed at the time as the […]
Architectural, industrial, and graphic design in the United States from the 1950s through to the 1970s – generally known as mid-century modern – is now perceived as a golden era, with artists such as Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, and Eliot Noyes having become household names. We are delighted to be publishing Design for […]
Painter and illustrator Edward Bawden’s five scrapbooks, assembled over a period of more than 55 years, and housed at The Fry Art Gallery, contain everything from stamps, photographs, cigarette cards, Christmas cards and letters to newspaper cuttings, and amongst other fascinating ephemera. Edward Bawden Scrapbooks, by Brian Webb and Peyton Skipwith, includes over 250 […]
Author and curator Ian Collins introduces the work of John Craxton, on display at The Salisbury Museum, 30 January – 7 May 2016. John Craxton (1922-2009) was one of the most interesting and individual British artists of the 20th century. His life story, starting with wanderings on Cranborne Chase, was as colourful as his later […]
We’re delighted to share an extract from the publication: The Art of David Jones: Vision and Memory by Ariane Bankes and Paul Hills, published October 2015. Soldiers returning home after prolonged service at the Front commonly felt themselves outsiders in civilian society, estranged from its rituals, newly aware of its foibles. And certainly Jones at 24 – back in civvies and […]
Stanley Spencer’s paintings aren’t always easy to like, but they are hard to ignore. As the sub-title of Andrew Causey’s new book (my Book of the Week) implies, Spencer’s paintings don’t set out to please, but rather to reflect the artist’s own singular internal vision. ‘Stanley Spencer explored fundamental issues of life with an urgency and persistence unique among British artists […]
For many artists who live into their eighties and nineties, retirement isn’t an option. Unless the frailties of old age curtail it, the creative impulse continues, nourished perhaps by a sense of being free of external expectations and demands, and directed by years of experience. Painter and printmaker Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was born in Edinburgh in […]
‘Art is not a plaything’, wrote painter-poet Isaac Rosenberg in 1912. He was by all accounts a serious, sensitive young man. When Rosenberg was first introduced in 1911 to the group of East End writers and artists known as the ‘Whitechapel Boys’, aspiring writer Joseph Leftwich described him as ‘depressingly self-absorbed … he did not smile once all that first […]
It was a precarious business negotiating around James Tower’s exquisite ceramic vessels at the private view of Erskine, Hall & Coe’s exhibition last night, particularly if you were encumbered by a large handbag. But Tower’s distinctive ceramic pieces, at once delicate and substantial, were beautifully displayed within the gallery’s high, bright-white yet quirkily intimate space, and refreshingly free […]
Modern British Artists 