Download or read book Letters to Gwen John written by Celia Paul and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With original artworks throughout, an extraordinary fusion of memoir and artistic biography from the acclaimed artist and author of Self-Portrait. Dearest Gwen, I know this letter to you is an artifice. I know you are dead and that I’m alive and that no usual communication is possible between us but, as my mother used to say, “Time is a strange substance” and who knows really, with our time-bound comprehension of the world, whether there might be some channel by which we can speak to each other, if we only knew how. Celia Paul’s Letters to Gwen John centers on a series of letters addressed to the Welsh painter Gwen John (1876–1939), who has long been a tutelary spirit for Paul. John spent much of her life in France, making art on her own terms and, like Paul, painting mostly women. John’s reputation was overshadowed during her lifetime by her brother, Augustus John, and her lover Auguste Rodin. Through the epistolary form, Paul draws fruitful comparisons between John’s life and her own: their shared resolve to protect the sources of their creativity, their fierce commitment to painting, and the ways in which their associations with older male artists affected the public’s reception of their work. Letters to Gwen John is at once an intimate correspondence, an illuminating portrait of two painters (including full-color plates of both artists’ work), and a writer/artist’s daybook, describing Paul’s first exhibitions in America, her search for new forms, her husband’s diagnosis of cancer, and the onset of the global pandemic. Paul, who first revealed her talents as a writer with her memoir, Self-Portrait, enters with courage and resolve into new unguarded territory—the artist at present—and the work required to make art out of the turbulence of life.
Download or read book Self Portrait written by Celia Paul and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich, penetrating memoir about the author's relationship with a flawed but influential figure—the painter Lucian Freud—and the satisfactions and struggles of a life lived through art. One of Britain's most important contemporary painters, Celia Paul has written a reflective, intimate memoir of her life as an artist. Self-Portrait tells the artist's story in her own words, drawn from early journal entries as well as memory, of her childhood in India and her days as a art student at London's Slade School of Fine Art; of her intense decades-long relationship with the older esteemed painter Lucian Freud and the birth of their son; of the challenges of motherhood, the unresolvable conflict between caring for a child and remaining commited to art; of the "invisible skeins between people," the profound familial connections Paul communicates through her paintings of her mother and sisters; and finally, of the mystical presence in her own solitary vision of the world around her. Self-Portrait is a powerful, liberating evocation of a life and of a life-long dedication to art.
Download or read book The Good Bohemian written by Michael Holroyd and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2017-05-04 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Captivatingly fresh and intimate letters from Augustus John's first wife, Ida, reveal the untold story of married life with one of the great artists of the last century. Twelve days before her twenty-fourth birthday, on the foggy morning of Saturday 12 January 1901, Ida Nettleship married Augustus John in a private ceremony at St Pancras Registry Office. The union went against the wishes of Ida's parents, who aspired to an altogether more conventional match for their eldest daughter. But Ida was in love with Augustus, a man of exceptional magnetism also studying at the Slade, and who would become one of the most famous artists of his time. Ida's letters – to friends, to family and to Augustus – reveal a young woman of passion, intensity and wit. They tell of the scandal she brought on the Nettleship family and its consquences; of hurt and betrayal as the marriage evolved into a three-way affair when Augustus fell in love with another woman, Dorelia; of Ida's remarkable acceptance of Dorelia, their pregnancies and shared domesticity; of self-doubt, happiness and despair; and of finding the strength and courage to compromise and navigate her unorthodox marriage. Ida is a naturally gifted writer, and it is with a candour, intimacy and social intelligence extraordinary for a woman of her period that her correspondence opens up her world. Ida John died aged just thirty of puerperal fever following the birth of her fifth son, but in these vivid, funny and sometimes devastatingly sad letters she is startlingly alive on the page; a young woman ahead of her time – almost of our own time – living a complex and compelling drama here revealed for the first time by the woman at its very heart.
Download or read book Gwen John written by Gwen John and published by Tate. This book was released on 2004 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The artist Gwen John (1876-1939), known for her intense figure studies, portraits and interiors, was one of the most enigmatic and intriguing figures in the history of twentieth century art. This first publication of an extensive selection of unabridged letters, alongside extracts from her notebooks, sheds new light on her life, her career and her artistic development.
Download or read book The Mirror and the Palette written by Jennifer Higgie and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dazzlingly original and ambitious book on the history of female self-portraiture by one of today's most well-respected art critics. Her story weaves in and out of time and place. She's Frida Kahlo, Loïs Mailou Jones and Amrita Sher-Gil en route to Mexico City, Paris or Bombay. She's Suzanne Valadon and Gwen John, craving city lights, the sea and solitude; she's Artemisia Gentileschi striding through the streets of Naples and Paula Modersohn-Becker in Worpswede. She's haunting museums in her paint-stained dress, scrutinising how El Greco or Titian or Van Dyck or Cézanne solved the problems that she too is facing. She's railing against her corsets, her chaperones, her husband and her brothers; she's hammering on doors, dreaming in her bedroom, working day and night in her studio. Despite the immense hurdles that have been placed in her way, she sits at her easel, picks up a mirror and paints a self-portrait because, as a subject, she is always available. Until the twentieth century, art history was, in the main, written by white men who tended to write about other white men. The idea that women in the West have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet they have - and, of course, continue to do so - often against tremendous odds, from laws and religion to the pressures of family and public disapproval. In The Mirror and the Palette, Jennifer Higgie introduces us to a cross-section of women artists who embody the fact that there is more than one way to understand our planet, more than one way to live in it and more than one way to make art about it. Spanning 500 years, biography and cultural history intertwine in a narrative packed with tales of rebellion, adventure, revolution, travel and tragedy enacted by women who turned their back on convention and lived lives of great resilience, creativity and bravery.
Download or read book GWEN JOHN written by Gwen John and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Gwen John and Augustus John written by David Fraser Jenkins and published by Tate. This book was released on 2004-12-07 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Augustus John (1878-1961) was a hugely charismatic and colourful figure, his technical skill as a draughtsman matched by his bohemian manners and dashing appearance. In the pre-war years he epitomised the rebellious artist, travelling the country in a caravan and learning Romany as a result of the time he spent with gypsies. An official War artist during the first war, he subsequently took up a career as a portraitist, painting the leading literary figures of his day as well as inheriting Sargent's mantle as a painter of Society. Gwen John (1876-1939) studied at the Slade along with Augustus, leaving in the same year (1898). She then studied in Paris under Whistler, adopting his remarkable control of colour. In 1904 she settled permanently in France, where she earned a living as a model for artists including Rodin, who became her lover. The opposite of her brother both in personality and artistically, she favoured introspective subjects, and led a reclusive life.
Download or read book Time Song written by Julia Blackburn and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Julia Blackburn has always collected things that hold stories about the past, especially the very distant past: mammoth bones, little shells that happen to be two million years old, a flint shaped as a weapon long ago. Shortly after her husband’s death, Blackburn became fascinated with Doggerland, the stretch of land that once connected Great Britain to Continental Europe but is now subsumed by the North Sea. She was driven to explore the lives of the people who lived there—studying its fossil record, as well as human artifacts that have been unearthed near the area. In Time Song, Blackburn brings us along on her journey to discover what Doggerland left behind, introducing us to the paleontologists, archaeologists, fishermen and fellow Doggerland enthusiasts she meets along the way. She sees the footprints of early humans fossilized in the soft mud of an estuary alongside the scattered pockmarks made by rain falling eight thousand years ago. She visits a cave where the remnants of a Neanderthal meal have turned to stone. In Denmark she sits beside Tollund Man, who seems to be about to wake from a dream, even though he had lain in a peat bog since the start of the Iron Age. As Doggerland begins to come into focus, what emerges is a profound meditation on time, a sense of infinity as going backward and an intimation of the immensity of everything that has already passed through its time on earth and disappeared.
Download or read book Keeping the World Away written by Margaret Forster and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2008-07-29 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gwen, a bold and spirited young English artist, defies convention and sets out to study in Paris, where she has a tumultuous affair with the inspiring, controlling sculptor Rodin. But as the relationship cools, Gwen feels lonely and adrift as she awaits the ever more infrequent visits from her lover. Attempting to restore her artistic vision and recapture her true self, Gwen pours out her soul onto a canvas, creating an intimate painting of a quiet corner of her attic room. Lost, found, stolen, sold, and fought over, the painting enchants all who possess it. First it falls into the hands of Charlotte, a dreamy intellectual with artistic leanings–though little talent. In turn the work finds its way to the lovely, bright Stella; the destitute but willful Lucasta; self-sufficient Ailsa; and, finally, young, curious Gillian. All of whom long for a tranquil golden place such as the one depicted in the painting, a haven where they can “keep the world away.” Praise for Keeping the World Away: “Evocative . . . an apparently simple yet potent work of art.” –The New York Times Book Review “Highly recommended . . . One small painting, a still life of a corner of an attic room, is the thread that ties this moving novel together.” –Library Journal (starred review) “It is the painting’s power to evoke tranquility that Forster so effectively celebrates.” –Richmond Times-Dispatch “Haunting . . . revealing . . . exquisitely drawn.” –The Washington Post Book World “An intimate, subtly crafted, satisfying read.” –Kirkus Reviews
Download or read book Gwen John written by Sue Roe and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1942, at the height of his fame, Augustus John predicted that 'fifty years from now I shall be known as the brother of Gwen John'. Gwen John (1876 - 1939) is indeed now recognised as a great artistic innovator, yet for years her life remained shrouded in the myth of the solitary recluse. Born in Pembrokeshire, Gwen followed her brother to the Slade. Her future was bound up with Augustus, his women and his coteries, yet she was also daring and highly original, living determinedly in her own way. Defiant yet shy, she painted and modelled amid the Bohemian circles of early twentieth-century Paris and embarked on a long, intense love affair with France's most legendary artistic figure, the sculptor Rodin. A friend of Symbolist poets and post-Impressionist painters, later she turned increasingly to religion, achieving a deep serenity which masked her inner turbulence, creating her haunting paintings - delicate, austere, restrained and still. Based on her lively and passionate unpublished letters and copiously illustrated, this vivid new biography challenges our prejudices about the ways we evaluate women artists and finally uncovers the life of this ardent and complicated personality, one of the finest artists of her day. Important Notice: The digital edition of this book is missing some of the images or content found in the physical edition.
Download or read book Refuge and Renewal written by Peter Wakelin and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innumerable artists have found refuge in Britain during the past hundred and fifty years, escaping dispossession, torture, intellectual oppression or war. Their arrival frequently enriched art in Britain.00Following the isolation of most émigrés in the First World War, artists who escaped Nazism in the 1930s became part of art communities in places as far apart as Hampstead, Glasgow, Merthyr Tydfil, the Swansea valley and St Ives. Gabo and Mondrian influenced Nicholson, Hepworth and Lanyon, while younger artists were inspired by radical ideas of Kurt Schwitters and John Heartfield and by the Expressionists Bloch, Herman, Kokoshcka and Koppel. Lotte Reiniger brought innovations in animation and Bill Brandt and Felix Man showed the potential of documentary photography. Refugees have come since from China, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.00The experiences of artist refugees have followed many patterns. Some stayed a short time and moved on, some made their lives in Britain, teaching, exhibiting and inspiring. In the 1940s, refugees contributed to the war effort and the defeat of fascism. The stories of later refugees' contributions to British art are still unfolding.00Exhibition: Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK (14.12.2019 - 01.03.2020) / MOMA Machynlleth, UK (14.03.- 16.06.2020).
Download or read book Tate British Artists Gwen John written by Alicia Foster and published by Tate. This book was released on 2016-05-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gwen John (1876-1939) was an artist with a singular vision, one whose intense gaze produced some of the most beguiling and atmospheric paintings of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This concise survey of her life and work places John--often unfairly thought of as a recluse--at the artistic heart of London and Paris. A seminal figure within these circles, her work is reappraised in that context and explored in terms of the alliances and differences John had with her contemporaries. Gwen John's representation of the female nude, her paintings of interiors, and the effect of her Catholic faith on her work are all discussed. The author also discusses the key relationship between John's position as a woman artist and her lifelong fascination with the portrayal of the female sitter.
Download or read book The Death of Francis Bacon written by Max Porter and published by Strange Light. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Letters to Camondo written by Edmund de Waal and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A tragic family history told in a collection of imaginary letters to a famed collector, Moise de Camondo Letters to Camondo is a collection of imaginary letters from Edmund de Waal to Moise de Camondo, the banker and art collector who created a spectacular house in Paris, now the Musée Nissim de Camondo, and filled it with the greatest private collection of French eighteenth-century art. The Camondos were a Jewish family from Constantinople, “the Rothschilds of the East,” who made their home in Paris in the 1870s and became philanthropists, art collectors, and fixtures of Belle Époque high society, as well as being targets of antisemitism—much like de Waal's relations, the Ephrussi family, to whom they were connected. Moise de Camondo created a spectacular house and filled it with art for his son, Nissim; after Nissim was killed in the First World War, the house was bequeathed to the French state. Eventually, the Camondos were murdered by the Nazis. After de Waal, one of the world’s greatest ceramic artists, was invited to make an exhibition in the Camondo house, he began to write letters to Moise de Camondo. These fifty letters are deeply personal reflections on assimilation, melancholy, family, art, the vicissitudes of history, and the value of memory.
Download or read book Windswept Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women written by Annabel Abbs-Streets and published by Tin House Books. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Smithsonian Top Ten Best Book About Travel of 2021 2022 Banff Mountain Book Competition Finalist An Apple Books Pick of the Month and a Powell's and The Story Exchange Best Book of Fall “Unfailingly interesting and even revelatory. . . . Reading about the unfettered freedom to roam enjoyed by these trailblazing women induced considerable vicarious pleasure—and envy.”—The Wall Street Journal Annabel Abbs-Streets’s Windswept: Walking the Paths of Trailblazing Women is a beautifully written meditation on connecting with the outdoors through the simple act of walking. In captivating and elegant prose, Abbs-Streets’s follows in the footsteps of women who boldly reclaimed wild landscapes for themselves, including Georgia O’Keeffe in the empty plains of Texas and New Mexico, Nan Shepherd in the mountains of Scotland, Gwen John following the French River Garonne, Daphne du Maurier along the River Rhône, and Simone de Beauvoir?who walked as much as twenty-five miles a day in a dress and espadrilles?through the mountains and forests of France. Part historical inquiry and part memoir, the stories of these writers and artists are laced together by moments in her own life, beginning with her poet father who raised her in the Welsh countryside as an “experiment,” according to the principles of Rousseau. Abbs-Streets’s explores a forgotten legacy of moving on foot and discovers how it has helped women throughout history to find their voices, to reimagine their lives, and to break free from convention. As Abbs-Streets traces the paths of exceptional women, she realizes that she, too, is walking away from her past and into a radically different future. Windswept crosses continents and centuries in a provocative and poignant account of the power of walking in nature.
Download or read book Letter 1950 Dec 28 to Gwen John written by Walter De la Mare and published by . This book was released on 1950 with total page 3 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acknowledges receipt of a copy of John's "Syringa," discusses literary matters. Includes a poem, "Comfort", inscribed to Gwen John.
Download or read book Nature s Friend written by Lindsey McDivitt and published by Sleeping Bear Press. This book was released on 2018-07-15 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2019 Green Earth Book Awards - Long List The art and writing of Gwen Frostic are well known in her home state of Michigan and around the world, but this picture book biography tells the story behind Gwen's famous work. After a debilitating illness as a child, Gwen sought solace in art and nature. She learned to be persistent and independent--never taking no for an answer or letting her disabilities define her. After creating artwork for famous Detroiters and for display at the World's Fair and helping to build WWII bombers, Gwen moved her printmaking business to northern Michigan. She dedicated her work and her life to reminding people of the wonder and beauty in nature.
