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Books > Arts & Architecture > Art forms, treatments & subjects > Art treatments & subjects > Individual artists
At the start of the March 2020 lockdown, Ian Beck would walk his
greyhound Gracie through the early morning streets of Isleworth in
west London, revelling in the light and the silence that the
restrictions had brought. The familiar became charged with new
meaning, inspiring Ian to paint the scenes around him for their own
sake, something that he hadn't done since his student days in the
sixties. Suburban streets, trees, fences, shrubs and overgrown
alleyways - all are transformed in the quiet intensity of Ian's
lockdown paintings. He painted interiors too: the moon shining
through a bedroom window, objects on mantelpieces, the eeriness of
back gardens at dusk. As the year progressed, the crisp light of
spring gave way to the haze of summer and the gloom of autumn fogs.
The Light in Suburbia collects sixty of Ian's paintings from this
period: a remarkable record of his year spent trying to capture the
beauty of the unprepossessing everyday.
This is a concise and engaging, yet detailed and informative
monograph that explores Gauguin's most Important works. Paul
Gauguin (1848-1903) was one of the most important artists of the
late 19th century, and one whose work was to have a profound
influence on the development of art in the 20th century. He began
as an Impressionist, but went on to develop a richly-coloured style
in his constant search for pristine originality and unadulterated
nature. This concise monograph collects the most important works by
Gauguin, not only of his best known paintings of Tahiti in which
the artist attempted to reconstruct the perfect life which he had
failed to find in reality, but also of many powerful works that
reflect the artist's contact with other seminal early modern
masters like Van Gogh or Cezanne.
Robert Kirkman (b. 1978) is probably best known as the creator of
The Walking Dead. The comic book and its television adaptation have
reinvented the zombie horror story, transforming it from cult
curiosity and parody to mainstream popularity and critical acclaim.
In some ways, this would be enough to justify this career-spanning
collection of interviews. Yet Kirkman represents much more than
this single comic book title. Kirkman's story is a fanboy's dream
that begins with him financing his irreverent, independent comic
book Battle Pope with credit cards. After writing major titles with
Marvel comics (Spider-Man, Captain America, and X-Men), Kirkman
rejected companies like DC and Marvel and publicly advocated for
creator ownership as the future of the comics industry. As a
partner at Image, Kirkman wrote not only The Walking Dead but also
Invincible, a radical reinvention of the superhero genre. Robert
Kirkman: Conversations gives insight to his journey and explores
technique, creativity, collaboration, and the business of comics as
a multimedia phenomenon. For instance, while continuing to write
genre-based comics in titles like Outcast and Oblivion Song,
Kirkman explains his writerly bias for complex characters over
traditional plot development. As a fan-turned-creator, Kirkman
reveals a creator's complex relationship with fans in a comic-con
era that breaks down the consumer/producer dichotomy. And after
rejecting company-ownership practices, Kirkman articulates a vision
of the creator-ownership model and his goal of organic creativity
at Skybound, his multimedia company. While Stan Lee was the most
prominent comic book everyman of the previous era of comics
production, Kirkman is the most prominent comic book everyman of
this dynamic, evolving new era.
With Barry Flanagan is a vivid account of a friendship that evolved
into a working relationship when Richard McNeff became 'spontaneous
fixer' (Flanagan's description) of the sculptor's show held in June
1992 at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Ibiza, where they were
both living. McNeff was to gain a privileged insight into the
sculptor's singular personality and eccentric working methods,
learning to decipher his memorably surreal turns of phrase and to
parry his fascinating, if at times unsettling, pranksteresque
quirks . In September 1992 Flanagan and McNeff took the show to
Majorca, resulting a lively visit to the celebrated Spanish artist
Miquel Barcelo. The following year McNeff was involved in
Flanagan's print- making venture in Barcelona and in his Madrid
retrospective. Flanagan rescued him from a rough landing in England
in 1994 by commissioning a tour of stone quarries there.
Subsequently McNeff ran into a fourteen- year-old profoundly deaf
girl who turned out to be his unknown daughter. She had a talent
for art and the superbly generous sculptor was instrumental in
helping with her studies. Late in 2008 Barry was diagnosed with
motor neurone disease. By June 2009 he was wheelchair- bound. Two
months later he died, and McNeff read the lesson at his funeral.
Fleshed out with biographical detail, much of it supplied by the
sculptor himself, supplemented by photographs and details of the
work, this touching memoir is the first retrospective of a major
Welsh-born artist. With Barry Flanagan captures the spirit of this
remarkable Merlinesque figure in a moving portrait that reveals a
true original.
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Far Country
(Hardcover)
John L Barnwell; Edited by Stephen Barnwell; Introduction by Siedell Daniel
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R1,345
Discovery Miles 13 450
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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