Category Archives: Biography and memoir

Kasmin’s Camera

Texts by Chris Stephens and Judith Goldman

John Kasmin, known to all simply as Kasmin, was the most important dealer in contemporary art in Britain in the 1960s. At the eponymous Kasmin Gallery on New Bond Street, he worked with the leading British and American artists of the day, notably Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, Anthony Caro, Richard Smith, Robyn Denny, Gillian Ayres, Howard Hodgkin, and David Hockney. Kasmin gave many of these artists their first show and was an early champion of their art. A true pioneer, he introduced the work of American Abstract Expressionists and minimalists to Britain, and helped bring young British artists to American audiences for the first time. In the process, he transformed the London art world and became as recognizable as his gallery artists.

Less well known is that Kasmin is also an accomplished photographer, having started his working life as an assistant to the celebrated portrait photographer Ida Kar. Throughout his life, he has always carried his camera, constantly photographing – and being photographed with – his bohemian artist and writer friends and family members. This remarkable book is the first time that he has published a collection of his favourite and most intimate photographs. With a focus on the 1960s and 1970s, these images tell a rich story of a fertile period when Kasmin was working with an array of diverse creative figures. We see Newman, Frankenthaler, and others in their studios; we hang out with Clement Greenberg, Leo Castelli, and other important figures of the New York scene; we join Hockney as he learns to drive in Los Angeles and as he holidays in France with Kasmin and his children and their shared circle of friends, among them Celia Birtwell, Ossie Clark, and Wayne Sleep; we witness the same artist again in playful mood with his parents at home in Bradford; and we follow Kasmin as he and his close friend the travel writer Bruce Chatwin voyage to Africa and the Caribbean, and as he visits India with Howard Hodgkin.

Drawn directly from Kasmin’s personal archive, the book contains dozens of images that have never been seen before. Each photograph, whether a posed portrait or a hastily grabbed snapshot, reveals something new, something private about some of the best-known names in postwar art and the milieu in which they lived. They capture key moments – such as Hockney’s early days in California – and the close friendships within Kasmin’s circle. Seen together, they bear witness to an exciting time when young, dynamic artists were finding a new language and shaping a new world.

Accompanying the photographs are texts by the British art historian and curator Chris Stephens, writing about Kasmin’s circle in the 1960s and 1970s, and his long-time friend American curator and writer Judith Goldman, who offers a more personal account of Kasmin and his life.

Dr Chris Stephens has been Director of the Holburne Museum in Bath since 2017. Prior to that he worked at Tate for more than twenty years, as Head of Displays, Tate Britain, for much of that time, and also as Head of Modern British Art.

Judith Goldman is an award-winning writer, curator, and publisher in New York City. A former editor of ARTnews, she was also the curator of prints at the Whitney Museum of Art from 1977 to 1991. She has established the Blue Heron Press and Deuce II Editions to publish artists’ books and editions.

Josef Albers

Discovery and Invention –
The Early Graphic Works

Foreword by David Cleaton-Roberts
Texts by Brenda Danilowitz and Jeannette Redensek 

Josef Albers was one of the twentieth century’s most influential artists, teachers, and theorists of art. Alongside teaching at the Bauhaus school in Germany and later at Black Mountain College and Yale University in the United States, he created seminal work in diverse mediums from painting and printmaking to furniture design and stained glass. His lifelong explorations into form, vision, and the processes of making art led to his ground-breaking Homage to the Square paintings and confirmed his reputation as a leading proponent of abstraction.

This publication considers Albers’s early development as an artist, beginning with the pre-Bauhaus years when he worked as an elementary-school teacher in his native Bottrop in north-west Germany, while sketching the landscape and architecture of his home town and studying courses in art by night. Focusing on his prints and other works on paper, the book reveals not only the unappreciated naturalistic origins of his art, but also his ongoing interest in producing organic, surrealistic forms alongside the geometric abstraction for which he is best known. It presents dozens of prints, paintings, and drawings from the first half of his career, as well as previously unseen photographs of the artist at work and on research trips to the ancient sites of Mexico where he found important sources of inspiration for his art and theories. With texts by two recognized Albers scholars, this volume offers a fresh and surprising view of a celebrated pioneer of modernism.

David Cleaton-Roberts is a co-director of Cristea Roberts Gallery.

Brenda Danilowitz is an art historian and Chief Curator at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. She is the author and editor of numerous books and essays on the work of Josef and Anni Albers, and has organized exhibitions of their work in the United States, Europe, Mexico, Peru, and Brazil.

Jeannette Redensek is an art historian and Research Curator and Josef Albers Catalogue Raisonné Director at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation. 

Modern World

The Art of Richard Hamilton

Michael Bracewell

Richard Hamilton was one of the most influential artists of his generation. Often described as ‘the father of Pop art’, he produced multilayered work that explored and crystallized postwar consumer society and ‘pop’ culture in an attempt to ‘relate to everything that was going on in the world’. Seminal works such as his 1956 collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?, the 1965 painting My Marilyn, and screenprints based on a press photo of the arrest on drugs charges of Mick Jagger and Robert Fraser, Swingeing London 67, defined an era in which new commodities and technologies, mass media, and celebrity came to the fore, and challenged the hierarchical values of ‘high’ and ‘low’ art. His innovative work with installation and exhibition design continues to influence artistic and curatorial practice to this day; and his importance to fields beyond contemporary art was demonstrated when he designed the radical packaging of The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ in 1968. His ultimate commitment, however, was to the capacities of painting.

In this handsome book, acclaimed writer Michael Bracewell presents a concise introduction to this deeply complex artist. Writing from a personal perspective, he discusses Hamilton’s all-embracing work in relation to the music, film, and popular culture of the day in a rich and brilliant new interpretation of his art and ideas. He covers the full scope of the artist’s practice, including examples from the various media in which he worked – collage, print, painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and installation – and the diverse subjects that he addressed until his death in 2011. Bracewell focuses on key works such as the My Marilyn and Swingeing London 67 series; images produced in response to highly charged current events and political and sociological developments, including Kent State and The Citizen; and collages, prints, and paintings that examine the fashion and advertising industries. He also considers Hamilton’s illustrations to James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, his collaborations with Marcel Duchamp, his work with The Beatles, and the significance of his apparently unfinished final work, itself a quest for a state of ‘perfection’ in oil painting. With quotes from the artist’s writings and interviews throughout, this attractive volume will appeal to anyone wanting to understand Hamilton’s iconic and pioneering work and its lasting cultural legacy.

Michael Bracewell is the author of six novels and two works of non-fiction, including the novellas The Crypto-Amnesia Club (1988) and Perfect Tense (1999). He has written widely on modern and contemporary art and contributed to catalogues for museum exhibitions of Richard Hamilton’s work, including at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2010) and the National Gallery, London (2012). A collection of Bracewell’s writings on art, The Space Between, was published in 2011.

On Being An Artist – paperback

Sir Michael Craig-Martin

NEW IN PAPERBACK

‘One of the best books of an artist’s writings in years: elegant, pithy and full of insights’ — Sir Nicholas Serota, Chair, Arts Council England and former Director, Tate
‘Coherent, absorbing … such a compelling read … Craig-Martin writes brilliantly’ — The Art Newspaper
‘[An] absorbing and important book … a must-have for anyone with the slightest interest in today’s art scene’ — Telegraph, Best Art Books of 2015
‘Extraordinary … positively quakes with brilliance … Brimming with intelligence, Craig-Martin’s book gathers a lifetime of artistic wisdom.… Since finishing [it] I do nothing but recommend it.’ — Art Monthly
‘Erudite, insightful and hugely readable … an intelligent, entertaining and inspiring journey into the mind of one of the leading artistic figures working today’ — It’s Nice That
‘Illuminating … wise and inspiring’ — Art Quarterly
‘A revelation … brilliant … a fascinating record of a life in art’ — RA Magazine 
‘Craig-Martin is the artist-teacher par excellence … On Being an Artist is an engaging book and a useful reminder of the benefits of a life enriched by art and teaching.’ —Visual Culture in Britain
‘Written with force and intelligence … so clear, concise and coherent that we can have no doubt how much, and how well, students will have learned from him’ — Irish Arts Review
‘[Craig-Martin is] a splendid writer, humane, amusing and informative. This is a handsome, wise and often funny book, open and honest about his own life, and interested in the life and work of others.’ — Arts Journal
‘Full of stimulating and often unexpected insights into the contemporary art world, teaching and the practice of art … He writes with an elegant simplicity – totally jargon-free – and is a delight to read. He does much to enliven the ways in which the layman might think about art, and makes the reader not only think, but look – and see.’ — Burlington Magazine
‘An essential read’ — Wallpaper*
‘Only intermittently interesting’ — New Statesman 
_____________

SHORTLISTED Art Book Prize 2016

Celebrated artist and influential teacher Michael Craig-Martin’s first book is a lively mix of reminiscence, personal manifesto, anecdote and advice for the aspiring artist.

Craig-Martin’s life has been as colourful and varied as his distinctive work. From an early childhood that took him from wartime Dublin to postwar Washington D.C. and Bogotà, and student life in New York and at Yale University, he has gone on to enjoy a successful international career, feted around the world with major exhibitions, high-profile commissions and numerous honours.

In On Being An Artist, Craig-Martin reflects with both wit and candour on the many people, ideas and events that have shaped his professional life. In a series of short and entertaining episodes, he recounts his time studying under the influence of legendary artist Josef Albers at Yale University School of Art alongside Chuck Close, Richard Serra and other soon-to-be-famous radicals; his memories of meeting personal heroes such as Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and John Cage; his efforts to explain his art to a bewildered astrophysicist at high table at King’s College, Cambridge; his astonishment at seeing the house and art collection of Charles Saatchi for the first time; and his surreal experience of staking out Christine Keeler at the height of the Profumo scandal.

He recalls, too, his first tentative steps as a practising artist and emergence as a key figure of early conceptual art in Britain. He also looks back on his achievements as a teacher at Goldsmiths, where he nurtured two generations of students, among them Damien Hirst and Sarah Lucas, earning himself the sobriquet ‘the godfather of the YBAs’. As he considers the development of his own career and the evolution of the art world over the last half century, he offers the benefit of insights gained from his professional highs and lows, revealing the essential attributes and knowledge that one needs as an artist today. He also tackles controversial issues such as the fashionability of contemporary art, the enduring status of painting, the relevance of life drawing and practical skills, the qualities of art schools, the role of commercial dealers, the importance of speaking clearly about art, and the judgment of what is good and bad in art.

More than the life of one of the most creative minds of our age, On Being An Artist provides lesson after valuable lesson to anyone wishing to know what it means and what it takes to be an artist today.

Sir Michael Craig-Martin CBE, RA was born in Dublin in 1941. At the age of four, he moved with his family to the United States, where he was brought up and educated. Between 1961 and 1966, he studied at Yale School of Art and Architecture. He returned to Europe in the mid-1960s and was a key figure in the first generation of British conceptualists. As a tutor at Goldsmiths College in London from 1973 to 1988 and again from 1994 to 2000, he had a significant influence on two generations of young British artists. He has had major exhibitions and retrospectives at museums and galleries across the world, and has several permanent large-scale installations in Europe and Asia. In 1990, he was appointed a trustee of Tate Gallery; in 2001, he was awarded a CBE; in 2006, he was elected a Royal Academician; and in 2016, he was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. His work is held in many international museum collections, including Tate, London; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and Museum of Modern Art, New York. He was curator of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2015.

 

Paul Gauguin’s Intimate Journals

Paul Gauguin
Preface by Emile Gauguin
Translated by Van Wyck Brooks

An Art / Books Vintage Classic

Paul Gauguin is one of the giants of French post-Impressionism and a pioneer of early modernism. A rebel in both art and life, he rejected his bourgeois upbringing and comfortable stockbroker’s job to devote himself to painting. Eventually, dismayed by the ‘hypocrisy of civilization’ and in search of a primitive idyll, he left his wife and children behind in France and took up residence in the South Seas, first in Tahiti and, later, in the Marquesas Islands. In the final months of his life, he wrote this witty and revealing autobiographical memoir with the request that it be published upon his death. It first appeared in French in 1918, and was translated into English three years later. As his son Émile wrote in the preface, ‘These journals are an illuminating self-portrait of a unique personality.… They bring sharply into focus for me his goodness, his humor, his insurgent spirit, his clarity of vision, his inordinate hatred of hypocrisy and sham.’

Wide-ranging and elliptical, these candid reflections reveal Gauguin’s inner thoughts on many subjects, including frank views on his fellow artists in Paris, his turbulent relationship with Vincent van Gogh, and the charms of Polynesian women, with glimpses into his often far-from-idyllic existence in the Pacific islands. This facsimile reproduces the first translation of the journals, a rare limited edition privately published in New York in 1921 for a select group of subscribers. With his own full-page sketches, these entertaining and enlightening musings give us a unique insight into Paul Gauguin the man and the artist.

Van Wyck Brooks was an American literary critic, biographer, and historian.

Emile Gauguin was Paul Gauguin’s eldest son. After working as a civil engineer in Colombia, he moved to the United States, where he lived until his death in 1955.

 

The Art of Rodin

Introduction by Louis Weinberg

An Art / Books Vintage Classic

Auguste Rodin is a colossus in the history of art. In a career that spanned the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Paris-born sculptor rebelled against the idealized forms and practices of traditional art and paved the way for the birth of modern sculpture. While he believed that art should be true to nature, he sought to penetrate beneath the surface appearance and to express inner truths of the human psyche. The hallmarks of his style – its highly eroticized, sometimes explicit character, his use of incomplete figures, his emphasis on formal qualities rather than on narrative, and his desire to retain the marks of the sculptural process – were considered revolutionary at the time. As a result, his intense, evocative works courted controversy, inspiring violent hatred and ardent admiration in equal measure. By the end of his life, however, his reputation was established and he had become one of the most celebrated artists in the world.

This centenary facsimile edition faithfully reproduces the pages of a 1918 volume published immediately in the wake of Rodin’s death. With an essay by American artist, critic, and teacher Louis Weinberg, it presents almost seventy of Rodin’s greatest works in a beautiful clothbound format for a contemporary audience. It is a perfect gift, collectible and keepsake for any Rodin enthusiast or lover of modern sculpture.

Louis Weinberg (1885–1964) was an artist, writer and professor emeritus of art at City College in New York. He was the author of The Art of Rodin, Color in Every Day Life, America in the Making, and America in the Machine Age.

The Art of Aubrey Beardsley

Preface and introduction by Arthur Symons

An Art / Books Vintage Classic

Aubrey Beardsley was a leading figure of the fin de siècle Aesthetic Movement and the most controversial artist in 1890s London. His delicate yet bold drawings of grotesque, sensual and erotic subjects transformed the art of illustration but also scandalized Victorian society with their dark and often perverse imagery. Prolific until his early death at the age of twenty-five from tuberculosis, in just six years and with almost no formal training he produced an enormous body of work that symbolized the decadence of the period.

Published twenty years after he died, The Art of Aubrey Beardsley presented sixty-four of his works in an intimate pocket-sized edition. With a personal memoir and critical appreciation by the poet and editor Arthur Symons, written upon the death of his friend and collaborator, it was the definitive word on the provocative artist’s seductive and individual art, the text becoming a collectors’ item that was privately printed until being published for a wider audience. This centenary facsimile edition faithfully reproduces the pages of the 1918 volume, presented in a special cloth binding with a black-and-gold motif adapted from one of Beardsley’s own designs for a book cover. A perfect gift for any Beardsley enthusiast, this book will also appeal to anyone interested in the fin de siècle era and the beginnings of modern graphic art.

Aubrey Vincent Beardsley (1872–98) was born in Brighton on 21 August 1872. By the age of seven, he was showing signs of the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him. From 1891 to 1892, he took evening classes at the Westminster School of Art, the only formal artistic training he ever received. That year, he visited Paris and discovered the work of Toulouse-Lautrec and Japanese prints, both of which influenced his own style. In 1893, he received his first commission, to illustrate Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Over the next six years, he completed numerous projects, including illustrations for editions of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata and The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope, and drawings for Oscar Wilde’s play Salome. He also co-founded the literary magazines the Yellow Book and the Savoy. By 1897, his health was deteriorating, prompting a move to Menton on the French Riviera, where he died on 16 March 1898.

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) was a British poet, critic and magazine editor and one of the key exponents of Symbolism in Britain. He contributed poems and essays to the illustrated quarterly literary periodical the Yellow Book, whose principal illustrator and first art editor was Aubrey Beardsley. From late 1895 through 1896 Symons edited, along with Beardsley and Leonard Smithers, The Savoy, a short-lived magazine of literature, art, and criticism whose contributors included Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and Joseph Conrad. Until he suffered a breakdown in 1909, Symons wrote numerous volumes of verse, plays, and essays, including the important The Symbolist Movement in Literature, which would have a major influence on W. B. Yeats and T. S. Eliot.

59 Paintings

In which the artist considers the process of
thinking about and making work

Paul Winstanley

What does a painter think about when he or she sets out to make a work? Where do their ideas and inspirations come from? How do they begin to translate those thoughts into a painted image? Taking his own works as a starting-point, award-winning artist Paul Winstanley presents a series of texts that together reveal what it means to conceive, make and think about paintings. Among the varied subjects that he considers are how a painter seeks out and finds inspiration in life and the world; the relationship between observed and depicted realities; what constitutes ‘truth’ in a painting; how to approach conceptual and technical challenges; the role of the viewer in the transaction at the heart of painting; and the various belief systems that lie behind the business of creating and looking at paintings. The result, a rare monograph on the work of an artist written by the artist himself, is an exquisite personal account of the art and craft of making painted images today.

Paul Winstanley was born in Manchester in 1954. He studied painting at Cardiff College of Art from 1973 to 1976, and at the Slade School of Art in London between 1976 and 1978. He won the first prize of the Unilever Award at the Whitechapel Open in 1989, and two years later was appointed Kettle’s Yard artist-in-residence at the University of Cambridge. He has work in important public and private collections in Europe and the United States. He is represented by Mitchell Innes + Nash, New York; 1301PE, Los Angeles; Kerlin Gallery, Dublin; Galerie Vera Munro, Hamburg; and Alan Cristea Gallery, London. He lives and works in London.

 

Becoming Henry Moore

Edited by Hannah Higham
Texts by Sebastiano Barassi, Tania Moore, Jon Wood

‘Fascinating look at the birth of a modern master ★★★★’ — Telegraph
‘Visually rich and quietly subversive’ — Times Literary Supplement

Accompanying an exhibition of the same name, Becoming Henry Moore tells the story of the artist’s creative journey between 1914 and 1930, from gifted schoolboy to celebrated sculptor. Displaying artistic skill and ambition from a young age, Moore spent his early years studying the art of the past and of his contemporaries, absorbing a wide variety of sculptural ideas and forms as he developed his own individual and now iconic style.

In this beautiful, richly illustrated book, Sebastiano Barassi presents a lively account of this formative period, from Moore’s time at Castleford Secondary School, where his talent was first spotted, through his active service in the First World War and student life at Leeds School of Art, and culminating with his move to the Royal College of Art in London and subsequent entry into the world of contemporary sculpture. What is revealed is a rich story of friendships, mentors, and collectors, and a range of artistic influences, from classical and non-Western art to Renaissance and modern masters and dialogues with other leading figures from the British and European avant-gardes. Moore’s encounters with collections both public and private and the importance of ancient art in his development are brought to life by contributions from Tania Moore and Jon Wood, who show not only how these experiences were critical in the formation of the artist’s early style, but also how they continued to inform his work for the rest of his career.

Richly illustrated with sculptures, drawings and photographs from his life, and including a chronology of the early years, this book shows the myriad influences at play as Henry Moore took his first steps on the path to becoming Britain’s foremost modern sculptor.

Sebastiano Barassi is Head of Henry Moore Collections and Exhibitions at the Henry Moore Foundation
Hannah Higham is Curator at the Henry Moore Foundation.
Tania Moore is Curatorial Assistant at the Royal Academy of Arts, London
Dr Jon Wood is Research Curator at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds

 

Fahrelnissa Zeid

Painter of Inner Worlds

Adila Laïdi-Hanieh

‘Her biography reads like a novel’ — Evening Standard
‘Laidi-Hanieh’s elegant prose brings to life the rich cultural environment in which Fahrelnissa lived and which she created around her.… The book’s excellent text is enriched by truly stunning images of Fahrelnissa’s paintings, as well as sketches and photos, and a comprehensive chronology of her life events and multiple exhibitions.’ — Jordan Times
‘Elegant … carefully researched … this handsome tome, the product of a thorough investigation into the artist’s life and work, challenges orientalist interpretations of her art. In so doing, it redefines Zeid as one of the foremost modernist painters of the last century.’ — Harper’s Bazaar Arabia
‘[Brings] her work out of the shadows and into the collective consciousness’ — New York magazine 
‘Comprehensive and painstakingly researched … this is a book to read and reread.’ — Cornucopia magazine
‘A timely and much-needed contribution to the study of transnational feminist art histories’ — Third Text

The story of Fahrelnissa Zeid’s (1901–91) life is truly like no other. A Turkish noblewoman by birth and Iraqi princess by marriage, she was the first female artist to have a solo exhibition at London’s prestigious Institute of Contemporary Arts. Friend and relative of kings, queens, and statesmen, and busy wife of an ambassador, she was also a leading figure of Turkish modernism in the 1940s and a prominent member of the avant-garde in postwar Paris, praised by fellow artists and critics alike. Despite her privileged background, she fought personal tragedy, psychological turmoil, and social and artistic prejudice to chart a unique and innovative path all of her own. She became celebrated in her lifetime for her monumental and dynamic abstract compositions that engulf the viewer in fields of colour, light, and energetic movement, as well as for her later expressionistic portraits of family and close friends. These works reflect her conception of art as a ceaseless forward quest, driven by a spiritual need to produce painterly renditions of cosmic journeys and inner psychic universes.

Coinciding with a retrospective exhibition at Tate Modern, this book is written by a former student of the artist and based on unprecedented access to her private papers and personal archive. It provides a revisionist and definitive account of both her extraordinary life and the constant innovation and reinvention that characterized her career right up until her final decades working and teaching in Jordan. It foregrounds the importance of her extensive knowledge of European culture and her shifting mental state on her artistic vision, and challenges orientalist interpretations of her art. In doing so, it redefines Fahrelnissa Zeid for the contemporary reader as one of the most important modernists of the twentieth century.

Dr Adila Laïdi-Hanieh is director of the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, and a writer and academic focusing on Arab and Middle East arts and cultural practices. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies from George Mason University in Virginia, United States, which she obtained as a Fulbright Scholar. A former painting student of Fahrelnissa Zeid, she writes and lectures on contemporary art of the Middle East.