Andrew Graham-Dixon

Literary Landscape: Turner and Constable by Ronald Paulson

This is a micro-study of how one might interpret the paintings of Turner and Constable and what they're really trying to do. It's one of the very few works I've ever read about Turner or Constable that addresses the real issues of their work.

on fivebooks.com · 31 Jan 20198yr

Neglected Genius: The Diaries of Benjamin Robert Haydon, 1808-1846 by Benjamin Robert Haydon

These are the writings of a painter who was so bad at art, and yet was one of the greatest prose writers of the nineteenth century. He completely mistook his vocation and wrote these utterly astonishing diaries in which all sorts of things crop up.

on fivebooks.com · 31 Jan 20198yr

Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston by Musa Mayer

This is a brilliant piece of social history. It's a daughter's expression of love for her father, even though it was a complicated love. I think it's a very memorable portrait of a particular painter. She relates his work to his life, to his fathering, and regrets the toll taken on him by the rather damaging macho culture of the male artists of the New York School, who seemed to have felt obliged to drink at least a bottle of whiskey and smoke five packets of Camel no-filter cigarettes every day. It's amazing that he lived as long as he did, given that he died in his mid-sixties.

on fivebooks.com · 31 Jan 20198yr

The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers by T J Clark

This is an extremely fascinating account of nineteenth-century French art in the age of Baudelaire, Manet, and moving forward into the Impressionists.

on fivebooks.com · 31 Jan 20198yr

Turner: Imagination and Reality by Lawrence Gowing

This catalogue was published on the occasion of the first ever exhibition of a long-dead painter at the Museum of Modern Art. It's only about thirty pages, but it is utterly brilliant.

on fivebooks.com · 31 Jan 20198yr