"Charles Spencer has written the first full-scale study of Cecil Beaton's achievement as a stage designer, and traces Beaton's career from undergraduate efforts with the Cambridge ADC through early designs for Cochran's revues to the triumphantly realised schemes for celebrated productions of Lady Windermere's Fan and The School for Scandal. Based on Sir Cecil's personal recollections, notebooks and sketchbooks, this sympathetic and penetrating account investigates Beaton's contributions not only to the theatre but also to ballet, opera and film, which brought him great acclaim and critical recognition. The evolution and characteristic components of the 'Beaton style' are recorded in a generous selection of illustrations, many from Beaton's private collection and previously unpublished, which point to the deep and lasting impression his remarkable career has left on twentieth-century stage design."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
The definitive book on the legendary photographer's life in New York City, with many never-before-seen images and reminiscences by his closest friends and confidants. From the 1930s, when he helped revolutionize fashion journalism, through the 1960s, when he launched headlong into the Pop art era, London-based photographer Cecil Beaton brought to New York City his own perspective--aristocratic, sexually ambiguous, and theatrical. At the same time, New York offered Beaton innumerable opportunities to reinvent himself and his career. Cecil Beaton: The New York Years features sketches, costumes, set designs, previously unpublished letters, and over 220 photographs and drawings, many in color and never seen before. This volume documents Beaton's most influential relationships with quintessential figures of the New York art scene, including Greta Garbo, his female confidant and muse, and Andy Warhol. Richly illustrated, Cecil Beaton is the definitive portfolio chronicling Beaton's stunning career in fashion, portraiture, and the performing arts. The book will be divided into five parts: Beaton in Vogue: Beaton's photography for Condé Nast's Vogue in the 1930s hastened the decline of fashion illustration in favor of today's emphasis on photography. Beaton himself became a celebrity photographer, as famous as his subjects, in the later mold of Richard Avedon and Annie Leibovitz. Beaton and the Stage: After World War II, Beaton appeared on the New York stage as an actor, and he also designed sets and costumes for such musicals as My Fair Lady and Coco and operas Vanessa and La Traviata, both at the Metropolitan Opera. Beaton on New York: Beaton produced many illustrated books on New York City and his tell-all diaries detailed his life among the city's best-known figures. Beaton was also commissioned to produce innumerable photographs of New Yorkers, from Truman Capote to Tom Wolfe. Beaton on Garbo: Greta Garbo was Beaton's closest female friend She was also his muse, and his photographs captured her in many different scenarios and moods from the mid-1940s, when she ended her Hollywood career and permanently moved to New York. Beaton on Warhol: In 1968, Beaton was advised to photograph a group of young New Yorkers, the most famous of which was Andy Warhol and his Factory. In effect, this photo shoot charted the passing of the torch from Beaton to Warhol, two figures who defined their era's concepts of popular culture, celebrity, and sexual mores.
A private view of the genius of Cecil Beaton, reflected through the lens of his town and country idylls, and his passion for interior design, gardening, and entertaining a circle of Bright Young Things. Cecil Beaton (1904–1980) was one of twentieth-century Britain’s Renaissance men: photographer, costume designer, set designer, playwright, creator of fashion fabrics, and writer on raffiné interiors and the personalities who inhabited them. He also happened to be a fine interior decorator. Cecil Beaton at Home focuses on two homes dear to Beaton’s heart—Ashcombe House, near the Wiltshire village of Tollard Royal, and Reddish House, located in Broad Chalke, another village in the same county—as well as London's Pelham Place and Beaton’s New York hotel suites. Simultaneously a retreat, an inspiration, a photographer’s studio, and a stage for impressive entertaining, Beaton’s country homes also fueled his passion for art, gardening, and delight in village life. Against his often-extravagant interiors, Beaton’s private life unfolds—his unique talent for self-promotion, desire for theatricality, and uncertain pursuit of love. This lavishly illustrated visual biography brings together original photographs, artworks, and possessions from his interiors to present an intimate picture of Beaton’s extraordinary life.
The 1960s contains some of the very best set pieces, including Churchill's funeral. He has just completed making the film, My Fair Lady, which included rows with the director George Cukor, Rex Harrison's fondness for watching live sex, Cukor on Audrey Hepburn's figure etc. (Cecil was also the master at slicing up Hollywood social life at that period. He loathed it). His partner Kin, who has spent a year with him in England, returns to the USA, leaving Cecil to loneliness - but not for long. He is soon travelling aboard Cecile de Rothschild's yacht with Garbo - his former lover - as a fellow traveller. He visits Picasso at his home, the Rolling Stones in Marrakech; Andy Warhol in New York. Here is the young David Hockney, Peter Sellers being beastly, Paul Getty being mean. Cecil is fascinated by this new generation testing the boundaries as he and his friends had done in the 1920s. Friendships remain important - the Avons, Lady Juliet Duff, Lady Diana Cooper, Mrs Heinz. He also sees off all younger competition as photographer royal and as in the previous volume there are some very funny and often very pointed entries about the Queen, the Queen Mother, Princess Marina, Princess Marga
Cecil Beaton was one of Britain's greatest cultural icons - not just as a photographer capturing some of the most celebrated portraits of the 20th century but also as designer of the iconic sets and costumes for the films My Fair Lady and Gigi. In 1980, Beaton personally chose Hugo Vickers to be his biographer, entrusting him with his diaries and the entire body of letters he had written - both personally and professionally - over the course of his life. Drawing on five years of intensive research and interviews with the likes of Audrey Hepburn, Truman Capote, Princess Grace of Monaco and Sir John Gielgud, Vickers' biography was an instant bestseller upon its publication in 1985. Exploring Beaton's metamorphosis from being the child of a staid middle-class family to an international figure mingling with the glittering stars of his age, the biography also details his great love for Greta Garbo and reveals his private sense of failure that the success he always wanted - as a playwright - eluded him. Republished in a new paperback edition in time for Bright Young Things, a major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 2020, Cecil Beaton is the definitive and authorised biography of one of the world's most fascinating, famous and admired photographers.
The stylish and extravagant world of the "Bright Young Things" of 1920s and '30s London, seen through the eye of renowned British photographer Cecil Beaton In 1920s and '30s Britain, Cecil Beaton used his camera and his larger-than-life personality to mingle with that flamboyant and rebellious group of artists, writers, socialites and partygoers who became known as the "Bright Young Things." Famously fictionalized by the likes of Evelyn Waugh (in Vile Bodies), Anthony Powell and Henry Green, these men and women cut a dramatic swathe through the epoch and embodied its roaring spirit. In a series of themed chapters, covering Beaton's first self-portraits and earliest sitters to his time at Cambridge and as principle society photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair, over 50 leading figures who sat for Beaton are profiled and the dazzling parties, pageants and balls of the period are brought to life. Among this glittering cast are Beaton's socialite sisters Baba and Nancy Beaton, Stephen Tennant, Siegfried Sassoon, Evelyn Waugh and Daphne du Maurier. Beaton's photographs are complemented by a wide range of letters, drawings, book jackets and ephemera, and contextualised by artworks created by those in his circle, including Christopher Wood, Rex Whistler and Henry Lamb. Cecil Beaton (1904-80) is one of the most celebrated British portrait photographers of the 20th century and is renowned for his images of elegance, glamour and style. Beaton quickly developed a reputation for his striking and fantastic photographs, which culminated in his portraits of Queen Elizabeth in 1939. Also well known as a diarist, Beaton became a society fixture in his own right. His influence on portrait photography was profound and lives on today in the work of many contemporary photographers.
