Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946) was a daring and visionary artist who callenged the artistic conventions of his day. Born in Ostend, as a young man he wandered the night-time streets of the North Sea resort, creating mysterious and highly atmospheric evocations of its dark quays, beaches and promenades. These layered works, among his most radical, have profound psychological depth and ambiguity, traits also seen in a series of haunting self-portraits considered outstanding exemplars of the genre. This publication, accompanying the first monographic exhibition of Spilliaert's art in Britain, illustrates over a hundred works from international collections. The Belgian artist Luc Tuymans, who considers Spilliaert a key influence, introduces the book.
The first publication in English of the ultimate monograph on painter Léon Spilliaert. Léon Spilliaert (1881-1946) was one of the most important Flemish Symbolist painters. Although he was embedded in the Symbolist tradition, he was also drawn to the avant-garde. He was, in fact, an einzelgänger, or loner, balancing on the fault line between two centuries, a transitional figure between Symbolism and Surrealism. Spilliaert, like James Ensor, was born and raised in Ostend. And like Ensor, he was also driven by ridicule and irony, non-conformism and the urge to look at the world from a different perspective. He created his own spiritual imagery, experimented with pastel and gouache, and played with purified areas of colour and graceful lines. The sea under a cool moon, lonely figures with a vacant gaze, desolate beaches, empty rooms and stylised silhouettes in backlight: Spilliaert was always able to evoke an atmosphere of mystery, magic and alienation in abstract lines and colours. This revised, English-language version of the ultimate Spilliaert book will be published to coincide with the major Spilliaert exhibition at the Royal Academy in London this autumn.
This deeply personal account of emotion and vulnerability draws upon anecdotes related to individual works of art to present a chronicle of how people have shown emotion before works of art in the past.
"A brilliant fantasy." -- Manchester Guardian. What would you do if you could re-live your life? In his only novel, occultist P. D. Ouspensky expands upon his concept of eternal recurrence, telling of a man who travels back in time and attempts to correct the mistakes of his schooldays and early manhood, including his romantic misadventures. Set in Moscow and Paris, the story served as an inspiration for the movie Groundhog Day.
This book is the first full-length study of the art and writings of Jean Delville. As a member of the younger generation that emerged during the end of the nineteenth century, he was a dynamic leader of a group of avant-garde artists who sought to establish a new school of Idealist Art in Belgium. He was one of the most talented painters of his generation, producing a vast body of works that, in both scale and technical accomplishment, is unsurpassed amongst his contemporaries. In his extensive writings in contemporary journals and books, he pursued a singular vision for the purpose of art to serve as a vehicle for social change, as well as to inspire individuals to be drawn to a higher, spiritual reality. Delvilles thinking is heavily indebted to the hermetic and esoteric philosophy that was widely popular at the time, and his paintings, poetry and writings reformulate the main tenets of this tradition in a contemporary context. In this regard, his aesthetic and artistic goals are similar, if not identical, to those found in the writings and art of Kandinsky and Mondrian during the early twentieth century.
Camille Claudel, sister of writer Paul Claudel, was a gifted nineteenth-century French sculptor who worked with Auguste Rodin, became his lover, and then left him to gain recognition for herself in the art world. With a strong sense of independence and a firm belief in her own considerable talent, Claudel created some extraordinary works of art and challenged the social and artistic limitations imposed upon the women of her time. Eventually, however, she crumbled beneath the combined weight of social reproof, deprivation, and art-world prejudices. Her family, distraught by her unconventional behavior as well as her delusions and paranoia, had her committed to a mental asylum, where she died thirty years later. Camille Claudel’s life has been romanticized in print and on film, but this is the first fully researched biography to present a rounded picture of the life and work of this remarkable woman. The book, also available in French, has been widely praised for its gripping presentation of the life of a woman artist in the nineteenth century, and for its successful attempt to free Claudel from the myths that had been woven around her. “The complete story of Claudel’s tragic life has never been thoroughly researched and recounted until now, and Ayral-Clause’s polished, to-the-point coverage is galvanizing… Fair and precise, Ayral-Clause’s clarion biography arouses the only reasonable response to Claudel’s saga: outrage.” — Booklist “Ayral-Clause commands much new data and an admirable objectivity. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal “… scholars will find this book, with its mastery of the sources in their original language, a welcome substitute for outdated previous studies…” — Publisher’s Weekly “By excavating Claudel from the edifice of victimization, Ayral-Clause frees us to focus on her work and the factors, both Rodin-and non-Rodin-related, that nurtured and hindered her career.” — Los Angeles Times “This is a fascinating biography… Using newly discovered private letters, family photographs and medical documents recently released to the public, the author provides the first serious, authoritative portrait of this brilliantly gifted, misunderstood artist.” — Umbrella “Ayral-Clause… resists dogmatic interpretation, choosing instead to view her protagonists as fully and as sympathetically as the evidence allows… Her straightforward narrative style offers a clear and vivid context for Claudel’s life and work.” — Art and Auction “Camille Claudel: A Life is riveting: measured, even-handed and revelatory. The author shows how we have absorbed the legend (Rodin exploited and deserted her), ignorant of the facts… Odile Ayral-Clause brilliantly illuminates Claudel’s vivacity and recounts her downfall.” — Art Quarterly (England) “The author has redefined the relationship between Camille Claudel, her environment and the art world, and brings to light the originality of the work of Camille Claudel in relation to Rodin’s” — L’Oeil (France)
America's great poet and art critic, John Ashbery, presents some of his most provocative essays on art. Ashbery has long been one of America's most important art critics--first for the Paris Herald Tribune and later for New York and Newsweek. Illustrated.
"Enigmatic magic, erotic sensuality and dark dreamworlds all characterise Symbolism, which evolved as an art current from the 1880s on - with Brussels advancing to become a centre of activity in the development of European art. The tendency towards the morbid and the decadent was most pronounced in Belgian Symbolism. Many of the impulses for this avant-garde came from Belgian artists, such as the disreputable Félicien Rops, the subtle Fernand Khnopff, the occult Jean Delville and the eccentric Léon Spilliaert and James Ensor."--back cover.
