On Monday I told you about the foreword to the excellent Writers On Artists. Today I am here to give you a little more information about this anthology and to share some of it. Karen Wright says in the introduction that this book has been in the making for fourteen years (it was published in 2001), and that after much agonising over who should go in first, she was advised by the late David Sylvester to place them chronologically in order of publication.
Thus we have thirty-nine writers on thirty-nine artists, from Peter Fuller on Sydney Nolan to Jed Perl on Henri Matisse, from Andrew Motion on Duane Hanson to A.S. Byatt on Patrick Heron, Siri Hustvedt on Giorgio Morandi and Seamus Heaney on Barrie Cooke. Here are some of my favourite extracts which, I really do hope, will spur you on to track this book down in order to enjoy, and maybe even discover, both writers and artists.
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The subject of all Cézanne's paintings is space. And those solids which, by their presence, delimit and define space between and surrounding them all – whether landscape or still-life objects – are not more solid, not more tangible than these shaped aerial spaces which separate them. The spaces between the solids in Cézanne's paintings are themselves solid! And these spaces between things are as solid and as individually shaped as those things themselves.
Patrick Heron on Paul Cézanne
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I think a lot of people in England are afraid of pictures which have visible emotions in them. They feel calmer in front of pictures which are placid.
Howard Hodgkin
Talking about art
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The modern female body represented in a state of intimacy by an observing male. A century on, we have become more self-conscious spectators; queasiness and correct thinking have entered the equation for some.
Julian Barnes on Edgar Degas
The Tub
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It is true that every artist has his own religion.
Robert Motherwell
Figure in Black (Girl With Stripes)
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Some say they see poetry in my paintings, I see only science.
Georges Seurat
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My argument is that, to the heartbreaking beauty of the preparatory drawing, Seraut, in the finished picture, brought blemishes. Deliberately.
Craig Raine on Georges Seraut
The Bridge at Courbevoie
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But my ambition is not a problem – whatever I really want, I find a way of being able to achieve it, so I don't actually think – especially with art, my art is just part of me and it's just what I do. My idea of success is being able to do what you want to do, and if that's being ambitious then I am. And the thing about being happier than I've ever been now, it's the first time in my life that I've come to terms with who I am, and I seem to be accepted for who I am, and I have a good group of friends around me and that makes me feel good. So, it's got quite meaningful really.
Tracey Emin
Automatic Orgasm
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The most powerful painter in contemporary America and the only one who promises to be a major one is a Gothic, morbid, and extreme disciple of Picasso's Cubism and Miro's post-Cubism, tinctured also with Kandinsky and Surrealist inspiration. His name is Jackson Pollock.
Clement Greenberg
Reflection of the Big Dipper
Loved this! You have some of my favourite painters and paintings here. Thanks!
Posted by: Talli Rolnd | 26 August 2010 at 18:04