Search results for ""Author Mel Gooding""

Cradle of Magic brings together two giants of 20th-century British painting: John Bellany and Alan Davie Alan Davie (1920–2014) was one of the first British artists to explore abstract expressionist forms and techniques, and his gestural paintings, rich with symbolism, demonstrate an interest in tribal art, as well as Zen Buddhism. John Bellany (1942–2013), over a long and prolific career, came to be considered one of Britain's foremost figurative painters. His intimate works, often filled with ghoulish, hybridized creatures, balance the uncanny, joyful and violent in powerful and original ways. The book comes with two different covers—one by each artist—and includes an essay by the acclaimed art historian Mel Gooding exploring the connections between the artists and the themes underpinning their paintings. Also included are two newly transcribed interviews with the artists recorded as part of the Artists' Lives oral history project at the British Library.

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This is the first full-scale monograph of the life and work of the remarkable British artist Merlyn Evans (1910–73). Deeply affected by the poverty and violence that he witnessed in Glasgow during the depressed years of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Evans developed a highly personal abstract style, combining plant, crustacean and mechanical forms. His work was fundamentally shaped by his conviction that art should be an engagement with life, reflecting psychological, ethical and political concerns. Surrealism became a major influence, but Evans’s subject matter became increasingly social and political, reflecting his growing concern over economic distress at home and political disaster in Europe. Living in South Africa at the end of the 1930s, he remained preoccupied by the European crisis, and his paintings made explicit reference to economic depression, atrocity and war. In London afterWorldWar II, he took up etching and aquatint and embarked on a distinguished printmaking career in parallel to his painting. He was deeply read in psychology, philosophy, politics, mechanics, optics, and the history and techniques of art, as well as in modernist literature and contemporary poetry. All these aspects of his thought found expression in his work as an artist and as a writer and teacher.

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Over the past decade, Frank Bowling has enjoyed belated attention and celebration, including a major Tate Britain retrospective in 2019. This comprehensive monograph, published in 2011, is now available in an updated and expanded edition. Born in British Guiana in 1934, Bowling arrived in England in his late teens, going on to study at the Royal College of Art alongside David Hockney and Derek Boshier. By the early 1960s he was recognised as an original force in the vibrant London art scene, with a style that brilliantly combined figurative, symbolic and abstract elements. Dividing his time between New York and London since the late 1960s, he has developed a unique and virtuosic abstract style that combines aspects of American painterly abstraction with a treatment of light and space that consciously recollects the great English landscape painters Gainsborough, Turner and Constable. In a compelling text the art writer, critic and curator Mel Gooding hails Bowling as one of the finest British artists of his generation.

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The first monograph on this important but overlooked artist. Coincides with a major show of new work at Alan Cristea Gallery, London, 27 June to 31 July, 2019. Mick Moon RA was born in Edinburgh in 1937 and grew up in Blackpool. He studied at the Chelsea School of Art (1958-62) and later taught at the Slade School of Fine Art (1973-90). He was elected a Royal Academician in 1994 and his work now forms part of many public collections including those of the Scottish National Gallery, Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Moon's paintings and prints combine a wide variety of media and techniques in complex and intriguing layers. More recently, photographic elements have formed part of his practice, along with textural materials such as wood and cloth which Moon combines with ink and paint. The art historian Mel Gooding provides an authoritative insight into Mick Moon's practice and a definitive overview of his career. He argues that Moon is one of the most important artists of his generation and asserts his place as one of the key figures of post-war British art.

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Fractured Light focuses on a key body of work by the British artist Johnnie Cooper, which was instrumental in his transformation from sculptor to painter. Throughout the 1990s, with a renewed dedication Cooper embarked on an industrious and experimental trajectory with paint and collage. These works on paper, made by layering multiple strips of paintings, were directly inspired by a series of large assemblage works he constructed during the late 1980s, when the culmination of his work in art education brought a new found freedom. The view from a new studio in rural Worcestershire conjured fresh inspirations and instilled a fascination with the ever-changing colour, shape and light values that fractured through a nearby woodland over the course of a day. This book documents an important part of Cooper's oeuvre and is a must for enthusiasts of Johnnie's work or anyone who is into British Expressionism or abstract art. It accompanies an exhibition, also called Fractured Light, and follows Johnnie Cooper: Sunset Strip, a major monograph on the artist in 2019, also published by Black Dog Press.

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Joseph Banks accompanied Captain Cook on his first voyage round the world from 1768 to 1771. A gifted and wealthy young naturalist, Banks collected exotic flora from Madeira, Brazil, Tierra del Fuego, the Society Islands, New Zealand, Australia and Java, bringing back over 1,300 species that had never been seen or studied by Europeans. On his return, Banks commissioned over 700 superlative engravings between 1772 and 1784. Known collectively as Banks’ Florilegium, they are some of the most precise and exquisite examples of botanical illustration ever created. The Florilegium was never published in Banks’ lifetime, and it was not until 1990 that a complete set in colour was issued in a boxed edition (limited to 100 copies) under the direction of the British Museum (Natural History). It is from these prints that the present selection is made, directed by David Mabberley, who has provided expert botanical commentaries, with additional texts by art historian Mel Gooding, setting the works in context as a perfect conjunction of nature, science and art. An afterword by Joseph Studholme describes the history of the modern printing.

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