Bücher von Edward Lucie-Smith

An essay by Edward Lucie-Smith explores the dynamic art of Titian, exhibited in a major collection of his key paintings at the National Gallery London and other studies of leading figures in the transcendent era of the High Italian Renaissance in painting, drawing, sculpture and architecture of the 15th and 16th centuies. 'The Titian show at the National Gallery here in London has just opened to the public again. It was available for just three days before the big lockdown. Now it is with us once more, though on rather different terms from what was the case previously. You have to book a time. You have to wearing a mask. You have to keep a distance between yourself and other visitors booked in for the same slot. Is it worth the hassle? Yes, of course it is. Titian is one of the greatest figures in the history of Western art.' ELS

The word 'avant-garde', so much used in connection with the various manifestations of contemporary art, is starting to have a strange, ironic ring to it. One might even claim that it is starting to signify what is behind the times, rather than in front of them. Like all such terms, it is in fact a metaphor, rather than a direct description. Borrowed from old-fashioned military terminology, it seeks to describe a situation where social norms are being perpetually challenged by artists. In the military sphere, where it originated, it is long out of use. Armies no longer marshal themselves in regular formations of the battlefield. There is now no recognized grammar of warfare - any more than (come to think of it) there is a recognized grammar of art. The mantra now is: 'It's art because I say it's art!' In these circumstances, it is increasingly difficult to define what is positioned ahead of what - who is at the head of the column and who is near he tail end of it. ELS

Cv publishes a collection of essays and reviews by the eminent art historian and writer, Edward Lucie-Smith. The articles cover the broad span, of classical to 20th/21st century art and its progression by pathways of postmodernism to contemporary art. With the experience of his landmark publications on modern art, several of which remain in print; the author introduces the reader to aspects of cultural mechanics, from the outset of creative experiment and intervention, absorbed by an intricate arena of curatorship and collection, with luminous insights to flaws in its hierarchy and prospects for the future. In 'The Art of the Dealer' Edward Lucie-Smith considers the history and development of the art market, from the practices of Northern Renaissance artists such as Albrecht Durer to the 18th century painter Jean-Antoine Watteau. He notes the Impressionist dealer DurandRuel and 20th century figures Ambroise Vollard and Paul Gillaume; the dominant American culture carried through by major operators such as Larry Gagosian into the 21st century.

In this study 'Art, Poetry and WW1, by Edward Lucue-Smith of writing, poetry and painting In the Centenary Year of the outbreak of the First World War the author considers the historical impact on the general psyche of the calamitous events, reflected in the expression of poets and visual artists. The volume includes Eric Kennington, CRW Nevinson, John Singer Sargent, William Orpen, Stanley Spencer and Paul Nash; and writers Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg, Wilfred Owen, Edward Thomas and T.S. Eliot. In Europe the painters: Otto Dix, Max Beckman, Franz Marc, Gino Severini, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Ludwig Meidner. He establishes a continuity to the theme with reference to works by Velázquez, Watteau, Goya and others, in their treatment of the spectacle of battle and the horrors of war and human conflict.

What is highly original is the fact that these drawings, often extremely ambiguous in meaning, form a meditative sequence, not apparently intended for public consumption, but entirely selfreflexive. They record the artist's dreams and fantasies, but strictly for his own contemplation. As such they represent a major psychological breakthrough, a next step forward from the late self-portraits of Rembrandt. Their successors are the images created by major Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalì and Max Ernst. The exhibition enables us to see our contemporary ideas about the nature of the self at the very moment of their first formation. These are the issues Edward Lucie-Smith will discuss in his text about this pioneering show, which not only reconstructs Goya's long-dispersed album, but places it In the context of other drawings and prints by the same great artist

The Rembrandt and Turner exhibitions, one at London's National Gallery, the other at Tate Britain, are populist homages to two of the undoubted giants of the European cultural tradition. They do not attempt complete surveys. Instead they seek to found themselves on a now well-established but in fact comparatively recent myth: that of a 'late style', wherein a great artist, nearing the end of his life, somehow transcends all the works he has made previously. Titian and Michelangelo have also been the subjects of the same kind of mythologisation. The facts are, of course, that neither Rembrandt nor Turner attained a very great age by 21st century standards. The Rembrandt show covers the artist's last decade-and-half, roughly speaking from the time when he went bankrupt in 1656 to his death in October 1669, aged 63. Turner had a longer life, but the show at Tate Britain covers about the same amount of ground - from 1835, when the artist was sixty, until his death in 1851, aged 76. The idea of the 'late style', as a very special, magical phase in the evolution of the work of a great artist, is, as I have just said, a comparatively modern invention.

Cv/VAR series 152 publishes an anthology of essays and reviews by the eminent art historian and writer, Edward Lucie-Smith. The articles cover a broad span, from the Italian Renaissance of Giotto and Antonello da Messina, Leonardo and Michelangelo, progressing to Rubens, Velazquez and Ingres, with essays on William Hogarth, John Constable and John Everett Millais for British Art. With the experience of his landmark publications on modern art, several of which remain in print, the author sweeps the reader on a fabulous journey of perception, disclosing the strands that bind the continuum of classic and contemporary art

The coincidence of two exhibitions in major London institutions, one at the National Portrait Gallery, devoted wholly to Giacometti's work as a portraitist, the other a retrospective devoted to the career of Frank Auerbach, with a high proportion of portraits, on view at Tate Britain, prompts some reflections on the role of portraiture in modern and contemporary art

He uses elaborate systems of arbitrary rules to regulate his patterns of markings - the absolute opposite of the freewheeling calligraphy typical of Abstract Expressionist predecessors such as Jackson Pollock. Where images are present, they are often mirrored or doubled. Or else camouflaged and concealed. His paintings therefore take on the character of being not simply objects to be looked at, but puzzles to be solved by the viewer. This aspect of his work perhaps explains by his work has had such a solid, long-lasting appeal to professional commentators on contemporary art. They feel great satisfaction in solving the riddles he sets them, and perhaps too, a bit of schadenfreude in contemplating those who are not sophisticated enough to crack the code. ELS In his introductory essay The Enigma of Jasper Johns author and art hist Edward Lucie-Smith considers the art of Jasper Johns, pivotal figure in the development of American contemporary art, whose sixty years activity is represented in a major exhibition at the Royal Academy London. The study is illustrated by key works along with a room by room view of the exhibition.

The essays by Edward Lucie-Smith, Marina Vaizey and James Cahill explore the development of the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the mid 19th century: a flowering of new voices that produced works which figure amongst the most enduring and generally popular in British art. The eminent writer and critic, Edward Lucie-Smith contributes a study of the Brotherhood's formation by seven artists, their inter-connection and absorption by the establishment of the time; their effect on the French School, Symbolism, the Aesthetic Movement and Surrealism. James Cahill has a special interest in the movement, having studied Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. He reviews a major exhibition of 180 works at Tate Britain presented from September to January 2012-13.

A study of the celebrated american painter John Singer Sargent explores his public practice as a society portrait painter and thee personal and complex aspects of his own creative drive. Additional essays by the author include: Citizens and Kings, Collecting Contemporary Art, Halfway There With Delacroix and Daumier. Contemporary descriptions of his portraits, often from people who knew the sitters, are at least as often unfavourable as they are favourable, even when he was at the very height of his success. Perhaps this is the fate of all successful portrait painters. The artist often sees his subjects rather differently from the way they would like to be seen. Friends and acquaintances mal also have a different image stored away. So, too, professional commentators, if the subject of the portrait is well known. Two quotes from the artist himself sum up the situation perfectly: "A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth." - "Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend."

In this volume Edward Lucie-Smith explores the magnetic poles of post-War modernism, with its figurehead in Europe of Pablo Picasso, and emerging creators in the USA led by Jackson Pollock and others in Abstract Expressionism. The author sets the mutual roots in Surrealism and reflects on the survival of the French artists during the Occupation. He traces Pollock's lasting effect to the later cycles American Pop.

In his fascinating study of the pervasive theme of 'The Dance of Death' 'Edward Lucie-Smith traces its lineage in art from mosaiics of Pompeii and early Medieval frescos. He cites the celebrated engraving by Albrecht Durer: The Knight, Death and the Devil' and an extensive series of woodcuts,'The Dance of Death' by Hans Holbein the Younger.