Bücher von Kelly Grovier

A unique approach to the history of art told through the story of colour and pigments. Did you know that the ultramarine that shimmers at the centre of Vermeer's Milkmaid connects that masterpiece with 6th-century Zoroastrian paintings found on the walls of cave temples in Bamiyan, Afghanistan? Or that the surging waves that crest and curl in Hokusai's perilous Great Wave off Kanagawa owe their absorbing blue lustre to an alchemist who was born in Frankenstein's Castle in 1673? And were the Pre-Raphaelites really obsessed with a murky brown hue derived from the pulverized remains of ancient mummies? (Spoiler: they were.) Invented by prehistoric cave-dwellers and medieval conjurers, cunning conmen and savvy scientists, the colours of art tell a riveting tale all their own. Over ten scintillating chapters, acclaimed author Kelly Grovier helps bring that tale vividly to life, revealing the astonishing backstories of the pigments that define the greatest works in the history of art. Interwoven between these chapters is a series of features focusing on key moments in the evolution of colour theory - from the revelations of the Enlightenment to the radicalism of the Bauhaus - while reproductions of carefully selected artworks help illuminate the narrative's twists and turns. The history of colour is an epic saga of human ingenuity and insatiable desire. Read this book and you will never look at a work of art in quite the same way.

It is estimated that, as a result of climate change, illegal trade, and habitat loss from the encroachments of technology and industrialization, as many as one in eight species of birds is heading towards extinction. Created in close collaboration between Sean Scully and Kelly Grovier, each pairing of poem and drawing is devoted to the beauty and mystery of an individual species of bird. Scully's visual language, at once measured and impassioned, geometric and free-flowing, captures the essence of creatures that are, themselves, on the brink of becoming mere abstractions. Though his first series of iPhone drawings are consistent with his signature style, they reveal a fresh intimacy, playfulness, and exhilaration of gesture, color, and form that is in accord with the wonder of feathered flight. Created on a digital device, the drawings are, as Scully remarked, the ironic embodiment of "technology which is ruining nature turned inside out to protest its demise." Yet taken together, these duets aim to offer something uplifting in the face of an accelerating tragedy. "Hope" is, after all as Emily Dickinson famously wrote, "the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul."Having developed a style over the past five decades that is uniquely his own, SEAN SCULLY (*1945, Dublin) is one of the world's most acclaimed contemporary artists. He is known for his large-scale abstract sculptures, installations and paintings, comprised of vertical and horizontal color bands, blocks and geometrical forms as well as his intellectually engaging writings and lectures.KELLY GROVIER is a poet and cultural critic. Educated at the University of California, Los Angeles and at the University of Oxford, he is a feature writer for BBC Culture and co-founder of the international scholarly journal European Romantic Review.