Bücher der Reihe CV/Visual Arts Research

Cv/VAR Series 177 publishes a study by the celebrated art historian and writer Edward Lucie-Smith of the leading American artist Chuck Close. Finding his early impetus in the photorealistic works by Richard Estes, as well as the surface shocks of Jackson Pollock's 'Tachiste' paintings,

Descriptions of human physiology are illustrated with ninety panel paintings by N.P.James ROI, which construct a detailed metaphor for the body. A viscous surface of pulped and washed colour interprets the intricate framework of muscles, arteries, bone and soft tissue, all infused with an internal dynamic of potent nervous energy.

Cv/VAR archive includes analytic essays on examples of Western art including: The Trinity by Masaccio at Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Vermeer's The Maidservant and Woman with a Balance; Velázquez court portraits, Cézanne, Salvador Dalí, Francis Bacon, Anthony Caro and Alison Wilding, Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol, with reviews of exhibitions in public and private galleries. The collection of over seventy pieces reveals strands that bind the continuum of classic and contemporary art. Cv/VAR 147 publishes an essay by Marina Vaizey 'which explores the work of artist Tracey Emin, exhibited at the Turner Contemporary Gallery Margate. May to September 2012. She considers her drawings, embroidery, prints and ne-ons, and the intricate correspondence of her art and life.

For his new cityscapes N.P.James made an artistic investigation of Paris, walking through the various districts of Opera, St.Lazare, Republic, Montmartre, Montparnasse, Le Marais, St. Denis and St.Germain. His sketchbook records aspects of the streets, buildings, courtyards and monuments.

Cv/VAR 156 presents a study by Anne Blood of the pioneering artist Kurt Schwitters (b. June 20, 1887, Hannover, d. January 8, 1948 Kendal) which reviews the exhibition Kurt Schwitters in Britain at Tate Britain, January to May 2013. The author focuses on the 'Merzbarn', a late work created in a barn at Elterwater, Cumbria in 1947, made in the last year of his life. The 'Merzbarn' is a complex internal sculpture integrated into the building used by permission of the owner Harry Pierce, who had commissioned a portrait by the artist. The unfinished but eloquent work proved to be a forerunner of modern pathways of art and installation, and added to Schwitters' seminal influence on future artists.

The survey began in April 1988 as interviews with artists, jewellers, fashion designers and furniture restorers, based at Old Loom House in Whitechapel, launching a quarterly review Cv Journal of Art and Crafts. Cv Journal was published to 1992 and the collection of interviews and features provided the foundation of Cv/Visual Arts Research archive and subsequent publications. Cv/VAR 154 publishes a study of Photography and Art in which authors Marina Vaizey and Anne Blood consider the historical impact of photography from pioneers Hill and Adamson, William Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre to contemporary practitioners such as Andreas Gursky and Boris Mikhailov. The documentary power and graphic clarity of the medium challenged and persuaded artists such as Degas, Sickert, Andy Warhol and Richard Hamilton, and innumerable creative voices. In their essays Marina and Anne explore the conjunctions and variations where document and dream intermingle, in a revolutionary medium which transformed the classical canons of Western tradition. The volume includes biographical details of leading figures and a guide to National Collections and study centres. of the spectacle of battle and the horrors of war and human conflict.

Renowned artist Lucian Freud (1922-2011) is commemorated in an exhibition of portraits and figure studies, spanning seven decades his working life, held at the National Portrait Gallery London from February to May 2012. The monograph explores the development of his art from acutely observed studies of the 1940s to major paintings in the later phase, where the artist engaged in a complex and sometimes brutal meditation on the human being, drawn from an intimate engagement with the sitter. Freud's unsparing eye maps his subjects, sustaining single handed an almost unique commitmnt to the ambitions of high art, grounded in classical canons of Western tradition. The study includes a review by Marina Vaizey of Freud's drawings, prints and oil studies, exhibited at Blain|Southern Gallery, Hay Hill.Marina Vaizey is an art critic, lecturer and traveller; her books include The Artist as Photographer, 100 Masterpieces of Art; Great Women Collectors. She was the art critic for the Financial Times for four years, and The Sunday Times for eighteen. She has curated several exhibitions and written manycatalogues. She has been a Trustee for several national museums.

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.

The survey began in 1988 as interviews with artists, jewellers, fashion designers and furniture restorers, based at Old Loom House Studios, Whitechapel, launching a quarterly review Cv Journal of Art and Crafts. Cv Journal was published to 1992 and the collection of interviews, features and reviews provided the foundation of the Cv/Visual Arts Research archive and subsequent publications. In Cv/VAR 104 the celebrated artist David Medalla gives an extensive interview, in which he discusses his advent to the literary and art scenes of Paris and London at a significant point of change in 1960. He recalls his introduction in Paris by Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duncan and Gaston Bachelard, who admired his original kinetic sculpture, The Bubble Machine.

Andy Warhol: Art, Design & SocietyThe 2013 monograph republished on the occasion of the 2020 Andy Warhol retrospective at Tate Modern London featuring: Campbell's Soup Cans, 1960s portraits; Suicides and Car Crashes; Sex Parts; Latinx Trans Portraits and the finnale Sicty Last Suppers 1986. Includes Andy Warhol at the NGMA Edinburgh, October 2007, A Celebration of Life..and Death. Magdalena Wasiura on Andy Warhol: Brigid Bardot portrait at Gagosian Gallery 2013; meeting Andy and his team at his Broadway office in May 1976; Vanitas at Anthony d'Offay 1996 and an interview with New Zealand artist Billy Apple¿, his recollections of Andy at the outset of his Pop Art before The Factory, in 1962-3.

Small Histories is a collection of essays and reviews by Nicholas James, 1993-2011, on examples of Western art: The Trinity by Masaccio at Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Vermeer's The Maid and Woman Weighing Pearls; Velázquez court portraits, Cézanne and Salvador Dalí, Francis Bacon, Anthony Caro, Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol, with reviews of exhibitions in London's public and private galleries. A collection of over seventy pieces reveals strands and connections that bind the continuum of classic and contemporary art.