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A Face to the World: on self portraits |
Perhaps the key to this fascinating book is the quote by Dickens on his ideal of Shakespeare's likeness: " . . . a genius and absolute blank". No portrait was necessary, his work is a self-portrait. Yet we're fascinated from Rembrandt to Lucien Freud, by artists' studying themselves in self-portraiture. Do we discover anything? About them, about ourselves? Or do we see just an image to make of what we will? Irresistible
(James Baker - bwl 58 Autumn 2010) |
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On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons |
Summer, 1929, a child is kidnapped on the beach only to be found 5 days later. The child grows up unaware of this event and it will take another fifty years before her daughter's diligence will unlock the secrets of the past. Cummings is an art critic and her family memoir, beautifully written, is illuminated by pictures and images as she gradually unearths all those things which nobody talked about it but which affected so many lives.
(Jenny Baker - bwl 95 Winter 2020) |
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The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez |
This book is about the great painter Velazquez. Also about the obsession of John Snare who acquires what he thinks is a masterpiece by the great man and ruins himself in the process. It is a beautifully written detective story and makes one want to discover this genius once again.
(David Graham - bwl 84 Spring 2017) |
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Thunderclap: A Memoir of Life and Art & Sudden Death |
Cumming's starting point is an enigmatic seventeenth century painting of Delft by Fabritius, who died young when a gunpowder explosion devastated the city. What follows is a beautifully written account of Dutch artistic life of the period, interspersed with an appreciation of her painter father and snippets of her own life. I much preferred the brilliant evocation of painters, including Vermeer, de Hooch and de Witte, based on a close observation of their paintings, but all in all a gripping read.
(Tony Pratt - bwl 114 Autumn 2024) |
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