Visual Art

With a unique blend of self-help, career strategy, and memoir-like elements, Vicki Lau speaks to the core of what it is like to work behind the scenes on some of your favorite Hollywood titles, covering strategies employed in order to maneuver her way into the upper echelons of the industry.

Painter Claudia Carr describes her surreal landscapes, composed from reflections of found objects that suggest imaginative scenarios of play and dreams.

Cv/VAR no.103 publishes an interview recorded 2010 with American artist John Dugger (b.California 1948) in which he gives an account of his art and development. He recounts 1960s America and arriving in London 1967: pioneering The Exploding Galaxy with David Medalla; 1970-2, their travels in the Philippines, Sri Lanka, India, then the China Journey of 1972 into Mao's Republic. The monograph documents the artists work for Banner Arts and other projects to date.

Edward Lucie-Smith examines Hans Holbein's famous series of prints, The Dance of Death, together with associated works, such as various artistic variations on the theme of Death and the Maiden. In addition, Lucie-Smith looks at some famous images made on the theme of war, notably the prints of Jacques Callot and the bitter social studies of Goya y Lucientes.

An interview with the author J. P. Donleavy, recorded in 1989 on the occasion of his exhibition at Anna-Mei Chadwick Gallery, Chelsea. He describes his formative experience of Dublin, with exhibitions there in 1948, '50, and '51, the catalogue manifestos, for these were his first published writings, leading to work on his first renowned novel, The Ginger Man.

Presents a collection of essays by Nicholas James on classic and contemporary art: "The Trinity" by Masaccio at Santa Maria Novella, Florence; Vermeer's "The Maid" and "Woman Weighing Pearls"; Cezanne and Salvador Dali, Francis Bacon portraits, and reviews of over 70 exhibitions in public and private galleries held between 1993 and 2010.

Somewhere within the iconic images, carefully made personae, star-studded milieu, million-dollar price tags and famous quotes lies the real Andy Warhol. But who was he? With Andy Warhol, Robert Shore unfolds the multi-dimensional Warhol, dissecting his existence as undisputed art-world hotshot, recreating the amazing circle that surrounded him, and tracing his path to stardom back through his early career and his awkward and unusual youth.

Marina Vaizey and Anne Blood consider the historical impact of photography on the fine and interpretive arts, from pioneers such as Hill and Adamson, Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre to Edward Steichen and Man Ray. The documentary power and graphic clarity of the medium challenged and persuaded artists such as Degas, Sickert, Warhol, and innumerable creative voices. In their essays Marina and Anne explore the conjunctions and variations where document and dream intermingle.

Daniel Graves is a man of many talents. He juggles his responsibilities of being a painter, a teacher, the director of The Florence Academy of Art, a husband, and a father remarkably well. He knew from the age of three or four who he wanted to be. His career launched when he was 11 years old. He studied with many artists including Richard Lack, Richard Serrin, and Signorina Simi, and received regular critiques from Pietro Annigoni.

In a set of essays entitled "Doubles" author, critic, curator, and traveller, Marina Vaizey explores pairings of artists drawn from the canonical cycle of Western art. She considers themes of engagement such as the portrait or figure, treated as stories of wider implication for society, that draw on the artist’s perception of the seen, combined with personal visions of dreams and imagination.

Cv/VAR no.100 publishes an interview with the American artist Jim Dine, recorded by cell phone from Wales to the artists Paris studio on May 11th, 2010. In this, he discusses his beginnings as an artist, his work with Claes Oldenburg and the Happenings, the Pinocchio series, 52 Books at Pace Gallery, New York, and the relationship of drawing to his graphic work.

A collection of reviews made from January to June 2019 of exhibitions in museums and galleries in London and Oxford. The volume proceeds from Small Histories, published in 1996 then updated in 2011. Contents include: Mantegna/Bellini at the National Gallery, John Ruskin at Temple Place, Elizabethan Miniatures at the National Portrait Gallery, Pierre Bonnard at Tate Modern, Mary Quant at the V&A, Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean Oxford, and Anish Kapoor at the Lisson Gallery London.

A review of the Mary Quant exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum London. The audiobook looks at the beginnings of the designer's practice, launched with the Kings Road boutique Bazaar in the 1950s; progressing to Quant's mini skirts and trouser suits in the 1960s, and development of a cosmetic range in the 1970s. Includes quotations from associates and biographical data.

Eco-art exhibitions are part of the trend of our times. Radical Nature, the show at the Barbican Art Gallery in London, demonstrated some of the possibilities and paradoxes of enterprises of this sort. Basically what the organizers had to do is to move the outside indoors. This set them both practical and, in their own terms at least, moral problems.

In this study, Art, Poetry, and WW1 by Edward Lucie-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. 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.

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 be wearing a mask. You have to maintain 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.

The monograph publishes a study of Rembrandt van Rijn and JMW Turner at the National Gallery and Tate Britain in exhibitions of their later works.

Cv/VAR 50 publishes an interview with the artist Helen Chadwick (1953-96), recorded at her Beck Road studio in 1989. It explores the body-action-photographic works distilled in installations such as Ego Geometria Sum and Of Mutability, and the cromalin prints of 1989: Viral Landscapes, prepared for exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Oxford in 1990.

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. The volume includes biographical details of leading figures and a guide to national collections and study centres.

This study explores the work of celebrated artist Tracey Emin, exhibited at Turner Contemporary in Margate Kent. It reviews the figurative studies and neon calligraphic scultpures.