John Piper, Myfanwy Piper

NOTE EDITORE

This book is about a shared journey made by John and Myfanwy Piper who early on settled down in a small hamlet on the edge of the Chilterns, whence they proceeded to produce work which placed them centre stage in the cultural landscape of the twentieth century. Here, too, they fed and entertained many visitors, among them Kenneth Clark, John Betjeman, Osbert Lancaster, Benjamin Britten, and the Queen Mother. Their creative partnership encompasses not only a long marriage and numerous private and professional vicissitudes, but also a genuine legacy of lasting achievements in the visual arts, literature and music. Frances Spalding also sheds new light on the story of British art in the 1930s. In the middle of this decade John Piper and Myfanwy Evans (they did not marry until 1937) were at the forefront of avant-garde activities in England, Myfanwy editing the most advanced art magazine of the day and John working alongside Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and others. But as the decade progressed and the political situation in Europe worsened, they changed their allegiances, John Piper investigating in his art a sense of place, belonging, history, memory, and the nature of national identity, all issues that are very much to the fore in today's world. Myfanwy Piper is best known as 'Golden Myfanwy', Betjeman's muse and for her work as librettist with Benjamin Britten. John Piper was an extraordinarily prolific artist in many media, his fertile career stretching over six decades and involving him in many changes of style. Having been an abstract painter in the 1930s, he became best known for his landscapes and architectural scenes in a romantic style. This core interest, in the English and Welsh landscape and the built environment, developed in him a sensibility that took in almost everything, from gin palaces to painted quoins, from ruined cottages to country houses, from Victorian shop fronts to what is nowadays called industrial archeology. His capacious and divided sensibility made him defender of many aspects of the English landscape and the built environment, while in his art he became an heir of that great tradition encompassing Wordsworth and Blake, Turner, Ruskin, and Samuel Palmer. He was torn between the pleasures of an abstract language liberated from time and place and those embedded in the locale, in buildings, geography, and history. Today, this expansive contradictoriness seems quintessentially modern, his divided response finding an echo in our own ambivalence towards modernity. Both Pipers created what seemed to many observers an ideal way of life, involving children, friendships, good food, humour, the pleasures of a garden, work, and creativity. Running through their lives is a fertile tension between a commitment to the new and a desire to reinvigorate certain native traditions. This tension produced work that is passionate and experimental. 'Only those who live most vividly in the present', John Russell observed of John and Myfanwy Piper, 'deserve to inherit the past'.

SOMMARIO

1 - John 2 - 'That's Painting!' 3 - Stained Glass and Coastal Gaiety 4 - Orchard's Angel 5 - Going Modern 6 - Axis 7 - Abstract and Concrete 8 - 'Look, Stranger, at this island now' 9 - New and shattered circumstances 10 - Decrepit Glory, Pleasing Decay 11 - 'The Weather in Our Souls' 12 - Fawley Bum 13 - War Artist 14 - Stormy Weather 15 - Renishaw and the Sitwells 16 - Topographical mania 17 - Sly Liaisons 18 - Stern Watching and Mysterious Sympathy 19 - Return to Peace 20 - Working for the Stage and with Britten 21 - 'A firm shape among shadows' 22 - Cranko and Britten 23 - The Turn of the Screw 24 - Textiles, Mosaics, Murals, and early Stained Glass 25 - Coventry and Cranks 26 - Ambiguous Venice 27 - Dark Glasses at Evensong 28 - Church Commissions 29 - Owen Wingrave 30 - Shell Guides 31 - Pottery, Tapestries, and Fireworks 32 - Death in Venice 33 - Deaths and Entrances 34 - An English Garden 35 - Myfanwy

ALTRE INFORMAZIONI

• Condizione: Nuovo
• ISBN: 9780199567621
• Dimensioni: 247 x 34.4 x 189 mm Ø 1336 gr
• Formato: Brossura
• Illustration Notes: Fully illustrated throughout with 80 black-and-white in-text illustrations and 80 colour plates
• Pagine Arabe: 624