Fabulous Art Books - What I've been reading.

Lockdown means it has been a year of very few gallery visits and really only accessing exhibitions online. I managed to see the Harley Open exhibition during the summer, when restrictions were eased but that’s been pretty much it. I’m still utterly gutted that I didn’t get my planned weekend in York to see the Gillian Lowndes exhibition at York Art Gallery.

In lieu of my much loved gallery & museum visits, I have been filling this void with some reading and perusing my collection of art related books. I have even allowed myself to purchase a few more, including a couple of those big, full colour expensive ones that I usually can’t justify spending the money on. However, during this time of being cut off from actually seeing work, it has been so enriching to sit and read as well as be treated to large colour images of art.

My first ‘treat’ of a book, which I bought last summer was Vitamin C - Clay + Ceramic in Contemporary Art. It starts with a fabulous essay, A Haptic Art by Clare Lilley, Director of Programme at Yorkshire Sculpture Park and curator of Frieze London Sculpture Park. Her writing explores the progression of ceramics as a medium of expression from ancient figurines, Pablo Picasso & Joan Miró, to Peter Voulkos and Ken Price among many others. Lilley discusses how works by these prominent artists has helped change the perception of work made in clay from ‘craft’ to ‘high art’. The rest of this book is more of a directory of contemporary ceramic artists with large colour images and a small passage of information on each artist and their practice.

I read this from front to back over a few weeks, reading and taking in the work in small doses so as not to get that overwhelm of information which results in one artist blurring into another. We’ve all had that, right? In museums or galleries where after about 3 hours you realise that you are no longer ‘seeing’ what you’re looking at. I created a structure to my lockdown days and looked forward to sitting down at the end of the day to savour my bougie new book with a peppermint tea. (Oh, I know how to live!)

Vitamin C - Clay + Ceramic in Contemporary Art, Phaidon Press

Another book that I have enjoyed it The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St Clair which delves into the stories and histories behind the colours we use. I was fascinated to learn that one of the reasons that green is associated with poison is because in 1775 a Swedish scientist named Scheele created a pea shade pigment from the compound copper arsenite, which, although highly toxic became very popular for printing fabrics, wallpapers and as an artists’ pigment. Many people died as a result of arsenical poisons released into the air from curtains, dresses and wallpapers dyed or printed with Scheele’s Green and yet it was never banned, such was the popularity for a beautiful green and a relaxed view on poisonous substances at the time. This book is a wonderful skip through the colour spectrum discovering origins and stories from across the world and centuries. Marvellous.

My latest treat, and another beautiful book for my coffee table is Women of Abstract Expressionism. which is the accompanying book to the exhibition of the same name which took place in Denver Art Museum in 2016. This book celebrates the work of 12 Abstract Expressionist female artists who worked within the late 1940s- 1950s whose contributions to this important movement have been somewhat overlooked.

I only got this last week, so have not yet finished it - not that you ever really ‘finish’ a book like this, but I am already enjoying the essays and discovering new works by some amazing female artists who often had to sign their work under pseudonyms to be taken seriously as artists.

Joan Mitchell 1956 - Photo by Loomis Dean for Life Magazine.

Although I will be delighted when we can finally visit galleries and museums again, I have found a renewed joy and value in taking time for books that nourish the mind and it’s an added bonus that they are visually stunning too! My resource library is coming along nicely.