James Cahill

Ben turns and grins ironically. ‘When you stopped just now and looked at the sky, you weren’t measuring it. You weren’t thinking about classical proportion. You were feeling something.’

Cambridge, 1994. Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However, his academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love.

When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don’s abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho.

Over the course of one long, hot summer, Don glimpses a liberating new existence. But his epiphany is also a moment of self-reckoning, as his oldest friendship – and his own unexamined past – are revealed to him in a devastating new light. As Don’s life unravels, he suffers a fall from grace that that shatters his world into pieces.

Tiepolo Blue

The Violet Hour

'The best novel I have read for ages. My heart was constantly in my throat as I read... There is so much to enjoy, to contemplate, to wonder at, and to be lost in.' STEPHEN FRY 'The smart, sexy read you need in 2022.' EVENING STANDARD Cambridge, 1994. Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However, his academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love. When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don's abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho. Over the course of one long, hot summer, Don glimpses a liberating new existence. But his epiphany is also a moment of self-reckoning, as his oldest friendship - and his own unexamined past - are revealed to him in a devastating new light. As Don's life unravels, he suffers a fall from grace that that shatters his world into pieces. 'A novel that combines formal elegance with gripping storytelling...wildly enjoyable' FINANCIAL TIMES 'Tiepolo Blue really has blown me away... The last debut novel I read that had this much talent buzzing around inside it was Alan Hollinghurst's The Swimming-Pool Library.' ROBERT DOUGLAS-FAIRHURST 'Meticulous and atmospheric... delicious unease and pervasive threat give this assured first novel great singularity and a kind of gothic edge' Michael Donkor, GUARDIAN

'The smart, sexy read you need in 2022’ Evening Standard

How do you be an artist? How do you become one in the first place, and what sort of advice should you heed along the way? Is art a 'career', or a vocation? Do you need a studio or a dealer, and how do you find one? Are artists too competitive? How do they come up with ideas, and what is the point of the private view? Does financial success—or the lack of it—change an artist? What are the advantages of getting older? How do older artists look back on their earlier work, and is it possible for an artist to ever retire? Based upon advice from a huge roster of artists, dealers and curators; and encompassing every stage of an artist's life—from early works, to debut shows and mid and late-career—this book answers all the key questions that every artist has at some point asked themselves.

Advice for Artists by Artists

Ways of Being

The first major survey to reveal the ways in which Classical mythology has inspired art throughout the last 2,500 years From the films of Woody Allen and the Coen Brothers to Margaret Atwood's books and Arcade Fire's songs, Classical Greek and Roman myths continue to be a source of cultural inspiration. The struggles of heroes, both triumphant and tragic, with gods, monsters, and fate, exert a particular grip on our imagination. Visual artists have long expressed and reworked these foundational stories. This is the first book to unite myth-inspired artworks by ancient, modern, and contemporary artists, from Botticelli and Caravaggio to Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.

Myths in Art from Classical to Contemporary

Flying Too Close to the Sun

The latest addition to the 'Lives of the Artists' series: highly readable short biographies of the world's greatest artists David Hockney is the most famous living British artist. And he is arguably one of the more famous American artists as well. Emerging from the north of England in the 1960s, he made quite a splash in Swinging London as a portaitist, and went on to make a even bigger splash in Los Angeles when he moved there in the 1970s. His figurative paintings of the 1970s and 1980s captured the zeitgeist of West Coast living, while he also explored new avenues by constructing mosaics out of polaroids. By the beginning of the millennium, he returned to his Yorkshire roots, embarking on a new period of painting. This came to an end with the death by misadventure in his home of a young studio assistant in 2013. He went 'home' to LA and has in the intervening years begun a new period of contemplative portraiture.

David Hockney

Reviews 'Jammers' by the celebrated American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008), in an exhibition held at Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street London, from 16th February to 28th March 2013. The series comes from a month in 1975 when the artist worked in an Ashram (textile factory) in Ahmedabad, India.

Art/Life

Robert Rauschenberg

Chinese Painting and Printing of the Anhui School

Shadows of Mt. Huang

Professor James Cahill

The turbulence of the period was echoed in its art, which saw the creation of some of China's great masterworks. Treated in detail are the lives and works of some forty-two of the period's leading artists. In the author's words: "Late Ming artists, besides producing a body of extraordinary interesting and sometimes superb paintings, were engaged in intricate ways with the past history of their art, and engaged also with their contemporary theorists in an elaborate interaction, a kind of cultural game that was played with especial intensity in this period. Theirs is often an intellectualized, historically conscious art; we can enjoy the paintings without reference to the issues that surround them, but to do so would be a severely limited reading of them.

Chinese Painting of the Late Ming Dynasty, 1570-1644

The Distant Mountains

David Hockney is the most famous living British artist. And he is arguably one of the more famous American artists as well. Emerging from the north of England in the 1960s, he made quite a splash in Swinging London as a portaitist, and went on to make a even bigger splash in Los Angeles when he moved there in the 1970s. His figurative paintings of the 1970s and 1980s captured the zeitgeist of West Coast living, while he also explored new avenues by constructing mosaics out of polaroids. By the beginning of the millennium, he returned to his Yorkshire roots, embarking on a new period of painting. This came to an end with the death by misadventure in his home of a young studio assistant in 2013. He went 'home' to LA and has in the intervening years begun a new period of contemplative portraiture.

A BBC "BOOKS OF 2022" PICKBen turns and grins ironically. 'When you stopped just now and looked at the sky, you weren't measuring it. You weren't thinking about classical proportion. You were feeling something.'Cambridge, 1994. Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. However, his academic brilliance belies a deep inexperience of life and love. When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don's abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho. Over the course of one long, hot summer, Don glimpses a liberating new existence. But his epiphany is also a moment of self-reckoning, as his oldest friendship - and his own unexamined past - are revealed to him in a devastating new light. As Don's life unravels, he suffers a fall from grace that that shatters his world into pieces.

Chinese Painting of the Yüan Dynasty, 1279-1368

Hills Beyond a River

Maggi Hambling

Maggi Hambling is one of Britain’s most celebrated and controversial contemporary artists. Her best-known works are her public sculpture of Oscar Wilde in London and The Scallop, celebrating composer Benjamin Britten, on the beach at Aldeburgh. But her paintings are just as remarkable, stirring emotions through broad, intense brush strokes and an unflinchingly direct engagement with her subject matter. Possessing a candor and emotiveness that is at odds with much contemporary art, Hambling’s paintings are distinct and unforgettable. War Requiem for the first time brings together Hambling’s many paintings of battlefields and the victims of war. Though fiercely contemporary, the paintings nonetheless feel timeless and speak to conflicts everywhere--from the most ancient to those in the here and now. Published to accompany an exhibit of Hambling’s work last summer at SNAP: Art at the Aldeburgh Festival, War Requiem stands as a bold testament to the anguish and absurdity of war. Essays by noted art historian James Cahill draw upon extensive interviews with the artist and help to place War Requiem within the larger context of Hambling’s oeuvre. As the centennial of World War I brings inevitable public reflection about war and history, War Requiem offers a stark reminder of the costs of conflict.

War Requiem

In this groundbreaking book, James Cahill significantly expands the field of Chinese pictorial art history with the first scholarly account of paintings for "use and pleasure." These functional, so-called vernacular works were produced by professional urban artists for affluent patrons, from the end of the Ming through the Qianlong period-the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Traditional Chinese collectors disparaged these works, which were intended as decorations or produced to mark a special occasion, and favored the "literati" paintings of upper-class amateurs. But today the often stunning vernacular images add a strong visual dimension to our understanding of High Qing culture. They bring to light the Qing or Manchu emperors' fascination with erotic culture in the thriving cities of the Yangtze Delta and revise our understanding of gender roles. They demonstrate the growth of figure painting within and around Beijing's imperial court and show that Chinese artists made important use of European styles. Pictures for Use and Pleasure introduces a rich corpus of works, long ignored in the studies of the period's art, and opens new windows on later Chinese life and society.

Vernacular Painting in High Qing China

Pictures for Use and Pleasure

Holly Black

New Edition, Fifty Cards

The Art Game

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

Helmut Brinker

Sherman Lee

Ma Chengyuan

Su Bai

Innovation and Transformation in the Arts

China, 5000 Years

Ellen Johnston Laing

James Francis Cahill

Osvald Sirén

This is the most comprehensive English-language compilation available on Chinese painters and their works from the late sixth through the mid- fourteenth century. Incorporating the work of Ellen Johnson Laing and Osvald Siren, the Index includes biographical details of the artists, their style and studio names.

Tʻang, Sung, and Yüan

An Index of Early Chinese Painters and Paintings

This beautifully illustrated book looks at three exemplary traditions in poetic painting, bringing new understanding of the relationship between the art and the societies that produced it.

James Cahill

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