'A beautifully written memoir by one of the most important and original artists working today . . . utterly gripping, enraging, entertaining - and important. I can't recommend it highly enough' Jennifer Higgie
A sparkling memoir and portrait of trailblazing artist Liliane Lijn as a young woman
In 1958, talented and fearless and eighteen years old, Liliane Lijn left her family home and moved to Paris alone to become an artist. Once there, she found an art world filled with the wild energy of creative revolution - peopled and controlled almost entirely by men.
In the years that followed, Lijn built a life for herself in the city. She embraced the hectic bohemian spirit of the Left Bank. She befriended artists, painters, poets, gallerists and revolutionaries, as the late Surrealists gave way to a burgeoning Pop Art movement. She had disastrous love affairs with difficult men. She experimented boldly, creating ground-breaking sculptures with light, text and movement. And as her profile steadily grew, she was told again and again that there are no great women artists: 'There never have been.'
Liquid Reflections is her memoir of these years of experiment and adventure - years when Lijn was constantly in motion, from Paris to New York to Venice to Athens, from paper and canvas to wax and Perspex to oil and water. In love, she became pregnant but rebelled against the idea that a woman could not be both a great artist and a mother.
And she sought - and found - radical pleasure in the act of creative expression and in the living, sensuous world around her.
Based on personal diaries from the time, this is a riveting and revelatory account of a singular coming of age: a glittering portrait of the artist as a young woman.
'I wrote LIQUID REFLECTIONS because I wanted to take my readers on the journey I made to become an artist. It's the story of an idealistic, inspired young woman who refuses to accept the prejudices of her time. Becoming an artist was also a search for my own identity...' Liliane Lijn
Rezensionen / Stimmen
With harrowing intimacy, Lijn's account reveals her experiences in an era when sexism was the norm. Meeting William Burroughs, Man Ray, Meret Oppenheim, and so many others, Lijn cut a path across American, British, and European postwar art scenes, even while her search for self-driven meaning was continually thwarted by this masculine milieu * Los Angeles Review of Books * A beautifully written memoir by one of the most important and original artists working today. It's not simply a record of the evolution of an artist, but a testament to the strength of spirit and imagination that allowed Lijn to develop her artwork in the face of structural sexism. I found her story utterly gripping, enraging, entertaining - and important. I can't recommend it highly enough -- Jennifer Higgie In the 1968 artwork that lends its name to American artist Liliane Lijn's memoir, two acrylic balls chase each other in a mesmerizing dance atop a transparent disc covered in water droplets. That same sense of fluid motion infuses this autobiography, a whirlwind of encounters - with fellow creatives, men, and artworks - mostly set in late 1950s and 1960s Paris, with escapades in Athens, Geneva, and Venice. Lijn traces her artistic evolution and influences with a limpid diaristic prose, which lends a nonchalance to her life's extraordinary events, from an enthralling but complex relationship with Greek artist Takis, to the relentless exploration of materials that made her a pioneer in melding art, poetry, and science * Art Basel * Liliane Lijn has been a unique and self-renewing force of creativity for six decades, amounting to an exceptional and unclassifiable career as a visual artist in many media, as well as a poet and a thinker -- Marina Warner
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
Zielgruppe
Für höhere Schule und Studium
Für Beruf und Forschung
Maße
Höhe: 220 mm
Breite: 139 mm
Dicke: 36 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-241-70396-0 (9780241703960)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Liliane Lijn is an artist and writer. From text based kinetic sculptures to large animated installations, inspired by science, mythology, and eastern philosophies, Lijn combines industrial materials with artistic processes to reimagine the female body. Her work is held in important public collections, including Tate, Victoria & Albert, British Museum, and FNAC in Paris. She has been exhibited internationally since the 1960s, most recently in the major retrospective Liliane Lijn: Arise Alive at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, touring to mumok, Vienna and Tate St. Ives. Born in New York, Lijn subsequently lived in Lugano, Paris, New York and Athens before finally settling in London in 1967.
