English Graphic
Published on 18. October 2012
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-0-7112-3370-6 (ISBN)
Description
English Graphic is a book of essays on the subject of illustration, with the focus entirely on English artists using graphic media; drawings, prints and watercolours. The pieces are largely drawn from Tom Lubbock' s weekly Great Works column for the Independent, with some longer pieces originally published as reviews or catalogue essays. The historical span of the book is broad - from the Uffington White Horse to the Winchester Psalter Hellmouth to Harry Beck' s London Underground Map and beyond. The high point of English Graphic art in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century makes up the heart of the book, with Fuseli, Blake, Bewick and Palmer all the subject of extended essays. The fifty or so images range from the visionary to the empirical, from folk art to caricature. Connecting and overlapping ideas on line and shape run through the book; maps, islands, clouds, swarms, wombs, skins, dots, contours and boundaries. Energetic, coherent and strange, English Graphic presents an electrical storm of ideas and illuminations provocatively argued by one of our most brilliant writers on art.
Reviews / Votes
'Lubbock's prose style is also, in its own way, quintessentially English ... it makes a refreshing change from those critics who seek to obfuscate with sesquipedalian logorrhoea ... a remarkable thematic focus [is] on display - all the more so given that Lubbock was sadly unable to oversee this book to its completion ... A fitting tribute.' 'Lubbock writes insightful mini-essays that reflect a fine eye, literate sensibility, and voracious curiosity. Recommended.' This is the perfect bed- or bog-sized book. Forty pungent, witty and erudite bites-size illustrated essays, each of two or three pages, range broadly over all aspects of British graphic art. ' An endlessly lively and surprising book ... a virtuoso display of variety in essay technique' - Julian Bell in the GuardianThis is the perfect bed- or bog-sized book. Forty pungent, witty and erudite bites-size illustrated essays, each of two or three pages, range broadly over all aspects of British graphic art.
'Lubbock writes insightful mini-essays that reflect a fine eye, literate sensibility, and voracious curiosity. Recommended.'
'Lubbock' s prose style is also, in its own way, quintessentially English ... it makes a refreshing change from those critics who seek to obfuscate with sesquipedalian logorrhoea ... a remarkable thematic focus [is] on display - all the more so given that Lubbock was sadly unable to oversee this book to its completion ... A fitting tribute.'
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Quarto Publishing PLC
Illustrations
50 illustrations in colour and b-w
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 165 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-7112-3370-6 (9780711233706)
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 Classification
Persons
Jamie McKendrick was born in Liverpool in 1955. He taught at the University of Salerno in Italy and is the author of five collections of poetry: The Sirocco Room (1991); The Kiosk on the Brink (1993); The Marble Fly (1997), winner of the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and a Poetry Book Society Choice;Ink Stone (2003), which was shortlisted for the 2003 T. S. Eliot Prize and the 2003 Whitbread Poetry Award; and Crocodiles & Obelisks (2007), shortlisted for the Forward Prize. A selection of his poems was published as Sky Nails (2000), and he is editor of 20th-Century Italian Poems (2004). His translations of the poetry of Valerio Magrelli were published by Faber in 2009, and awarded the Weidenfeld Translation prize for 2010.
Tom Lubbock, critic and illustrator, was the chief art critic of the Independent from 1997 until his death in 2011. He wrote widely on art, books and radio and produced major catalogue essays on Goya, Thomas Bewick and Ian Hamilton Finlay. His illustrations, mainly done in collage, appeared every Saturday on the editorial page of the Independent between 1999 and 2004. His weekly Great Works column, from which these essays are taken, ran between 2005 and 2010.
http://tomlubbock.com/
Tom Lubbock, critic and illustrator, was the chief art critic of the Independent from 1997 until his death in 2011. He wrote widely on art, books and radio and produced major catalogue essays on Goya, Thomas Bewick and Ian Hamilton Finlay. His illustrations, mainly done in collage, appeared every Saturday on the editorial page of the Independent between 1999 and 2004. His weekly Great Works column, from which these essays are taken, ran between 2005 and 2010.
http://tomlubbock.com/
Content
Introduction 6
1. Uffington White Horse 18
2. Hellmouth 22
3. Mappa Mundi 26
4. Two English Maps 30
5. The Bishop's Eye 34
6. Hilliard Minature 38
7. Leviathan 42
8. Hooke's Flea 46
9. Fantasy of Flight 50
10. Marring a Face 54
11. Character and Caricatures 58
12. Complete New System of Midwifery 62
13. Source of the Arviron 66
14. Ambleside 70
15. The British Slave Ship 'Brookes' 74
16. Elektra and the Chorus 78
17. The Face of the Moon 82
18. Romney 86
18. Gothic Nightmares 92
19. A Blot:Tigers 98
20. The Gout 102
21. A Democrat 106
22. Blake 110
23. Jerusalem 118
24. The Dance of Albion 122
25. Defining the Vignette 126
26. Palmer 142
27. Early Morning 146
28. In a Shoreham Garden 150
29. The Fairy Ring 154
30. West Bromwich Sweep 158
31. Alice Outgrowing the Room 162
32. Portrait of Himself in Bed 166
33. Mr Aubrey Beardsley 170
34. The Sower of Systems 174
35. The New Word in Golf 178
36. Wyndham Lewis 182
37. The London Underground Map 186
38. Patrick Caulfield 190
39. Bridget Riley 194
40. For the 5 Vowels 198
Index 206
1. Uffington White Horse 18
2. Hellmouth 22
3. Mappa Mundi 26
4. Two English Maps 30
5. The Bishop's Eye 34
6. Hilliard Minature 38
7. Leviathan 42
8. Hooke's Flea 46
9. Fantasy of Flight 50
10. Marring a Face 54
11. Character and Caricatures 58
12. Complete New System of Midwifery 62
13. Source of the Arviron 66
14. Ambleside 70
15. The British Slave Ship 'Brookes' 74
16. Elektra and the Chorus 78
17. The Face of the Moon 82
18. Romney 86
18. Gothic Nightmares 92
19. A Blot:Tigers 98
20. The Gout 102
21. A Democrat 106
22. Blake 110
23. Jerusalem 118
24. The Dance of Albion 122
25. Defining the Vignette 126
26. Palmer 142
27. Early Morning 146
28. In a Shoreham Garden 150
29. The Fairy Ring 154
30. West Bromwich Sweep 158
31. Alice Outgrowing the Room 162
32. Portrait of Himself in Bed 166
33. Mr Aubrey Beardsley 170
34. The Sower of Systems 174
35. The New Word in Golf 178
36. Wyndham Lewis 182
37. The London Underground Map 186
38. Patrick Caulfield 190
39. Bridget Riley 194
40. For the 5 Vowels 198
Index 206