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A History of British Art |
| A History of British Art begins with the unpromising acknowledgment that "the British are a tribe of writers, not painters ... we have never been truly possessed of a native visual imagination." Graham-Dixon's book is an attempt to challenge these assumptions about British art and its history and he does so through a striking reassessment of the "tradition of anti-art, which dominated Britain for more than a century after the start of the Reformation". In tracing "the nation's love-hate relationship with art" and the recurrent "iconophobia" which has often literally done such damage to British art, Graham-Dixon offers a refreshing perspective on a surprisingly neglected topic.
Beginning with a consideration of what remains of a Catholic, pre-Reformation tradition in 15th-century English architecture and church art, Graham-Dixon reassesses the bad press accorded the Tudors. He offers illuminating accounts of the paradoxical embrace of Holbein and Van Dyck by the English court, Holbein in particular exemplifying English values of "common sense, precision, empiricism, determination, a capacity for inward reflection and a strong consciousness of responsibility." Hogarth, Gainsborough and Reynolds are celebrated as titans of the eighteenth century, while George Stubbs is hymned as one of the greatest painters ever to have lived. There are fine sections on the radical nature of Constable and Turner, the turn away from their innovations by the Victorians and the complex, often painful reception of modernism into the mainstream of 20th-century British art from Wyndham Lewis to Damien Hirst. Overall, this is an elegant and readable overview of British art.
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Review Paperback: 256 pages Publisher: University of California Press; New Ed edition (1 Feb 2000) Language English ISBN-10: 0520223764 ISBN-13: 978-0520223769 Product Dimensions: 24.8 x 19 x 1.9 cm "Graham-Dixon's account of this story is accurately and elegantly told... What is winning and very British is Graham-Dixon's gift for turning out memorable remarks in an understated style... He charms the reader to think, to look again and to rethink, above all to take seriously his central thesis that the British are a profoundly visual people." Timothy Wilson-Smith, The Tablet "Ever since he began his thoughtful, carefully reasoned, beautifully written weekly page on visual art in the Independent, Andrew Graham-Dixon has been a source of great pleasure and enlightenment for a large and appreciative public, now vastly multiplied by TV. This man thinks along fresh and original lines and he's also a first-class writer. Graham-Dixon selects and plants his words with edgy refinement. He is incapable of cliche. Art critics who write for the daily or weekly press fall into three categories. The well-informed, up-to-the-minute art journalist provides a useful, thorough and objective surbey of events in galleries and museums, describing and assessing strengths and weaknesses on a broad front. The more partisan critic is politically, socially or aesthetically committed to particular areas of interest or even a specific approach to art. The trouble here is that intellectual 'commitment' can degenerate fast into promotion and become a real bore - and even a tissue of distortions or half-truths, in which everything that isn't a socially or politically correct swan is a duck to be shot on sight... As a critic, Graham-Dixon comes into a third category, exemplified in the US by Robert Hughes, whose astringent views on contemporary art and its attendant lunacies are so diverting to read in Time magazine and occasional books. This category consists of a small number of freely speculative, broadly cultivated and independent thinkers who can write well-constructed essays on a variety of subjects involving some original thinking... These richly speculative and original essays on British art are full of good things..." Bryan Robertson, The Independent on Sunday "It should get people arguing about - and perhaps even looking at - British art. Graham-Dixon has been billed as the new Kenneth Clark, but a more apt comparison would be with John Berger... What he has given us is a history of British art that looks at ashes as well as phoenixes." James Hall, Times Literary Supplement |
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