Reading the 20th Century discussion

Our September 2020 theme will be Art or Artists - so that's a book about Art or Artists that you would like to read and discuss.

It can be either fiction or non-fiction

Please supply the title, author, a brief synopsis, and anything else you'd like to mention about the book, and why you think it might make a good book to discuss.

If your nomination wins then please be willing to fully participate in the subsequent discussion



Happy nominating

I'm going to nominate a biography of an artist who I really like and who had a fascinating life....


The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (1994)

by

Daniel Farson

Widely regarded as the best British painter since Turner, very little is known about Francis Bacon's life. In this, the first-ever book to be written about him, Daniel Farson, friend and confidant to Bacon for over forty years, gives a highly personal, first-hand account of the man as he knew him. From his sexual adventures to his rise from obscurity to international fame, Farson gives us unique insight into Bacon's genius.

On Amazon UK is has an average rating of 4.4 out of 5 based on 25 reviews and ratings

It's available for Kindle too

I'd be interested in reading about Bacon's life, but my nomination is Widow Basquiat: A Memoir, a sort of semi-novelised memoir from Jennifer Clement who knew his partner Suzanne Mallouk and, through her, Jean-Michel Basquiat.


Rated on here 4.35 out of 3,140 ratings, and on Amazon 4.7 from 113 ratings. Available on Kindle and Audible.

GR blurb:
The beautifully written, deeply affecting story of Jean-Michel Basquiat's partner, her past, and their life together

New York City in the 1980s was a mesmerizing, wild place. A hotbed for hip hop, underground culture, and unmatched creative energy, it spawned some of the most significant art of the 20th century. It was where Jean-Michel Basquiat became an avant-garde street artist and painter, swiftly achieving worldwide fame. During the years before his death at the age of 27, he shared his life with his lover and muse, Suzanne Mallouk.

A runaway from an unhappy home in Canada, Suzanne first met Jean-Michel in a bar on the Lower East Side in 1980. Thus began a tumultuous and passionate relationship that deeply influenced one of the most exceptional artists of our time.

In emotionally resonant prose, award-winning author Jennifer Clement tells the story of the passion that swept Suzanne and Jean-Michel into a short-lived, unforgettable affair. A poetic interpretation like no other, Widow Basquiat is an expression of the unrelenting power of addiction, obsession and love.


Self Portrait


Portrait of Jean-Michel Basquiat by Bernard Bieling

Thanks. I'd like to read that one RC


NOMINATIONS....

Nigel: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon (1994) by Daniel Farson
Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement

I have a copy of "A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War" by David Boyd Haycock, which looks interesting. I think someone in the old BYT group may have recommended it when we were discussing books set during WWI.
The five artists in question are Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, Christopher Nevinson, and Stanley Spencer, who were all students at the Slade School around the same time.
This is not a nomination at the moment, perhaps more of an alternative book to read if the Spencer biography wins and I can't get hold of it.

A Crisis of Brilliance sounds great and is on Kindle if you are tempted to nominate, Val.

Val wrote: "This is not a nomination at the moment, perhaps more of an alternative book to read if the Spencer biography wins and I can't get hold of it"

Has someone nominated a Spencer biography?

I would like to nominate Life Class

From the Booker Prize-winning and Women's Prize-shortlisted author of The Silence of the Girls

The first novel in Pat Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy - an unforgettable story of art and war, from one of our greatest writers on war and the human heart

'Triumphant, inspiring, shattering' The Times

'Barker writes as brilliantly as ever... With great tenderness and insight she conveys a wartime world turned upside down' Independent on Sunday

'Masterly, gripping' Penelope Lively

'Extraordinarily powerful' Sunday Telegraph

Spring, 1914. The students at the Slade School of Art gather in Henry Tonks's studio for his life-drawing class. But for Paul Tarrant the class is troubling, underscoring his own uncertainty about making a mark on the world. When war breaks out and the army won't take Paul, he enlists in the Belgian Red Cross just as he and fellow student Elinor Brooke admit their feelings for one another. Amidst the devastation in Ypres, Paul comes to see the world anew - but have his experiences changed him completely?

The Life Class trilogy:
Life Class
Toby's Room
Noonday

For some strange reason I've read Toby's Room and Noonday but not Life Class - so great pick, Susan.

I wasn't going to nominate, but I have been thinking I want to read some more Pat Barker and I haven't read that trilogy.

I think I'm just not interested in reading biographies of painters I've never heard of. It's spendy, but the Barker is one I would read.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I think I'm just not interested in reading biographies of painters I've never heard of. It's spendy, but the Barker is one I would read."

Fair enough. What does spendy mean?

The Pat Barker is red hot favourite in the betting now


NOMINATIONS....

Nigel: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson
Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement
Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker

The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday. It is available on kindle, at least in the US. And I need to get back to this book.

It is a show that apparently revolutionized art in America. I first heard about this exhibition in the movie Reds. The show was first at the armory in New York and subsequently went on to Chicago and Boston.

Looks interesting, Jan. Love the blurb too:

The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America

The story of the most important art show in U.S. history. Held at Manhattan’s 69th Regiment Armory in 1913, the show brought modernism to America in an unprecedented display of 1300 works by artists including Picasso, Matisse, and Duchamp, A quarter of a million Americans visited the show; most couldn’t make sense of what they were seeing. Newspaper critics questioned the artists’ sanity. A popular rumor held that the real creator of one abstract canvas was a donkey with its tail dipped in paint.

The Armory Show went on to Boston and Chicago and its effects spread across the country. American artists embraced a new spirit of experimentation as conservative art institutions lost all influence. New modern art galleries opened to serve collectors interested in buying the most progressive works. Over time, the stage was set for American revolutionaries such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol. Today, when museums of modern and contemporary art dot the nation and New York reigns as art capital of the universe, we live in a world created by the Armory Show.

Elizabeth Lunday, author of the breakout hit Secret Lives of Great Artists, tells the story of the exhibition from the perspectives of organizers, contributors, viewers, and critics. Brimming with fascinating and surprising details, the book takes a fast-paced tour of life in America and Europe, peering into Gertrude Stein’s famous Paris salon, sitting in at the fabulous parties of New York socialites, and elbowing through the crowds at the Armory itself.

Expensive on kindle, but definitely added to my TBR list.

Nigeyb wrote: "Fair enough. What does spendy mean?"

It's not that bad, $12. But I do like Pat Barker very much. ;-)

EDIT: and I see my library has the other two in the trilogy - a bonus.

Toby's Room is very good and takes an unusual angle on WW1-based fiction, Noonday flips forward to WW2 and feels more meandering and less incisive than I'd have liked. But I agree, Barker is an author I like a lot.

Thanks Jan


NOMINATIONS....

Nigel: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson
Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement
Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker
Jan: The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday

First time in ages that non-fiction has outnumbered the fiction choices.

Nigeyb wrote: "Has someone nominated a Spencer biography?"
Not yet, but he is the artist of the five I most want to read about.

Roman Clodia wrote: "Toby's Room is very good and takes an unusual angle on WW1-based fiction, Noonday flips forward to WW2 and feels more meandering and less incisive than I'd have liked. But I agree, Barker is an aut..."

You keep changing my reading direction. (In a good way.)

Susan wrote: "I would like to nominate Life Class

The first novel in at Barker's acclaimed 'Life Class' trilogy..."

I have read "Toby's Room", but not the other two. I liked it a lot, but not as much as her "Redemption" trilogy.

I read Life Class years ago when the paperback came out, and I think it was one of her better ones, as was Toby's Room. I didn't much care for Noonday.

I cannot think of any. Barker's is on my TBR list but her characters can be aloof. I am still thinking.

Nigeyb wrote: "Has someone nominated a Spencer biography?"


Val wrote: "Not yet, but he is the artist of the five I most want to read about."

How's the search going Val?

There's Stanley Spencer: A Biography

Yours for £3.49 for a Kindle edition

This is the first biography of Stanley Spencer to be written with the full co-operation of Spencer's family, and access to his letters and diaries. Kenneth Pople's method is to advance biographically by examining the pictures in detail. His analysis demonstrates that there never was an artist for whom life and art were so much of a piece, and that without understanding Spencer's doings and circumstances, we have no hope of understanding the paintings. He reveals for the first time, for example, the complexity of Spencer's thinking behind his divorce of his first wife and life-long inspiration, Hilda, his marriage to his lesbian second wife, and his desperate attempts therafter to establish a menage a trois. Spencer was, as is well-known, born, brought up, and for the whole of his life rooted in the tiny community of Cookham on the Thames. The sense of place which is everywhere prevalent in Spencer's paintings is examined in this biography. This work integrates biography, analysis of paintings and extracts from Spencer's own writing.

Who else is nominating?


Or thinking about it?


NOMINATIONS....

Nigel: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson
Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement
Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker
Jan: The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday

Can I nominate a book I haven't read?

The Portrait "An art critic journeys to a remote island off Brittany to sit for a portrait painted by an old friend, a gifted but tormented artist living in self-imposed exile. The painter recalls their years of friendship, the gift of the critic's patronage, and his callous betrayals. As he struggles to capture the character of the man, as well as his image, on canvas, it becomes clear that there is much more than a portrait at stake... "

Iain Pears has written some of my favourite books, but I have somehow missed reading this one. If it's not successful, I will put it in my own queue.

Rosina wrote: "Can I nominate a book I haven't read?"


But of course Rosina. Thanks for another enticing nomination.


Who else is nominating?

Or thinking about it?


NOMINATIONS....

Nigel: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson
Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement
Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker
Jan: The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday
Rosina: The Portrait Iain Pears

I have meant to read more Iain Pears. Great nomination, Rosina. Some enticing nominations, as always.

Susan wrote: "I have meant to read more Iain Pears. Great nomination, Rosina. Some enticing nominations, as always."

Yes, I might need two votes.

Would be helpful at times I agree :)

I'll read the Spencer biography when I can borrow the hardback from the library (art reproductions don't work all that well on the kindle), so I'm not going to nominate it.

Two books which are about the art, rather than the artists, and don't read like textbooks are Ways of Seeing, which accompanies a BBC2 programme from 1972 presented by John Berger (all four episodes are available on youtube) and What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by Will Gompertz, the BBC Arts editor and former director of London’s Tate Gallery.
I nominate What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell.

Val wrote: "I nominate What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell"


What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell looks really interesting Val - a great nomination

Wonderful cover too...



This video is a really enticing introduction to What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by the author...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oov9e...

I was so inspired that I have already bought a copy of What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell and look forward to reading it. I went for a physical version as it seems sensible to get decent reproductions of the art - and not the black and white images we get on a Kindle


So, any final nominations?

Last call for nominations


NOMINATIONS....

Nigel: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson
Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement
Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker
Jan: The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday
Rosina: The Portrait by Iain Pears
Val: What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by Will Gompertz

Val wrote: "I'll read the Spencer biography when I can borrow the hardback from the library (art reproductions don't work all that well on the kindle), so I'm not going to nominate it.

Two books which are ab..."


Art can be fantastic on audio IF it is done right. Unfortunately this is rarely so! Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson is a superb example of how this can and should be done. It has a fantastic PDF with 144 pictures of art, principle characters and time line. By magnifying the PDF you get VERY close to the painting. In the lines of the book they tell you exactly what to look closely at as they discuss the given spot. It is better than even a professionally guided tour b/c you do not have people in your way! Another book of photography did this too. The title of that has slipped from my head.

I'll get the poll up tomorrow

The poll is open....


https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...

Vote, vote, vote


NOMINATIONS....

Nigel: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson
Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement
Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker
Jan: The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday
Rosina: The Portrait by Iain Pears
Val: What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by Will Gompertz

Pollwatch:


Val: What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by Will Gompertz - 3 votes, 37.5%

Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker - 2 votes, 25.0%
Rosina: The Portrait by Iain Pears - 2 votes, 25.0%

Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement - 1 vote, 12.5%

Jan: The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday - 0 votes, 0.0%
Nigeyb: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson - 0 votes, 0.0%


*VOTE NOW*...
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...

Pollwatch:


We have a tie at the top of the poll now....

Val: What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by Will Gompertz - 3 votes, 27.3%
Rosina: The Portrait by Iain Pears - 3 votes, 27.3%

Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker - 2 votes, 18.2%
Jan: The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday - 2 votes, 18.2%

Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement - 1 vote, 9.1%

Nigeyb: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson - 0 votes, 0.0%



*VOTE NOW*...
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...

Pollwatch:


It's now a three way tie...

Val: What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by Will Gompertz - 3 votes, 27.3%
Rosina: The Portrait by Iain Pears - 3 votes, 27.3%
Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker - 3 votes, 27.3%

Jan: The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday - 2 votes, 18.2%

Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement - 0 votes, 0.0%
Nigeyb: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson - 0 votes, 0.0%



*VOTE NOW*...
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...
or perhaps change your vote

Pollwatch:


We've now got a front two, both level pegging...

Val: What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by Will Gompertz - 4 votes
Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker - 4 votes

Rosina: The Portrait by Iain Pears - 3 votes

Jan: The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday - 2 votes

Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement - 0 votes
Nigeyb: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson - 0 votes



*VOTE NOW*...
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...
or perhaps change your vote

Ooh, very close this month.

It would be good to have both a non-fiction book and a novel to read.

Val wrote: "It would be good to have both a non-fiction book and a novel to read."

We'll see what we can do Val

Pollwatch:


Life Class by Pat Barker is out in front and now looks likely to win the poll with a day to go...

Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker - 5 votes

Val: What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by Will Gompertz - 4 votes
Rosina: The Portrait by Iain Pears - 4 votes

Jan: The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday - 2 votes

Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement - 0 votes
Nigeyb: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson - 0 votes



*VOTE NOW*...
https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...
or perhaps change your vote

The poll has closed and we have a winner:


Life Class by Pat Barker (Group Read)

The associated mod read will be:

What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by Will Gompertz (Mod read)

We will also read and discuss:

The Portrait by Iain Pears (Buddy Read)

Thanks to everyone who discussed, nominated, and voted - here's to a great set of discussions in September


Final results:

Susan: Life Class by Pat Barker - 6 votes

Val: What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell by Will Gompertz - 4 votes
Rosina: The Portrait by Iain Pears - 4 votes

Jan: The Modern Art Invasion: Picasso, Duchamp, and the 1913 Armory Show That Scandalized America by Elizabeth Lunday - 2 votes

Roman Clodia: Widow Basquiat: A Memoir by Jennifer Clement - 0 votes
Nigeyb: The Gilded Gutter Life of Francis Bacon by Daniel Farson - 0 votes

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...

Three great titles to look forward to - thank you to Nigeyb for organising the poll and to all who nominated.

Hurrah - now I can finally finish Barker's trilogy by... er... reading the first book! Apologies to Susan and others here who are strict about reading in order ;))

September ...

I will violate my "rule" to have read the group read prior to the opening of the discussion, but I will try to get it in.

Thank you for including the Iain Pears as a buddy read.

And I've ordered used physical copies of both the Pat Barker and Iain Pears - both a bit cheaper than the Kindle.

So pleased we get to read the Barker and the Pears. Three great options and wonderful nominations from everyone, as always.