T. J. Clark is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the seminal The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (1984), Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (1999) and The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing (2006). He writes art criticism regularly for the London Review of Books. His last book was If These Apples Should Fall: Cézanne and the Present (2022), also published by Thames & Hudson.

'Vital for our times … an exhilarating essay collection summing up a lifetime’s thinking about painting and politics … His questioning voice carries the book, creating a mood of contemplative suspense, like a psychological thriller … a marathon of art history through a political lens, it is subtle, revelatory and broad-ranging … Clark’s faith that painting matters, reflects emotional and social experience, reads as nostalgic – yet vital – in today’s art world hollowed by money and hype … the decade’s most stimulating art book' - Financial Times

T. J. Clark is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the seminal The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (1984), Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (1999) and The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing (2006). He writes art criticism regularly for the London Review of Books. His last book was If These Apples Should Fall: Cézanne and the Present (2022), also published by Thames & Hudson.

'Vital for our times … an exhilarating essay collection summing up a lifetime’s thinking about painting and politics … His questioning voice carries the book, creating a mood of contemplative suspense, like a psychological thriller … a marathon of art history through a political lens, it is subtle, revelatory and broad-ranging … Clark’s faith that painting matters, reflects emotional and social experience, reads as nostalgic – yet vital – in today’s art world hollowed by money and hype … the decade’s most stimulating art book' - Financial Times

T. J. Clark is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the seminal The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers (1984), Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism (1999) and The Sight of Death: An Experiment in Art Writing (2006). He writes art criticism regularly for the London Review of Books. His last book was If These Apples Should Fall: Cézanne and the Present (2022), also published by Thames & Hudson.

'Vital for our times … an exhilarating essay collection summing up a lifetime’s thinking about painting and politics … His questioning voice carries the book, creating a mood of contemplative suspense, like a psychological thriller … a marathon of art history through a political lens, it is subtle, revelatory and broad-ranging … Clark’s faith that painting matters, reflects emotional and social experience, reads as nostalgic – yet vital – in today’s art world hollowed by money and hype … the decade’s most stimulating art book' - Financial Times