Eric Karpeles - Böcker

This stunning monograph, a long-overdue critical appraisal of Polish artist Józef Czapski (1896–1993), arrives at a moment when the artist’s legacy is gaining new recognition. Within these pages, author Eric Karpeles conveys how making art was so enmeshed with Czapski’s way of seeing and being in the world that it was second nature. Given that he lived into his 97th year, it’s no surprise that the artist has works dating from every decade of the 20th century but the first. As witness to the tumultuous events of that century, he found in painting ‘a refuge and a salvation’. Prolific as a painter, he was equally disciplined in recording the events of his life in pencil, ink, and watercolour in his journals. At a time when abstract art tended to dominate aesthetic discourse, he preferred to observe the world around him, to portray people going about their daily business. Some of his most compelling works depict theatre-goers and art lovers doing what they do best – looking.

Eric Karpeles’s lavishly illustrated and comprehensive guide offers a feast for the eyes as it celebrates the close relationship between the visual and literary arts in Proust’s masterpiece. Karpeles has identified and located all of the paintings to which Proust makes exact reference. Where only a painter’s name is mentioned to indicate a certain mood or appearance, he has chosen a representative work to illustrate the impression that Proust sought to evoke. Botticelli’s angels, Manet’s courtesans, Mantegna’s warriors and Carpaccio’s saints stand among Monet’s water lilies and Piranesi’s engravings of Rome, while Karpeles’s insightful essay and lucid contextual commentary explain their significance to Proust. The book closes with extensive notes and a comprehensive index of all painters and paintings mentioned in the novel. With over 200 beautifully reproduced paintings, drawings and engravings, and accompanying texts drawn from the Moncrieff/Kilmartin/Enright translation of In Search of Lost Time, this book is an essential addition to the libraries of Proustians worldwide and a handsome volume in its own right.