Jennifer Higgie – författare

Rose Wylie OBE RA (b. 1934) lives and works in Kent. She paints from memory, frequently taking her imagery from mass media. Her large works on unstretched, unprimed canvas appear simple at first glance, but close inspection reveals them to be subtle meditations on the nature of visual representation. She regularly brings together apparently disparate images, creating visual rhymes and resonances that coalesce into unified compositions.This new book, the catalogue of a large-scale exhibition at the Royal Academy, brings together leading authorities on Wylie’s work and a host of her unmistakable imagery.

'Endlessly intriguing . . . I was enchanted' - DAILY TELEGRAPH'Illuminating in every sense of the word' - John HiggsIn an illuminating blend of memoir and art history, The Other Side explores the lives and work of a group of extraordinary women artists. From the twelfth-century mystic Hildegard of Bingen and the nineteenth-century spiritualist Georgiana Houghton to the pioneering Hilma af Klint, these women all - in their own unique ways - shared the same goal: to communicate with, and learn from, other dimensions. Weaving in and out of their myriad lives, Jennifer Higgie considers the solace of ritual, the gender exclusions of art history, the contemporary relevance of myth, the boom in alternative ways of understanding the world and the impact of spiritualism on feminism and contemporary art.

This book explores the works of one of Sweden’s most esteemed artists, Hilma af Klint, alongside others in her artistic circle – and examines their inspirational influence on contemporary artists working today.Swedish Ecstasy tells the story of renowned Swedish artist Hilma af Klint and her artistic circle as the country sought to reconcile religious beliefs with scientific advances at the turn of the 20th century. While Sweden has often been characterized as a Protestant nation of great engineers and entrepreneurs, the country’s spiritual life has long been governed by a less official current, visible in its art and literature. In the early 20th century, mysticism and esoteric speculation ran through the works of some of Sweden’s most important artistic and literary figures.This book explores these mystic visions and their meaning with this intellectual and spiritual milieu. Contemporary artists Cecilia Edefalk, Carsten Höller, Christine Ödlund, Daniel Youssef, and Lars Olof Loeld contribute essays that show how these artworks continue to inspire today.

'Reveals an until-now hidden history of women's self-portraiture. A gift that keeps on giving' ALI SMITH, NEW STATESMAN, Books of the Year'A fascinating survey . . . Extraordinary' DAILY MAIL'A bewitching, invigorating history' OLIVIA LAING'Grips from the opening pages' FINANCIAL TIMES'Important and brilliantly accessible' VOGUEUntil the twentieth century, art history was, in the main, written by white men who tended to write about other white men. The idea that women in the West have always made art was rarely cited as a possibility. Yet they have - and, of course, continue to do so - often against tremendous odds, from laws and religion to the pressures of family and public disapproval. In THE MIRROR AND THE PALETTE, Jennifer Higgie introduces us to a cross-section of women artists who embody the fact that there is more than one way to understand our planet, more than one way to live in it and more than one way to make art about it. Spanning 500 years, biography and cultural history intertwine in a narrative packed with tales of rebellion, adventure, revolution, travel and tragedy enacted by women who turned their back on convention and lived lives of great resilience, creativity and bravery. This is a dazzlingly original and ambitious book by one of the most well-respected art critics at work today.

Jennifer Higgie presents a year in the life of Rich­ard Dadd, infamous inmate of one of England's most notorious sanitariums, London's Bethlem Hospital, better known as Bedlam.A young man of great promise, Dadd embarks on a grand tour of Europe and the Middle East with his patron, Sir Thomas Phillips. The two men travel through German forests, Alexan­drian brothels and across the desert to the Nile. By the time they find themselves beneath the unforgiving sun of Syria and Palestine, Dadd's fraught mind has been taxed to the limit with extraordinary images. He becomes stranger and more violent, changes his companion attributes to sunstroke. But in Dadd's imagination he has become a devotee of the god Osiris. Shortly after his return to England in 1843, the god directs him to take a life, and Dadd is set on the road to Bedlam.At once jarringly acute and alarmingly askew, Dadd's voice is rendered with both empathy and acuity by Higgie. This is a poetic and consid­ered portrait of an artist, as well as an intriguing mystery about how, and why, a mind can go so swiftly and dangerously awry.

The first serious study on the paintings of the female icon and one of the most celebrated British artists, Tracey Emin Dame Tracey Emin DBE is known for her frank, confessional style and for transforming her inner world into intimate works of art. She has become one of the most celebrated artists in the world, a household name, and part of the Art establishment. Her practice includes painting, drawing, film, photography, sewn appliqué, sculpture, and neon, but in recent years she has focused on painting. Inspired by artists Egon Schiele and Edvard Munch, her paintings are provocative, confrontational, and vulnerable. They are at once deeply personal and universal, and it’s for this reason her work is revered around the world, and she has become an international icon. The book features more than 300 images of Emin’s gestural and expressive figurative paintings, from the 1990s to today, as well as a conversation with close friend David Dawson and an essay by Australian writer Jennifer Higgie. Made in close collaboration with the artist, this special book is the first publication dedicated to Emin’s emotive paintings and showcases her soulful work like never before.

Gideon Rubin (b. 1973, Israel) is an artist who lives and works in London. Exploring identity, history and the inheritance of trauma in his enigmatic paintings, Rubin’s subject matter draws on myriad references such as film, popular culture, art history and literature, creating and investigating mythologies from the recent past. Haunting and subtly theatrical, the paintings often feature faceless yet familiar figures. Underlying each work is Rubin’s expressive mark-making, muted palette and understated use of negative space and raw canvas. _Look Again_ is Gideon Rubin’s second major trade monograph and showcases his substantial body of work since 2015, including studies of people in nature and scenes of solitude and intimacy. Author and art critic Jennifer Higgie discusses the evolution of his artistic style and his many influences—Balthus, De Kooning, Guston and Diebenkorn to name a few. Dr Matthew Holman’s expansive essay touches on Rubin’s cinematic characters, source material, his use of artistic conventions and engagement with sexuality. Holman investigates the meaning of redaction in Rubin’s work, both in his faceless portraits and in Black Book—a work in which Rubin used black paint to erase the contents of a 1938 English translation of Mein Kampf.Exhibited at the Freud Museum in London in 2018, Black Book is an exploration of what is left out of history, as much as what is remembered.Painting is essential to Rubin, as both a creative and therapeutic act; ‘a log keeping him afloat in the middle of the sea’, as he puts it. In conversation with fellow artist Varda Caivano, Rubin analyses his motivations, processes and doubts, and explains his surprising route to painting. Despite coming from a lineage of painters on his father’s side, it was largely his mother’s academic love of art that galvanised his artistic career, as well as a transformational experience in South America that opened him up to painting. An emotive poem by South Korean author Park Joon sheds further light on Rubin’s imagination.Rubin studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York and then at the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. He has had numerous international one-man shows and his works are included in a number of international private and public collections. Recent exhibitions include 13, Galleria Monica De Cardenas, Milan (2023), Dark Noise, The Kupferman House Collection, Israel (2023), Portrait without a Face, Fox Jensen Gallery, Tokyo (2023), a solo show at CASSIUS&Co., London (2023) and Living Memory, a two-person show with Louise Bourgeois in a Grade II listed chapel in London (2023). Rubin’s work has been featured in publications such as _Artribune_, _San Francisco Examiner, Vestoj, Koln Kultur, Galerie Magazine, Südostschweiz Newspaper_ and _Elephant_ among others. The publication has been supported by Galerie Karsten Greve, who represent Rubin’s work in Paris, Cologne and St. Moritz.

Daniel Crews-Chubb (b.1984) is a London-based painter whose mixed-media works wrestle with the human condition and modes of selfexpression. This monograph, Out of Chaos, ispublished to coincide with his solo exhibition at Timothy Taylor, New York, which brings togethernew paintings and works on paper.Crews-Chubb’s paintings exist somewhere between figuration and abstraction. They drawon a wide variety of references, including ancient cosmologies, historic artefacts and sculpture,pre-Columbian deities, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and Hellenic myth. He intertwinescanonical sources and classical allusions in his paintings, creating a highly personal, idiosyncratic lexicon of human, celestial and bestial figures.Out of Chaos takes its title from the ancient Greek notion that chaos is a state of undifferentiated matter from which the universe emerged. The paintings that form this series feature urgent, gestural marks and passages of vivid colour, centred around the figure as a motif. The bodies that he depicts are ageless, nongendered and non-racial – conduits for feeling, rather than signifiers of individuals.This publication reproduces Crews-Chubb’s paintings from 2015 to 2024, starting with hisearly works and subsequently organised into seven series. Notable among these are the recentImmortals (2022–) and Out of Chaos, which is the focal point of his solo exhibition. The book also features an introduction by the writer Jennifer Higgie, an essay by art historian Matthew Holman and an interview with writer Amah-Rose Abrams. Daniel Crews-Chubb was born in Northampton in 1984. He completed his BA at Chelsea College of Arts, London, in 2009 and undertook the Turps Studio Programme, London, in 2013. He lives and works in London. His first solo museum exhibition will take place at the Long Museum, Shanghai, in November 2024.

British Portuguese Paula Rego (1935–2022) carved out her place in international art history with a self-possessed, uncompromising expression and a burning commitment to fighting oppression and lack of freedom. She grew up in Portugal under António de Oliveira Salazar’s dictatorship, which imposed strong constraints, especially on women’s freedom, and throughout her long career Rego dissected the relationship between gender, the body and power in a dark, fantastical visual language. At a time when authoritarian forces are on the rise across the world and women’s right to control their own bodies is under pressure, her images feel more relevant than ever. The exhibition Paula Rego – Dance Among Thorns presents Rego’s powerful and unsettling body of work in its full breadth. The catalogue includes all works on display and a collection of new texts by the exhibition’s curator Kari J. Brandtzæg as well as by Catarina Alfaro, Isabel Freire and Jennifer Higgie. Together, they sketch an intense and nuanced portrait of an artist who never ceased to challenge – whether aesthetically or politically.

Jadé Fadojutimi: Jesture is a publication produced by Pippy Houldsworth Gallery to accompany the second solo exhibition at the gallery of new paintings by London-based artist Jadé Fadojutimi, presented in autumn 2020. The word "Jesture" in the title of the exhibition and publication evokes a sense of the absurd, responding to the disruption of daily rhythms arising from forced isolation during lockdown. Central to Fadojutimi's practice is a repeated questioning of identity, its fluid nature and how the understanding of notions of pleasure, desire and choice are integral to a sense of self. Addressing the exchange between an individual and their environment, the vivid choices of colour and form derive from the associative qualities of the special items that capture her attention and the memories they invoke. Fadojutimi's studio is filled with objects, drawings and writings that evoke nostalgic pleasure. Powerful memories, experienced whilst listening to film, animation and video game soundtracks, transport Fadojutimi to the first time she encountered them, eliciting a response that is experienced through intense colour. The synthesis of these various influences, through which Fadojutimi understands her sense of self, is transformed into large-scale gestural paintings charged with energy and emotion. Described by Fadojutimi as "environments", these complex compositions, neither wholly abstract nor figurative, are built up with layers of oil paint, interrupted by the more linear mark-making made possible by her recent adoption of oil pastels. The introduction of new materials into her painting has enabled Fadojutimi to think more broadly about palette, composition and depth, while translating the spontaneity of her drawing on to the canvas. In her essay for the publication, From Life - Thoughts on the paintings of Jadé Fadojutimi, writer, critic and editor-at-large of frieze magazine Jennifer Higgie writes: "In these paintings, the world, in all of its chaotic glory, exists as an intimation. Art is not an explanation: it's a shot of energy, a flash of colour; a shimmer, a reaction, a line thrown out to see who might pick it up. Pictures are made by people and, like people, their tone can switch direction in the blink of an eye. A painting is a very human thing: they're allowed to be messy. Jadé tells me that her aim is for "deep emotion, not deep description"." This, the artist's first published book, designed by A Practice for Everyday Life and printed by PUSH, London, has been co-published by Pippy Houldsworth Gallery, London, and Anomie Publishing, London. Jadé Fadojutimi (b.1993) lives and works in London. She earned a BA from The Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2015 and an MA from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2017. After Pippy Houldsworth Gallery took on representation of the artist and presented her first solo exhibition in 2017-18, she had her first one-person institutional show at PEER UK, London in 2019. Acquisitions by Baltimore Museum of Art, ICA Miami, Tate, and a promised gift to Dallas Museum of Art followed soon after. She had her first solo exhibition in Germany with Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, in 2019 and will have her first solo exhibition in Japan with Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, opening March 2021. Fadojutimi has been selected to participate in Liverpool Biennial 2021. Her first solo US museum exhibition will be presented at ICA Miami, opening in November 2021. She will also have a solo exhibition of new work at The Hepworth Wakefield in 2021.