Jens Neubert – författare

The Lost Landscapes of England Anthony Amies’ paintings assert a classical conception of painting. From the mid 1970s, the British artis pursued a radical counter-concept to the art of his time with a stylistically peculiar landscape painting. They are calm and enigmatic pictures that do without any scandal. In large-scale drawings and oil paintings, he plays with the “blot” technique: Amies abstracts the landscapes to convey an idea rather than a realistic image. The reduction to land and sea is a reflection on England and the loss of its individual landscapes to the monotony of industrial and urban proliferation and sprawling housing estates. In this idiosyncrasy - the assertion of the genre of landscape painting and in the painterly quality of the works as a contribution to the assertion of painting in art - lies the importance of this English painter.

Showing What Cannot Be Explained Along the three major themes of technique, art epochs, and pictorial genres, art history can delve into the smallest details. “Don't think, but look!” concern is diametrically opposed. Foregoing any commentary text, this book is about the conscious act of seeing without distraction in order to recognize the essential—the “unexplainable”— in the work of art. This publication does not intend to be a comprehensive history of art. Instead, this quite subjective selection of 338 paintings aims to provide an unclouded view of the chronological development of Western painting over seven centuries. The key painting is on the cover: Cezanne’s Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses) that, like a gateway, opens the path to the non-representational image of our time.