Paul Moorhouse – författare

This beautifully illustrated book takes readers inside Samuel and Gabrielle Lurie's dynamic private collection of contemporary British art, an intended gift to the Yale Center for British Art. Spanning the past four decades, the collection includes major works by Ian Stephenson, Patrick Caulfield, and John Walker, as well as important prints by Howard Hodgkin and R. B. Kitaj. At its core are 52 paintings and drawings by John Hoyland, widely considered one of Britain's foremost abstract painters. The Independent Eye features an interview with the Luries, as well as essays by leading critics and writers, some of whom were and are personally acquainted with the artists represented. These experts assess individual artists and works, explore their inspirations and methods, and define their shared experiences and values. They also address subjects such as the overall importance of the collection and postwar art in Britain.Distributed for the Yale Center for British ArtExhibition Schedule:Yale Center for British Art(09/16/10-01/02/11)

Cindy Sherman (b. 1954) is her own subject matter. One of the most celebrated female artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries she has, for a period spanning more than thirty years, used make-up, prosthetics and props to present herself in the guise of numerous different personae, placed in contexts that draw on the visual conventions of film, television and the media. Such settings and characters invite the viewer to consider the relation of appearance and identity and also the way in which female stereotypes have been perpetuated not only by the media but also by the art world itself.This book introduces some of Sherman's most important works, from her seminal 1970s series Untitled Film Stills, which references film noir movies by such directors as Alfred Hitchcock and Jacques Tourneur, to her progression into colour photography in the 1980s series Centerfolds. It also follows her decision to remove herself from the picture by allowing her props and prosthetics alone to represent the subjects that she wished to critique, such as pornography and war photography.In the last decade Sherman has reintroduced herself into her work, for example in her History Portraits where she playfully appropriates the subjects of the Old Masters, as well as introducing us to a whole new cast of characters in her Clowns and Headshots (or Hollywood/Hampton Types). It also presents her most recent pieces – large-scale murals and photographs, in which more ambiguous identities are played out within epic landscapes.

Richard Hudson (b. 1954, Yorkshire, UK) began working on his organic forms and sculptures at a relatively late age after many years of traveling. Drawing inspiration from luminaries such as Henry Moore, Jean Arp, and Constantin Brancu?i, Hudson creates work that is meticulously refined, timeless, and contemporary. Hudson s imaginative forms are frequently emblematic of the human figure and, at the same time, possess reflective surfaces and evoke surreal reflections of the environment. This landscape-format book illustrates a wide range of Hudson s work, from never-before-seen models and sketches to miniature and monumental pieces, including his major installations at Chatsworth, notably Frog with Fly in 2015 and Tear in 2016, and his numerous commissions globally, such as Love Me in Donum Sculpture Park, California, in 2016, and a second version in Valle de Bravo, Mexico, in 2021. Despite the immense size of these installations, Hudson s creative process nevertheless remains distinctively unassuming, studio-based, private, and introspective. This book substantiates Hudson s cultural impact, positioning him as a pivotal figure in contemporary sculpture.

Hans Hofmann (1880-1966) was a pivotal figure in Abstract Expressionism and stands as one of the most important characters of post-war American art. This ground-breaking catalogue raisonne of paintings, which has been painstakingly researched over sixteen years, is both an invaluable scholarly resource and a celebration of Hofmann's remarkable artistic achievements.Hofmann's long and productive career began in Paris in 1904 where the young artist absorbed the manifold influences of the city's avant-garde. Drawn back to Germany due to war, Hofmann, exempt from military service, opened an innovative school for art in Munich. The school's reputation spread internationally and, as the political situation in Germany deteriorated during the 1930s, Hofmann re-located his school to New York. The city, a center for emerging artistic talent, was the perfect environment for Hofmann to continue his teaching practice, which he did until 1958, when he devoted himself entirely to painting. Throughout his American years, Hofmann enlarged the expressive language of abstraction, through his innovative use of color, materiality and structure.This impressive three-volumed catalogue marks a milestone in the scholarship and understanding of Hofmann's huge contribution to twentieth-century art. Through insightful essays, meticulous catalogue entries and supporting academic apparatus, it is shown how Hofmann's exceptional body of work often defies categorization - his was a highly personal visual language with which he endlessly explored pictorial structures and chromatic relationships. Both visually stunning and academically robust, this publication is an essential purchase for all those with a keen interest in one of the twentieth century's most significant and original artists.

This volume focuses on Bridget Riley's energetic ‘curvilinear’ works from a 2006 exhibition by Bridget Riley. The paintings incorporate complex layers of flowing forms that interlock and move with one another, reflecting the artist's exploration of curves to create paintings of great energy and movement. Using a patch of colour that is similar to a brush mark, Riley’s forms interrupt and threaten to break out from the picture plane, overhanging the frame to jostle and animate the visual field. Refining and developing this form in recent paintings, the artist's work offers an incredible melding of form and colour. Featuring over 20 full-colour illustrations, this publication includes an in-depth essay by Paul Moorhouse examining the changes within Riley’s work throughout her multi-decade career.

During the early 1960s, Riley’s black-and-white work employed elementary shapes to convey movement and light. Having tested this limited set of means, the artist incorporated colour into her paintings in 1967.This volume accompanied an exhibition at Graves Gallery, Sheffield (18 February–25 June 2016) that chronicles the period of change which took place before, during and after Riley’s representation of Great Britain at the 34th Venice Biennale. Using Rise 1 (1968) as a starting point, the carefully selected group of paintings and works on paper from 1967–85 situate this important painting within its context.Alongside over 30 full-colour illustrations, an essay by Paul Moorhouse explores how the adoption of colour informs developments throughout Riley’s ensuing career.

'"As Paul Moorhouse shows in this thorough and sensitive first biography, which concentrates on [Riley's] early years up to the age of thirty-four, it was only after many false starts, bracing shocks and firm decisions that Riley found her way as an abstract painter in the early 1960s with her eye-dazzling lines, squares, curves ... in ultra-hard-edged black-and-white". –Times Literary Supplement"In “Bridget Riley: A Very Very Person – The Early Years,” Paul Moorhouse ... homes in on the period between the artist’s childhood and her earliest success, and makes a surprising but compelling case for the influence of landscape on Ms Riley’s distinctive style." –Wall Street Journal"An entertaining and informative text that adds greatly to our understanding of a very prominent and still highly intriguing British artist." –HyperallergicIn January 1965 the international art world converged on New York to pay homage to a brilliant new star. The glittering opening of The Responsive Eye, a major exhibition of abstract painting at the Museum of Modern Art, signalled the latest phenomenon, op art – and its centre of attention was a young painter named Bridget Riley, whose dazzling painting Current appeared on the cover of the catalogue. Riley’s first solo show in New York sold out, and, following a feature in Vogue magazine, the Riley 'look' became a fashion craze. Overnight, she had become a sensation, yet only three years earlier, she was a virtual unknown. How did success arrive so suddenly?Authored by the acclaimed curator and writer Paul Moorhouse, A Very Very Person is the first biography of Bridget Riley and addresses that tantalising question. Focusing on her early years, it tells the story of a remarkable woman whose art and life were entwined in surprising ways. This intimate narrative explores Riley’s wartime childhood spent in the idyllic Cornish countryside, her subsequent struggles to find her way as an artist, and the personal challenges she faced before finally arriving as one of the world’s most celebrated artists in Swinging Sixties London.

With a career spanning more than five decades, Ian McKeever is one of Britain’s most senior artists working on the international stage. This publication documents the Henge paintings – a series started in 2017 and completed over the course of five years, inspired by prehistoric standing stones in the county of Wiltshire, England, and continuing the artist’s long-standing investigation into the languages and possibilities of abstract painting.Comprising thirty paintings along with numerous works on paper, the genesis of the series was a visit by McKeever to the world-famous neolithic site in the village of Avebury in 2016, where he took black and white photographs of the large stones that form three discrete circles: two smaller ones contained within the largest. Erected some 4500 years ago, Avebury is the largest stone circle in Britain, and forms part of what English Heritage asserts to be ‘a set of neolithic and Bronze Age ceremonial sites that seemingly formed a vast sacred landscape.’Art historian and curator Paul Moorhouse, in his essay commissioned for the publication, describes how McKeever ‘framed each megalith in close-up, their edges visible at the extremity of the resulting images,’ explaining how ‘the experience of moving around Avebury and responding to the huge stones’ monumental presence made an abiding impression that resonated with deep-seated preoccupations.’ McKeever’s resulting body of work is an earnest and considered exploration into how paint can convey universal forces and properties such as mass, gravity and time, and how colour, texture and abstraction can converse with three-dimensional space, form and materiality. The relationship between painting and sculpture in McKeever’s work is discussed by means of an in-conversation between the artist and Dr Jon Wood. ‘My interest in alluding to early megalithic sites in titling the group of paintings Henge paintings,’ says McKeever, ‘was in touching that deeper sense of time, time’s weight, so to speak. How to imbue a painting with its own weight of time, forsake the immediacy of the here and now.’Designed and produced by Tim Harvey, the publication has been printed by Narayana Press in Odder, Denmark. It is published by Anomie, London, with support from Galleri Susanne Ottesen, Copenhagen, and Heather Gaudio Fine Art, New Canaan, Connecticut. The publication accompanies exhibitions of selected works from the Henge paintings at both galleries in 2022.Ian McKeever was born 1946, Withernsea, Yorkshire, UK. He lives and works in Hartgrove, Dorset. McKeever has received numerous awards including the prestigious DAAD scholarship in Berlin 1989/90 and was elected a Royal Academician in 2003. He has held several teaching positions including Guest Professor at the Städel Akademie der Kunst in Frankfurt, Senior Lecturer, Slade, University of London and Visiting Professor at the University of Brighton. He has also published many texts on painting.Recent public solo exhibitions include Ian McKeever / Tony Cragg – Painting and Sculpture, Skulpturenpark Waldfrieden, Wuppertal, Germany (2020); Paintings 1992–2018, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull, UK (2018); Hours of Darkness, Hours of Light, Kunstmuseet i Tønder, Denmark (2015); Between Darkness and Light, National Gallery of the Faroe Islands, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands (2015); Hours of Darkness, Hours of Light, Kunst-Station Sankt Peter Köln, Cologne, Germany (2014); and Hartgrove. Malerei und Fotografie, Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop, Germany (2012). McKeever’s work is represented in leading international public collections, including Tate, British Museum, Royal Academy of Arts, London; Museum Moderner Kunst (mumok), Vienna; Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk; Glyptotek, Copenhagen; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki; Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Boston Museum of Fine Art and Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut.