Richard Kendall – författare

Claude Monet (1840–1926) is one of the best-known and most beloved painters in the history of art, with myriad publications and exhibitions devoted to his oeuvre. And yet there remains a previously undiscovered aspect of his career: his surprisingly significant role as a draftsman. This book is the first to focus on Monet’s pastels, drawings, and sketchbooks, offering a revolutionary new interpretation of the artist’s life and work.Monet has long been seen as an anti-draftsman, an artist who painted his subjects directly and whose rarely seen graphic works were marginal to his artistic process. In an effort to develop his public image, Monet denied the role of drawing in his working method. In actuality, Monet began his career as a caricaturist and as a teenager developed a passion for drawing that was never extinguished. He went on to master the medium of pastel and included seven in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874.Citing recently discovered, unpublished documents that overturn the accepted image of the artist, The Unknown Monet reveals an extensive group of graphic works created over the course of the artist’s career, many of which are unknown to the general public and to scholars: beautiful pastels, stunning black chalk drawings, and fascinating sketchbooks, which include pencil studies that relate to many of his paintings. The book also shows how Monet exploited the print media to promote his art.The most important publication on Monet to appear in a generation, this illuminating volume is essential to anyone interested in his work, Impressionism, and nineteenth-century French culture.Distributed for the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MassachusettsExhibition Schedule:Royal Academy of Arts, London (March 17 – June 10, 2007)Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts (June 24 – September 16, 2007)

British artist Euan Uglow (1932–2000) maintained a lower profile than others of his generation, yet his beautiful, intelligent, humane, and often witty landscapes, still lifes, and figure studies are today gaining the recognition they so clearly deserve. Many critics and admirers now consider Uglow one of Britain’s greatest post-war artists. This is the first book devoted to Uglow and his oeuvre. Richard Kendall’s essay explores Uglow’s fundamental attitudes, beliefs, and processes in the years 1950 to 1970, and Catherine Lampert looks at the content and personal nature of the artist’s paintings over a lifetime, emphasizing his growing attention to color and light. The volume reproduces every known oil painting by Uglow—a total of more than 400 works--some 80 of which are here reproduced for the first time. In addition to a chronology, bibliography, and exhibition history for each work, the catalogue entries provide many other details and illuminating notes, including the artist’s own observations.Exhibition Schedule:Marlborough Gallery, London (opens May 2007)

Richard Kendall''s first book, An Extraordinary Life, is an extraordinary tour-de-force. Richard shares with us in a very personal way his passion for music and politics by taking us on a tour of his meetings with the top stars in opera and the legends of the political world (with a few Hollywood stars - who happened to be opera lovers as well - added to the extraordinary tour). He has a special place in his heart for those individuals among us who can simultaneously create beauty and inspire us, but can also exhibit humility and warmth and generosity of spirit utterly devoid of artifice or phoniness. And Richard, with his own humility and his sheer joie de vivre, as well as his comfort with the art of honest conversation, brings out the warmth and the humor in all he meets. It turns out he is the right person in the right place at the right time! In a particularly engaging chapter, he describes his audition for the Los Angeles Master Chorale in front of Roger Wagner, who had a talent for creating fear and awe among those who aspired to join the Chorale. Richard successfully wowed the master by enjoying himself, having a little fun, and most of all taking the perspective that the audition would be an interesting learning experience. To his shock, Richard had exactly the kind of voice Wagner was looking for. For his opening chapter, Richard selected an apt quote from Marian Anderson, who aspires to a world where we don''t see a black singer or a white singer, but only see a colorless soul. From the first to the last chapter of the book, Richard clearly has a "colorless soul" himself, seeing the essential humanity in political figures on the left or on the right, and the real person behind the "celebrity." The most engaging, and touching, chapters in the book have to be his sensitive descriptions of his friendships with his two favorite divas, Lily Pons and Joan Sutherland. Both divas clearly knew a kindred spirit when they met him, and opened up their hearts to Richard. Sutherland invites Richard''s mother, who inspired Richard''s love of opera and his interest in writing, to keep her company backstage after one of her numerous sold-out shows. And Pons gives Richard a lesson in the proper French pronunciation of Au Revoir, after graciously hosting him and some of his music students at her Palm Springs home. When it comes down to it, Richard has clearly created his own extraordinary luck by being extraordinarily humane.