Books
by David Sweetman
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Love of Many Things, The - A Life of Vincent Van Gogh |
Vincent's story is so well known that a biography might seem almost superfluous but this one must be as near definitive as possible separating, through scrupulous scholarship, fact from myth, especially in the years before he decided to 'live to paint',. Without his outstanding output his short life could be classified as a tragic mess. His paintings transform tragedy into triumph. So does this book help us to understand Vincent's vision? Most decidedly, it does.
(James Baker - bwl 26 October 2004) |
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Toulouse-Lautrec and the Fin-de-Siècle |
The crippled Lautrec's brief adulthood was spent mostly in the cafés and brothels of Paris, his suffering alleviated by absinthe, 'fun' and hard work. He never flinched at recording what he saw with penetrating insight and compassion. Sweetman does him proud, putting him and his art into the context of the challenge to entrenched attitudes about sex, politics and women's place in a man's world, exemplified by the trials of Oscar Wilde, Dreyfus and the anarchists.
(James Baker - bwl 8 April 2001) |
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