Richard Canning
Art Attack
Outsider: Always Almost, Never Quite – Volumes I & II
By Brian Sewell
Quartet Books Vol I 344pp Vol II 300pp £25 each order from our bookshop
Naked Emperors: Criticisms of English Contemporary Art
By Brian Sewell
Quartet Books 368pp £15 order from our bookshop
Coming across octogenarian art critic Brian Sewell’s late appeal to Truth in Outsider II, his second volume of autobiography, I thought of Keats’s familiar equation of Truth with Beauty (‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’). Sure enough, a paean to Beauty soon follows, in Sewell’s reflections on the flawless skin of the young and the ‘ridiculous’ responsiveness of the elderly to the allure of youth. Truth and Beauty propel these books, and are present on every page.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'The return of nature to Wordsworthian commentary is a corollary of the environmentalist spirit of the age.'
Seamus Perry on Jonathan Bate's 'Radical Wordsworth'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/force-of-nature
My review of Samanta Schewblin's 'Little Eyes', in this month's issue of @Lit_Review
https://literaryreview.co.uk/tamagotcha
'Has the printed book finally outlived its span?' asks @AdamCSDouglas. 'If so, how long can the rare book trade continue? And how much longer can we keep flying in fat-bellied jets to gather in some foreign land to exhibit our wares?'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/how-long-can-we-keep-doing-this