Martin Gayford
Canvassing Opinions
In My View: Personal Reflections on Art by Today’s Leading Artists
By Simon Grant (ed)
Thames & Hudson 208pp £19.95 order from our bookshop
One day in August 1831, John Constable wrote to his friend C R Leslie about a painting by Watteau in Dulwich Picture Gallery, ‘which looks as it should be painted in honey – so mellow – so tender – so soft & so delicious’. When artists discuss their predecessors in this way we get a double dose of insight: not only in this case into the work of Watteau but, just as interestingly, into how Constable thought about oil paint – which, evidently, was as a sensuous, almost edible substance.
This is the kind of two-way revelation that might be expected from, and is sometimes delivered by, In My View, an anthology of more than 75 reflections by contemporary artists on work from a period somewhat vaguely, if necessarily, defined as ‘the past’. Before opening it, however, it is worth
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
'As we examined more and more data from the Chernobyl and Fukushima disasters ... we were amazed to find that there is almost never a case for permanently moving people out of the contaminated area after a big nuclear accident.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying
'This problem has dogged Labour’s efforts to become the "natural party of government", a sobriquet which the Conservatives have acquired over decades, despite their far less compelling record of achievement.'
Charles Clarke on Labour's civil wars.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/comrade-versus-comrade
'Lamb has always attracted admirers ... Yet, as Eric G Wilson observes, "Dream-Child" is the first full-scale biography in over a century.'
Edward Weech on the life and work of Charles Lamb.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-man-with-the-golden-pun