Huysmans bemoaned the academic mediocrity of the Salons’ most celebrated regulars; never one to mince his words, he wrote that Pierre Lecontre Du Noüy “made the wrong choice of career,” that Henri Gervex “no longer knows how to paint,” and that William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s “The Birth of Venus” is “so bad that there isn’t even a word for it.”
Category Archive: Books
The French author discusses autobiography, formal experimentation and her Man Booker shortlisted book “The Years.”
Taking Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of ‘déterritorialisation’ as a point of departure, this article explores how certain forms of literature dismantle or disrupt dominant linguistic codes
Looking at Freud’s paintings, one can sense this intuitively; plants are not charged with doing or saying something, they are just there, in all their quiddity.
Full article in Modern Painters (October-November 2019).
The British novelist Will Self and the legendary illustrator Quentin Blake have teamed up on a new book — a dreamy rumination on travelling by the light of the moon.
“Bacon always said that what he wanted to do with his work was to celebrate life. When you love life, you integrate all parts of it — even death, even cruelty, it’s all part of life.”
Full article in Modern Painters magazine (October-November 2019).
“Post-modernist” is perhaps too weighty a word for such a joyous denouement, but, whatever you want to call it, “I Am Sovereign” makes many of the great masters of experimental literature look like they were just trying too hard.
Some musings on unfinished works and the theme of incompletion, inspired by seeing Klimt’s “Portrait of Amalie Zuckerkandl” at the Belvedere in Vienna.
Daisy Sainsbury 