The Lives of Artists : Collected Profiles
Regular price £99.95'An elegant homage... Reading [the interviews] only confirms the enviable lucidity and profound insight of Tomkins' writing. He has championed the avant-garde and worked the miracle of making the difficult seem easy without talking down to readers. Who could ask for anything more?' - The Evening Standard
The definitive collection of artist profiles by legendary journalist and New Yorker writer Calvin Tomkins, from the 1960s to today
When Calvin Tomkins joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 1960, he did not plan to make art and living artists his main subjects. And yet, auspiciously for the magazine and its readers, Tomkins did just that. For the last six decades, his profiles of contemporary artists, from Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg to Cindy Sherman and Mark Bradford, have become the liveliest and most authoritative guide to the art of our time.
These six volumes contain eighty-two of Tomkins's profiles, from 1962 to 2019. Balancing insight and observation with wit, candor, and appreciation, Tomkins is a master of the profile-his indelible prose forming fascinating portraits, each a work of art in its own right.
Details
- Author: Calvin Tomkins
- Paperback: 1640 pages
- Date published: September 2019
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780714879369
- Product Dimensions: 24.7 x 16.1 cm
Reviews
'Over his long career, he has published masterly profiles of visual artists and creative virtuosos. His pieces are marked by a keen eye for detail and an elegant understanding of an artist's relationship to her work' - The New Yorker
'...The handsome new Phaidon tome-six volumes in a fluorescent red case... Clocks in at about 1,600 pages and weighs a healthy 6 pounds. An essential and highly pleasurable record of the era, it also amounts to a sprawling, lifelong investigation into what it means to be an artist. Tomkins would go on to become the premier chronicler of the age's art scene, right up to the present... [his] prose exudes the sheer joy of writing about art' - ARTnews
'An elegant homage... Reading [the interviews] only confirms the enviable lucidity and profound insight of Tomkins' writing. He has championed the avant-garde and worked the miracle of making the difficult seem easy without talking down to readers. Who could ask for anything more?' - The Evening Standard
'Legendary Journalist Calvin Tomkins... has profiled many of the greatest artists of the age... A lavish new multi-volume set... His profiles make artists human, allowing other humans to understand their art' - Artnet News
