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A Crisis of Brilliance First Edition
Author(s): David Haycock (Author)
- Publisher: Old Street Publishing
- Publication Date: 13 Nov. 2009
- Edition: First Edition
- Language: English
- Print length: 320 pages
- ISBN-10: 190584784X
- ISBN-13: 9781905847846
Book Description
Using letters, diaries, memoirs and biographies, Haycock recreates in intimate detail the formative years of these supremely gifted and committed painters. More than just a history of art,
A Crisis of Brilliance First Edition is a story of individual artists and their times. It is an exploration of artistic ambition, struggle and success; and of lives linked by close friendships, fierce rivalries and love.To the Bloomsbury Group critic Roger Fry they were ‘les jeunes’: the Young British Artists of their day. As their talents evolved in different directions, they became Futurists, Vorticists and ‘Bloomsberries’, and befriended the leading writers and intellectuals of the time, from Virginia Woolf and Rupert Brooke to D. H. Lawrence and Katherine Mansfield. They and their Bohemian colleagues led the way in fashion with their avant garde clothes and haircuts; they slept with their models and with prostitutes; their tempestuous love affairs descended into obsession, murder and suicide. And as Europe plunged into the madness of the ‘War to end Wars’, they responded to its horror with all the passion and genius they could muster.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Guardian BOOK OF THE WEEK
‘A lucid study of the lives behind the art . . . What gives Haycock’s book its freshness is that, through skilful use of letters and memoirs left by his five subjects, he injects it with the anxiety, ambition, self-doubt and jealousy that possessors of youth and talent are fated to feel’
‘What a fascinatingly tangled mess of human lives! Haycock tells the whole story engagingly and unpretentiously: the human conflicts, the clashes of ideas, and the terrible disruptions of war beneath it all.’
‘A sad tale, wonderfully told… [Haycock] fades the many different narratives in and out with ease’
‘Boyd Haycock sets the story of Nash, Spencer, Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler and Richard Nevinson against the backdrop of Britain before and during the war, and he delineates it all with real vigour. Recommended.’
‘Haycock manages the drama in this tale with such skill that his story unfolds like a well-plotted novel… Formidably well-informed… Never before have the private vicissitudes in these artists’ lives been made so real or their exuberance so vivid.’
‘There is something endlessly appealing about a group of artists behaving badly while simultaneously creating their best work…Depression, doubt, love triangles and the horrors of war all conspire against their ambitions, causing their fortunes to diverge wildly… [Haycock’s] research provides rich context, with personal letters supplying detail to every squabble or concern’
‘A vintage decade of early twentieth century British art, told in vivid and entertaining detail through the adventures of five highly gifted young painters … I greatly enjoyed it’
‘Truly fascinating from every angle – almost a work of art in itself’
‘An extraordinary book. I read it avidly … The familiar cast is handled in a quite new and original way. They have been made fresh and vulnerable once more, and their work re-evaluated, made new to us’
‘Haycock’s narrative teems with colourful characters and dramatic detail.’
