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Small Histories is a collection of essays and reviews by Nicholas James, 1993-2011, on examples of Western art: The Trinity by Masaccio at Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Vermeer's The Maid and Woman Weighing Pearls; Velázquez court portraits, Cézanne and Salvador Dalí, Francis Bacon, Anthony Caro, Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol, with reviews of exhibitions in London's public and private galleries. A collection of over seventy pieces reveals strands and connections that bind the continuum of classic and contemporary art.

An interview recorded at 'The Work of Angel' with Dr Michael Ryan of the National Museum Dublin, at the British Museum November 1989. The monograph is illustrated in colour with Celtic artefacts.

Documentary and fictions of daily experience, encounters and episodes: the streets, shoppers, external and internal worlds.

Despite his short span of activity, from 1423 to 1428, Masaccio can be posited as the signifier of a radical break with the period of Italian painting known as the Trecento, and alone among his contemporaries, in his use of dramatic realism, points the way to the spectacular creations of the High Renaissance, in which artists such as Michelangelo, Raphael and Palladio, achieved a fusion of classic and humanist ideals in painting, sculpture and architecture. Masaccio's Trinity at the Church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence is analysed in an essay initially prepared for the MA programme of History of Art at Kingston University in 1995. It considers the conditions of belief and patronage that informed the work, a powerful and original representation of The Crucifixion which in its striking effect became the key to unlock the major pictorial revolution of the Italian ArtisticRenaissance.

What is highly original is the fact that these drawings, often extremely ambiguous in meaning, form a meditative sequence, not apparently intended for public consumption, but entirely selfreflexive. They record the artist's dreams and fantasies, but strictly for his own contemplation. As such they represent a major psychological breakthrough, a next step forward from the late self-portraits of Rembrandt. Their successors are the images created by major Surrealist artists such as Salvador Dalì and Max Ernst. The exhibition enables us to see our contemporary ideas about the nature of the self at the very moment of their first formation. These are the issues Edward Lucie-Smith will discuss in his text about this pioneering show, which not only reconstructs Goya's long-dispersed album, but places it In the context of other drawings and prints by the same great artist

The Rembrandt and Turner exhibitions, one at London's National Gallery, the other at Tate Britain, are populist homages to two of the undoubted giants of the European cultural tradition. They do not attempt complete surveys. Instead they seek to found themselves on a now well-established but in fact comparatively recent myth: that of a 'late style', wherein a great artist, nearing the end of his life, somehow transcends all the works he has made previously. Titian and Michelangelo have also been the subjects of the same kind of mythologisation. The facts are, of course, that neither Rembrandt nor Turner attained a very great age by 21st century standards. The Rembrandt show covers the artist's last decade-and-half, roughly speaking from the time when he went bankrupt in 1656 to his death in October 1669, aged 63. Turner had a longer life, but the show at Tate Britain covers about the same amount of ground - from 1835, when the artist was sixty, until his death in 1851, aged 76. The idea of the 'late style', as a very special, magical phase in the evolution of the work of a great artist, is, as I have just said, a comparatively modern invention.

An index of three hundred Stately Homes and Country Houses in England, Scotland and Wales. Illustrated with historical and architectural data with family lineage in the properties.

Attending life classes each week studies of professional models, actresses and dancers, were made in watercolour, oil and charcoal pencil. About fifteen sketches were made each session, often in bespoke ornamental leather bound books. Studies feature the models Agnieszka, Bethan, Caroline, Esther, Jess, Gilda, Ella, Mairi, Maya, Lydia, Natasha, Serelyn, Erica, Sassy, Sophie, Sol, Stella, Susannah, Sylvette, Fatima, Marika, Maya Magdalena, Mercy, Tiziana and Vanessa. The oils are made on linen canvas or canvas board, oil painting paper in small scale from 6x4" to 60x40".

The first edition of Curators and Collections, published in 1997, was based on interviews and features published in the quarterly review: Cv Journal of Art and Crafts (1988-91). These recorded the launch of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1991, the construction of Tate Modern in 1997, as well as exploring special collections at The National Gallery, Courtauld Gallery, The British Museum and Royal Photographic Society. The book contained a comprehensive guide to public and private collections in England, Scotland and Wales, which is revised and updated in this volume. The landscape of the arts has radically transformed in the intervening years, with a tremendous growth in audiences for contemporary art. The study recognises the important role of private foundations and the activity of curators and gallerists in their independent initiatives. Interviews with Keepers of National collections consider aspects of arts management: conservation, acquisition and collection development, with the growth of the institution in relation to the general culture.

With its eccentric shape, tacked on like a long medieval shoe to Southern England, Cornwall is not the easiest shape of an area to research. I began by driving north to Kilkhampton and Morwenstow, then south via Bude to Bodmin and Padstow. From there I moved east to Launceston, visiting Antony and St Germans near the Tamar Valley, and down to Looe and St Austell. The centre of Cornwall disclosed the working face of mining towns such as Bugle and Camborne, their clusters of Victorian terraced cottages built around great quarries and industrial sites. My route around the southern peninsula brought me past some fabulous aspects of the coastline; the uncompromised rocky landscape of Sennen and St Just, or the delightful flower filled vale of Lamorna and the dramatic headland of The Lizard. Cornwall is like another country, carrying its own culture and history, though its energy keeps it moving forward in a present reality. It can provide a blissful escape and equally opens itself to enterprise and new connections. Nicholas James

Andy Warhol: Art, Design & SocietyThe 2013 monograph republished on the occasion of the 2020 Andy Warhol retrospective at Tate Modern London featuring: Campbell's Soup Cans, 1960s portraits; Suicides and Car Crashes; Sex Parts; Latinx Trans Portraits and the finnale Sicty Last Suppers 1986. Includes Andy Warhol at the NGMA Edinburgh, October 2007, A Celebration of Life..and Death. Magdalena Wasiura on Andy Warhol: Brigid Bardot portrait at Gagosian Gallery 2013; meeting Andy and his team at his Broadway office in May 1976; Vanitas at Anthony d'Offay 1996 and an interview with New Zealand artist Billy Apple¿, his recollections of Andy at the outset of his Pop Art before The Factory, in 1962-3.

Cv/VAR series 152 publishes an anthology of essays and reviews by the eminent art historian and writer, Edward Lucie-Smith. The articles cover a broad span, from the Italian Renaissance of Giotto and Antonello da Messina, Leonardo and Michelangelo, progressing to Rubens, Velazquez and Ingres, with essays on William Hogarth, John Constable and John Everett Millais for British Art. With the experience of his landmark publications on modern art, several of which remain in print, the author sweeps the reader on a fabulous journey of perception, disclosing the strands that bind the continuum of classic and contemporary art

The coincidence of two exhibitions in major London institutions, one at the National Portrait Gallery, devoted wholly to Giacometti's work as a portraitist, the other a retrospective devoted to the career of Frank Auerbach, with a high proportion of portraits, on view at Tate Britain, prompts some reflections on the role of portraiture in modern and contemporary art

The thirty parts of The Landscape Series were developed in two phases: sixteen sets were made from February 2002 to June '03 and a further fourteen in February 2006 totalling some 1,500 panel paintings. The uniform size of a 30cm square panel grew from the idea of one painting being all painting,or one landscape becoming all landscapes.With gesso and emulsion, mounds and hollows were formed by sweeping and dividing poured paint, using cardboard strips cut from cartons.The panels were laid on a framed base board which also served as a container for pools of colour washed over the textured surface. Two inch square wooden cubes were used to stack the paintings in small towers to dry out.Various factors steered the series: thoughts about load bearing pressures on a place, tracks and crossing points, air flow, water, spaces and intervals, the nature of settlement in the land. Offset corner marks in the panels from the cubes stood for a house, rounds for a moon. Titles were assigned later to the line of production. The identity of a place emerged not by literal description but as an equivalent found by coincidence in the passage of an abstract process.

London Review publishes a collection of reviews by Nicholas James visiting museum and gallery exhibitions between January and June 2019. Recording his responses and observations the author then composes pieces based on these on-site records. This allows accuracy and spontaneity to enliven the texts, which are supported by additional biographic information of the individual artists. Reviews in this volume include Mantegna and Bellini (National Gallery), Pierre Bonnard (Tate Modern), John Ruskin (Temple Place), Vincent van Gogh (Tate Britain), Jeff Koons (Ashmolean), Mary Quant (V&A), Anish Kapoor (Lisson Gallery), RA Summer Exhibition 2019; William Blake (Tate Britain), Frieze Masters (Regents Park), Pre-Raphaelite Sisters (NPG), Nam June Paik (Tate Modern), Antony Gormley (RA).

He uses elaborate systems of arbitrary rules to regulate his patterns of markings - the absolute opposite of the freewheeling calligraphy typical of Abstract Expressionist predecessors such as Jackson Pollock. Where images are present, they are often mirrored or doubled. Or else camouflaged and concealed. His paintings therefore take on the character of being not simply objects to be looked at, but puzzles to be solved by the viewer. This aspect of his work perhaps explains by his work has had such a solid, long-lasting appeal to professional commentators on contemporary art. They feel great satisfaction in solving the riddles he sets them, and perhaps too, a bit of schadenfreude in contemplating those who are not sophisticated enough to crack the code. ELS In his introductory essay The Enigma of Jasper Johns author and art hist Edward Lucie-Smith considers the art of Jasper Johns, pivotal figure in the development of American contemporary art, whose sixty years activity is represented in a major exhibition at the Royal Academy London. The study is illustrated by key works along with a room by room view of the exhibition.

A study of the celebrated american painter John Singer Sargent explores his public practice as a society portrait painter and thee personal and complex aspects of his own creative drive. Additional essays by the author include: Citizens and Kings, Collecting Contemporary Art, Halfway There With Delacroix and Daumier. Contemporary descriptions of his portraits, often from people who knew the sitters, are at least as often unfavourable as they are favourable, even when he was at the very height of his success. Perhaps this is the fate of all successful portrait painters. The artist often sees his subjects rather differently from the way they would like to be seen. Friends and acquaintances mal also have a different image stored away. So, too, professional commentators, if the subject of the portrait is well known. Two quotes from the artist himself sum up the situation perfectly: "A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth." - "Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend."

Two of the most interesting and pioneering British artists of the 20th century may be just as crucial in the trajectory of modern art for their private lives, their biographies, as for their painting. Vanessa Bell was a significant woman artist, for whom portraiture was a central preoccupation, and whose personal life, as a member of the Bloomsbury Group, has been the subject of endless study. Her complex life story has almost obscured her art, which is now being newly examined. She experimented early on with abstraction, and then turned to domestic subjects, modifying the lessons of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism which had so influenced Bloomsbury artistic thinking. David Hockney is a hugely versatile artist - painter, draughtsman, print-maker, writer, stage-designer - who has always been fascinated with new technology, including photography, fax, film and iPad. Yet he too is essentially an autobiographical artist, . MV 04/2017

In this volume Edward Lucie-Smith explores the magnetic poles of post-War modernism, with its figurehead in Europe of Pablo Picasso, and emerging creators in the USA led by Jackson Pollock and others in Abstract Expressionism. The author sets the mutual roots in Surrealism and reflects on the survival of the French artists during the Occupation. He traces Pollock's lasting effect to the later cycles American Pop.

A review of the exhibiton: Late Constable at the Royal Academy London. It explores the family background of the artist, his career development, working methods and technique; noted works including The Leaping Horse, Cottage in East Bergholt, Rainstorm at Sea, Chain Pier Brighton,Stonehenge and The Cornfield..It includes essays by Edward Lucie- Smith (John Constable 2006) and Janet Barber (John Constable: Earth and Sky 2012) 'In his own lifetime, Constable was constantly struggling to catch up with his great rival, J.M.W. Turner, whose astonishing fluency he could never match. Turner has maintained his fame, but, among the British at least, Constable is now more intimately loved. People talk of the 'Constable country' in Suffolk that he made his own artistically, and the images he created appear on calendars, kitchen towels and place mats. You don't have to be an intellectual to love Constable's work - in fact, it is probably better if you aren't.'Edward Lucie-Smith

Renowned artist Lucian Freud (1922-2011) is commemorated in an exhibition of portraits and figure studies, spanning seven decades his working life, held at the National Portrait Gallery London from February to May 2012. The monograph explores the development of his art from acutely observed studies of the 1940s to major paintings in the later phase, where the artist engaged in a complex and sometimes brutal meditation on the human being, drawn from an intimate engagement with the sitter. Freud's unsparing eye maps his subjects, sustaining single handed an almost unique commitmnt to the ambitions of high art, grounded in classical canons of Western tradition. The study includes a review by Marina Vaizey of Freud's drawings, prints and oil studies, exhibited at Blain|Southern Gallery, Hay Hill.Marina Vaizey is an art critic, lecturer and traveller; her books include The Artist as Photographer, 100 Masterpieces of Art; Great Women Collectors. She was the art critic for the Financial Times for four years, and The Sunday Times for eighteen. She has curated several exhibitions and written manycatalogues. She has been a Trustee for several national museums.

Cv/VAR 36 takes as its focus two paintings by Johannes Vermeer (1632-75): The Milkmaid c.1661-62 and Woman Holdinga Balance c.1662-65, and considers critical approaches to the artist by four historians Edward A.Snow, Lawrence Gowing, John Michael Montias, and Martin Pops. Its aim is not solely to describe Vermeer's art, but by a process of comparative analysis to discern the various standpoints of his biographers, and to clarify their methodologies in research. The volume includes studies of artists from the early Renaissance to the 20th century: Masaccio; Vermeer; Velázquez; Cézanne; Dali.

The survey began in April 1988 as interviews with artists, jewellers, fashion designers and furniture restorers, based at Old Loom House in Whitechapel, launching a quarterly review Cv Journal of Art and Crafts. Cv Journal was published to 1992 and the collection of interviews and features provided the foundation of Cv/Visual Arts Research archive and subsequent publications. Cv/VAR 154 publishes a study of Photography and Art in which authors Marina Vaizey and Anne Blood consider the historical impact of photography from pioneers Hill and Adamson, William Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre to contemporary practitioners such as Andreas Gursky and Boris Mikhailov. The documentary power and graphic clarity of the medium challenged and persuaded artists such as Degas, Sickert, Andy Warhol and Richard Hamilton, and innumerable creative voices. In their essays Marina and Anne explore the conjunctions and variations where document and dream intermingle, in a revolutionary medium which transformed the classical canons of Western tradition. The volume includes biographical details of leading figures and a guide to National Collections and study centres. of the spectacle of battle and the horrors of war and human conflict.

The sixth in Cv's series of English County Guides explores Wiltshire. The dramatic sweep of a spare landscape of the Pewsey Vale introduces the historic town of Marlborough. It follows routes towards the West; to Bath and Avon; taking in settlements of Chippenham, Calne, Melksham, , Devizes, Malmesbury and Bradford on Avon. Wiltshire is beautiful and mysterious, spanned by ancient lay lines and runic landmarks such as Stonehenge, The White Horse and the Avebury Ring. This is an original account of eye-witness experience; fascinating for visitors and informative for those seeking a new place to live. First researched from 1999-2001 and resumed in 2011-12, Cv's series of English County Guides provides descriptions of market towns and villages, for casual visitors and those interested in moving to a different area. The guides contain eye-witness records of natural character, of the villages: the properties, amenities, communication, travel and business links. Available titles include: Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Norfolk and Wiltshire; Cumbria is in preparation for autumn 2012. Each guide records between one and two hundred villages and county towns. There are route maps, colour photographs, and a directory of local services. 114pp, 56 colour ill, 6"x9", case bound, 70gsm interior pages, full colour.

In his fascinating study of the pervasive theme of 'The Dance of Death' 'Edward Lucie-Smith traces its lineage in art from mosaiics of Pompeii and early Medieval frescos. He cites the celebrated engraving by Albrecht Durer: The Knight, Death and the Devil' and an extensive series of woodcuts,'The Dance of Death' by Hans Holbein the Younger.

Cv/VAR 156 presents a study by Anne Blood of the pioneering artist Kurt Schwitters (b. June 20, 1887, Hannover, d. January 8, 1948 Kendal) which reviews the exhibition Kurt Schwitters in Britain at Tate Britain, January to May 2013. The author focuses on the 'Merzbarn', a late work created in a barn at Elterwater, Cumbria in 1947, made in the last year of his life. The 'Merzbarn' is a complex internal sculpture integrated into the building used by permission of the owner Harry Pierce, who had commissioned a portrait by the artist. The unfinished but eloquent work proved to be a forerunner of modern pathways of art and installation, and added to Schwitters' seminal influence on future artists.

For his new cityscapes N.P.James made an artistic investigation of Paris, walking through the various districts of Opera, St.Lazare, Republic, Montmartre, Montparnasse, Le Marais, St. Denis and St.Germain. His sketchbook records aspects of the streets, buildings, courtyards and monuments.

Cv/VAR archive includes analytic essays on examples of Western art including: The Trinity by Masaccio at Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Vermeer's The Maidservant and Woman with a Balance; Velázquez court portraits, Cézanne, Salvador Dalí, Francis Bacon, Anthony Caro and Alison Wilding, Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol, with reviews of exhibitions in public and private galleries. The collection of over seventy pieces reveals strands that bind the continuum of classic and contemporary art. Cv/VAR 147 publishes an essay by Marina Vaizey 'which explores the work of artist Tracey Emin, exhibited at the Turner Contemporary Gallery Margate. May to September 2012. She considers her drawings, embroidery, prints and ne-ons, and the intricate correspondence of her art and life.