Modernists and Mavericks: Bacon, Freud, Hockney and the London Painters

Description

Martin Gayford's masterful account of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s, illustrated by documentary photographs and the works themselves The development of painting in London from the Second World War to the 1970s has never before been told before as a single narrative. R. B. Kitaj's proposal, made in 1976, that there was a "substantial School of London" was essentially correct but it caused confusion because it implied that there was a movement or stylistic group at work, when in reality no one style could cover the likes of Francis Bacon and also Bridget Riley. Modernists and Mavericks explores this period based on an exceptionally deep well of firsthand interviews, often unpublished, with such artists as Victor Pasmore, John Craxton, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Allen Jones, R. B. Kitaj, Euan Uglow, Howard Hodgkin, Terry Frost, Gillian Ayres, Bridget Riley, David Hockney, Frank Bowling, Leon Kossoff, John Hoyland, and Patrick Caulfield.... Introduction * 1. 14 Abercorn Place * 2. Pope Francis * 3. Euston Road in Camberwell * 4. The Spirit in the Mass (at Borough Polytechnic) * 5. Girl with Roses * 6. Leaping into the Void * 7. Translating Life into Art: Bacon and Freud in the 50s * 8. Two Climbers Roped Together: Auerbach and Kossoff * 9. An Arena in Which to Act * 10. What Makes the Modern Home so Different? * 11. The Situation in London, 1960 * 12. The Artist Thinks: Hockney and his Contemporaries