Letters to Gwen John
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- Synopsis
- With original artworks throughout, an extraordinary fusion of memoir and artistic biography from the acclaimed artist and author of Self-Portrait.Dearest Gwen, I know this letter to you is an artifice. I know you are dead and that I&’m alive and that no usual communication is possible between us but, as my mother used to say, &“Time is a strange substance&” and who knows really, with our time-bound comprehension of the world, whether there might be some channel by which we can speak to each other, if we only knew how.Celia Paul&’s Letters to Gwen John centers on a series of letters addressed to the Welsh painter Gwen John (1876–1939), who has long been a tutelary spirit for Paul. John spent much of her life in France, making art on her own terms and, like Paul, painting mostly women. John&’s reputation was overshadowed during her lifetime by her brother, Augustus John, and her lover Auguste Rodin. Through the epistolary form, Paul draws fruitful comparisons between John&’s life and her own: their shared resolve to protect the sources of their creativity, their fierce commitment to painting, and the ways in which their associations with older male artists affected the public&’s reception of their work.Letters to Gwen John is at once an intimate correspondence, an illuminating portrait of two painters (including full-color plates of both artists&’ work), and a writer/artist&’s daybook, describing Paul&’s first exhibitions in America, her search for new forms, her husband&’s diagnosis of cancer, and the onset of the global pandemic. Paul, who first revealed her talents as a writer with her memoir, Self-Portrait, enters with courage and resolve into new unguarded territory—the artist at present—and the work required to make art out of the turbulence of life.
- Copyright:
- 2022
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- Book Size:
- 352 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9781681376417
- Related ISBNs:
- 9781681376400
- Publisher:
- New York Review Books
- Date of Addition:
- 07/14/22
- Copyrighted By:
- Celia Paul
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Biographies and Memoirs, Literature and Fiction
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.
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- by Celia Paul
- in Nonfiction
- in Art and Architecture
- in Biographies and Memoirs
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