Howard Hodgkin [Hardcover]

Andrew Graham-Dixon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1994

Studies the semi-abstract art of Howard Hodgkin, exploring his transitory modern life themes and elaborate pictorial language.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

British artist Howard Hodgkin strives to depict ``emotional situations,'' to pin down ``the evasiveness of reality,'' as he explains. Sometimes obscure yet nearly always engaging, his lush, radiant, daring semiabstract paintings evoke the haphazardness of experience, the way each of us subjectively constructs reality. Hodgkin is often classified as an intimist with Matisse and Bonnard, but in this excellent study, the first monograph on the artist, Graham-Dixon, chief art critic for the Independent in London, provocatively views him as a synthesizer who fulfills Baudelaire's call for a painting of modern life rooted in a sense of the transitory and the contingent. Hodgkin creates universes out of densely packed rainbow curves, pulsating blobs of color, warring stripes. Using juxtapositions of patterns and symbols, of realism and nonrealism, he speaks of loneliness, fear, beauty, death, absence and joy in a self-sufficient pictorial language. His paintings are like rare, enigmatic gifts whose meanings sensuously unfold.

Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

Delicious. Luscious. Scrumptious....[This volume] is that rare but sublime match of author and subject, paintings and text. -- New York Times Book Review

Graham-Dixon incisively characterizes the generic qualities of Hodgkin's art, and offers many interesting interpretations on individual pictures... -- Times Literary Supplement

There is heroism in the vehemence and the lack of irony of Hodgkin's pictures. -- Susan Sontag --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harry N Abrams; 1St Edition edition (June 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810934183
• ISBN-13: 978-0810934184
• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 9.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,418,609 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A passionate and scholarly study of Hodgkin., July 5, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Howard Hodgkin (Hardcover)

Andrew Graham-Dixon's passionate book about the work of Howard Hodgkin, has the detail and insight serious students of this important artist want. This book is as the first monograph to be published on this artist,a very important purchase. If like me you thirst for really good reproduction,the colour plates are large and do justice to the paintings.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A readable, sensitive and comprehensive treatment of Hodgkin, February 23, 2002

By 

Mr. P. O'beirne (Ireland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Howard Hodgkin (Hardcover)

The very dust-jacket with its dynamic detail from Hodgkin's Old Sky strikes the right note in this intelligently presented and visually seductive review of the painter's career. The excellent quality of the illustrations, their logical placing directly opposite the pertinent text, marginal page references, the choice of type-face and the luxury-feel paper all make the mere handling of the book a real pleasure.
Far from being of mere coffee-table appeal, however, the author's cool authoritative voice makes one feel that here is a critic in whose hands one is safe. Such a gem of wisdom as 'whatever residue of inexplicability lodges in a work of art is also its only hope of an afterlife' establishes his impeccable credentials as a discerning critic. Graham-Dixon deals with Hodgkin's seminal influences, his eclecticism, his evolving theatrical style, his preoccupation with the vagaries of memory and its transmutation into art. 'Hodgkin does not set out to paint what the world looks like, but what it feels like.' His work has the quality of intimacy which makes its own demands on the viewer who would engage with it, Graham-Dixon observes in a book which is lucid and comprehensive without ever wearying the reader.