Kitaj [Paperback]

Marco Livingstone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 7, 1999

This revised and expanded monograph provides full documentation of Kitaj's work to date, including his paintings, pastels and drawings. The book is a result of a series of interviews and letters between the artist and the author and from the artist's active participation in the design. In this edition the author has updated his text to include a survey of Kitaj's work in the 1990s. A new section of 20 illustrations of recent work has been added, and illustrations that were in black and white in earlier editions are now reproduced in full colour. Kitaj himself completes this edition with an outspoken account of his now famous confrontation with the critics of his 1994 retrospective exhibition, and the subsequent death of his wife Sandra.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This revised and expanded monograph provides full documentation of Kitaj's work to date, including his paintings, pastels and drawings. The book is a result of a series of interviews and letters between the artist and the author and from the artist's active participation in the design. In this edition the author has updated his text to include a survey of Kitaj's work in the 1990s. A new section of 20 illustrations of recent work has been added, and illustrations that were in black and white in earlier editions are now reproduced in full colour. Kitaj himself completes this edition with an outspoken account of his now famous confrontation with the critics of his 1994 retrospective exhibition, and the subsequent death of his wife Sandra.

About the Author

Marco Livingstone is an independent art historian, critic and curator who writes extensively on modern and contemporary art --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Phaidon Press; 3rd Revised edition (October 7, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0714838918
• ISBN-13: 978-0714838915
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,993,102 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars this review refers to the older edition, December 12, 2000

By 

http://www.davidrhoden.com (New Orleans, LA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kitaj (Paperback)

I have the older edition described above and I thought it was the greatest thing until now. My main disappointment in that edition was the number of b/w prints. Kitaj is a superior draftsman whose work brings in a lot of outside allusions - it looks like the work of a great and active mind that knows about things you yourself have no knowledge of - almost as if he lives on another planet, really. Anyway, whatever it is you know about, the drawing is what makes this great. Kitaj draws eyes better than anyone I can think of. I'd love to read more about his response to the critical panning he received in England recently.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still in mourning, January 23, 2011

By 

AnkerArts - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kitaj (Hardcover)

I was a young woman, of 25 - and it was my first time back to Holland since leaving it as a child.
Went to the Hague and in the museum there saw a Kitaj and have been haunted by him since. Then for years i lived in isolation in Ireland and only had the images in "Private View" by Snowdon to absorb. I am now 66 and have finally managed to buy Marco Livingstone & Richard Morphet 's retrospective and both books have me weeping in appreciation and in mourning still for a truly great genius, (who I carried with me for so long) that is no more.
I can now look and look - intimately devour these books - and like a magic plate which keeps refilling :
keep being fed.

Josepha van den Anker

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Among The Very Best of Contemporary American Painters, December 18, 2010

By 

drkhimxz (Freehold, NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Kitaj (Hardcover)

R.B. Kitaj was one of the most exciting, interesting and perplexing of the worlds generation of painters born in the late 1920's and early 1930's. What is more, he joined the minority of top artists of his day who kept alive the ancient traditions of figurative painting. Beyond that he was the most self-conscious, self-revelatory, overtly intellectual and aggressively Jewish in content of his time. He also championed the incorporation of text in pictures and attempts at written explanation accompanying paintings, to the chagrin of many critics. Complex, allusive, surrealist, polished in his work, in the later decades of his life, he opened up to free expression, broad, sweeping strokes, unfinished surfaces and emphasis on the most basic of human emotions. The intensity of love, grief, despair, hope, and frustration, manifest in high color, in those last years, struck me at the time as being as stirring as any work I have ever seen.
In this fourth edition of his standard work on Kitaj, Livingstone has been abetted by the publisher who sought to endow it with the richness of pictures in color not black and white. This has made his essay on Kitaj far more enlightening and understanding
of Kitaj's life and work much deeper than was possible from earlier editions. The addition of a healthy selection from his later pictures is a major improvement. The inclusion of some of Kitaj's own commentaries on particular work illustrated in the book helps one to see the artist's mind at work.
I can commend this fourth edition of the book to all who find their lives enriched by art. Kitaj committed suicide in Los Angeles in 2007 at the age of 75.