Those Passions - T. J. Clark

'For those, though, who relish brilliant analysis of painting – as well as former students of art history, like me, for whom, at university, Clark was a sort of god – Those Passions will be essential reading. Its finest essays engage in depth with painting’s subtle minutiae, observing and explaining how tiny touches can contribute to powerful overall effects. A bravura study of Henri Matisse’s Woman with a Hat (1905) is a case in point. ... Likewise, his scintillating exposition of The Lion Hunt (1855) by Eugène Delacroix – a detail from which, reproduced on a French poster which he bought in 1966, dominates his study' Sunday Telegraph 'A timely study of the connection between art and politics' Observer The careful distillation of a lifetime’s writing by the internationally renowned art historian T.J. Clark, who addresses key issues of art’s relationship with politics. Is art obliged to engage with politics? If so, how? By taking sides in political struggle; by singing the song of the barricade, the new nation, the bombed city? Or by giving form to the deeper patterns of experience – the raw materials of ‘society’ – from which any politics is made? Using case studies stretching across the centuries, from Hieronymus Bosch to Jacques-Louis David and the French Revolution, from Walter Benjamin to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Those Passions aims to show how modern art has responded to the chaos and danger of modern life. In the book’s three sections –
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