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Kenneth Clark : life, art and Civilisation / James Stourton.

By: Publication details: London : William Collins, 2016.Description: xvii, 478 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 25 cmISBN:
  • 9780007493418
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 709.2 23
LOC classification:
  • N7483.C55 S76 2016
Contents:
"K" -- Aesthete's progress -- Edwardian childhood -- Winchester -- Oxford -- Florence, and love -- BB -- The gothic revival -- The Italian exhibition -- The Ashmolean -- The National Gallery -- Appointment and trustees -- By royal command -- The Great Clerk Room -- Running the Gallery -- Lecturing and Leonardo -- Director versus staff -- The listener and the artist -- World War II -- Packing up: "Bury them in the bowels of the earth" -- The National Gallery at war -- The Ministry of Information -- Artists at war -- The home front -- The best for the most -- Arts Panjandrum -- Writing and lecturing -- Upper terrace -- Town and country -- The naked and the nude -- Television -- Inventing independent television: "a vital vulgarity" -- The early television programmes -- Saltwood 1953-68 -- Saltwood: the private man -- Public man: the 1960s -- Civilisation -- Civilisation: the background -- The making of Civilisation -- Civilisation and its discontents -- Apotheosis: Lord Clark of Civilisation -- Lord Clark of Civilisation -- Lord Clark of suburbia -- Another part of the wood -- Last years and Nolwen.
Summary: Drawing on previously unseen archives, James Stourton reveals the formidable intellect and the complicated private man who wielded enormous influence on all aspects of the arts and drew into his circle a diverse group, many of whom he and his wife Jane would entertain at Saltwood Castle. These included E.M. Forster, Vivien Leigh, Margot Fonteyn, the Queen Mother, Winston Churchill, John Betjeman, Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore. Hidden from view, however, was his wife's alcoholism and his own womanising. From his time as Bernard Berenson's protege at I Tatti in Florence to being the Keeper of Western Art at the Ashmolean aged 27 - by which time he had published The Gothic Revival, the first of his many books - to his appointment as the youngest-ever director of the National Gallery, Clark displayed precocious genius. During the war he arranged for the gallery's entire collection to be hidden in slate mines in Wales, and organised packed concerts of German classical music at the empty gallery to keep up the spirits of Londoners. The war and the Cold War that followed convinced him of the fragility of culture and that, as a potent humanising force, art should be brought to the widest possible audience, a social and moral position that would inform the rest of his career. No voice has exercised so much power and influence over the arts in Britain as Clark's. James Stourton has written a dazzling biography of a towering figure in the art world, a passionate art historian of the Italian Renaissance and a brilliant communicator who, through the many mediums of his work, conveyed the profound beauty and importance of art, architecture and civilisation for generations to come.
List(s) this item appears in: New acquisitions 2017
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Item type Current library Collection Call number Status Date due Barcode
Loanable Book Library Biography 920 CLA (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Available 000413531

Includes bibliographical references (pages 453-459) and index.

"K" -- Aesthete's progress -- Edwardian childhood -- Winchester -- Oxford -- Florence, and love -- BB -- The gothic revival -- The Italian exhibition -- The Ashmolean -- The National Gallery -- Appointment and trustees -- By royal command -- The Great Clerk Room -- Running the Gallery -- Lecturing and Leonardo -- Director versus staff -- The listener and the artist -- World War II -- Packing up: "Bury them in the bowels of the earth" -- The National Gallery at war -- The Ministry of Information -- Artists at war -- The home front -- The best for the most -- Arts Panjandrum -- Writing and lecturing -- Upper terrace -- Town and country -- The naked and the nude -- Television -- Inventing independent television: "a vital vulgarity" -- The early television programmes -- Saltwood 1953-68 -- Saltwood: the private man -- Public man: the 1960s -- Civilisation -- Civilisation: the background -- The making of Civilisation -- Civilisation and its discontents -- Apotheosis: Lord Clark of Civilisation -- Lord Clark of Civilisation -- Lord Clark of suburbia -- Another part of the wood -- Last years and Nolwen.

Drawing on previously unseen archives, James Stourton reveals the formidable intellect and the complicated private man who wielded enormous influence on all aspects of the arts and drew into his circle a diverse group, many of whom he and his wife Jane would entertain at Saltwood Castle. These included E.M. Forster, Vivien Leigh, Margot Fonteyn, the Queen Mother, Winston Churchill, John Betjeman, Graham Sutherland and Henry Moore. Hidden from view, however, was his wife's alcoholism and his own womanising. From his time as Bernard Berenson's protege at I Tatti in Florence to being the Keeper of Western Art at the Ashmolean aged 27 - by which time he had published The Gothic Revival, the first of his many books - to his appointment as the youngest-ever director of the National Gallery, Clark displayed precocious genius. During the war he arranged for the gallery's entire collection to be hidden in slate mines in Wales, and organised packed concerts of German classical music at the empty gallery to keep up the spirits of Londoners. The war and the Cold War that followed convinced him of the fragility of culture and that, as a potent humanising force, art should be brought to the widest possible audience, a social and moral position that would inform the rest of his career. No voice has exercised so much power and influence over the arts in Britain as Clark's. James Stourton has written a dazzling biography of a towering figure in the art world, a passionate art historian of the Italian Renaissance and a brilliant communicator who, through the many mediums of his work, conveyed the profound beauty and importance of art, architecture and civilisation for generations to come.

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