Enduring Creation:Art, Pain and Fortitude by Nigel Spivey

Enduring Creation:Art, Pain and Fortitude by Nigel Spivey

Why has such an apparently unpleasant subject such as pain preoccupied artists of every age? Nigel Spivey explores this question in a perceptive and eloquent exposition that ranges from the Christian martyrs to Munch's seminal The Scream and the horrors of the Holocaust. Enduring Creation triggers and explores in depth a host of complicated questions surrounding the motivations of artists and the psychology of our response. Can pain be beautiful? Do we always pity suffering? Is there a link between sainthood and sado-masochism? The result is a brilliantly innovative work of cultural history, and one of those rare books that makes the past come alive by creating a persistent sense that it is of pressing relevance today.

"'Nigel Spivey's Enduring Creation is an exhilarating roller-coaster read down through the troughs of hurt and up to the summits of artistic creativity: deeply thought, richly learned, but written in a voice that's by turns sharp, funny and seriously provokingIt's hard to imagine anything better on art's birth-pangs amidst pain and suffering. Nietzsche would have loved it, but don't worry, so will you' - Simon Schama; 'The finest attempt yet by an art historian to make sense out of what seems to destroy sense, the experience of pain' - Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, The Art Newspaper; 'The most illuminating art book of the year... with clarity, perspicacity and a leavening of anecdotes, Spivey explores the profound, often tender and at times almost unbearable, interrelationship between art and pain, from the classical Laocoon to Picasso's studies for Guernica' - Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times; 'An interesting book on an important, perplexing theme' - The Rt. Rev Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford, The Times Higher Education Supplement; 'A genuinely scholarly work, but also a very personal one; a heart-piece that makes of its difficult subject matter something urgent and relevant and brave' - The Guardian; 'This is that rare thing, a book on art that can be read' - Brian Sewell, The Evening Standard"

Nigel Spivey is Lecturer in Classics at the University of Cambridge, where he has also been a Fellow of Emmanuel College since 1992. His books include the prizewinning Understanding Greek Sculpture, as well as acclaimed volumes on Greek and Etruscan art.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780500285077
ISBN 10	0500285071
Title	Enduring Creation:Art, Pain and Fortitude
Author	Nigel Spivey
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Thames & Hudson Ltd
Year published	2004-08-23
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.