Lovers and Others Strangers: Paintings by Jack Vettriano - Softcover

Quinn, Anthony

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1862056307 ISBN 13: 9781862056305

Publisher: Anova Books, 2002

Synopsis

Evoking the worlds of Raymond Chandler and Hollywood film noir, the neo-realist paintings of Jack Vettriano are published here in a handsome monograph. Illustrated with 100 of his paintings, the book is accompanied by an elegant biographical portrait of the artist’s life and achievements.

About this title

About the Author

Jack Vettriano is entirely self-taught. A Scotsman of Italian descent, he left school at sixteen to become a mining engineer working down the Fife coalfields. For his twenty-first birthday a girlfriend gave him a set of watercolour paints and from then on, he spent much of his spare time teaching himself to paint. His first solo exhibition in Edinburgh was a sell-out and since then he has had solo exhibitions in London, Hong Kong and New York. Over the last twenty years, interest in Vettriano's work has grown consistently. Vettriano's best known painting, The Singing Butler, was sold at Sotheby's for close to GBP750,000. He was awarded an OBE for Services to the Visual Arts. In 2013, a major twenty year Retrospective exhibition of Vettriano's work was staged at Kelvingrove art Gallery and Musuem in Glasgow. He lives in Edinburgh.

From Booklist

Vettriano's popularity has increased so much since his paintings were first published in book form (Fallen Angels, 1995) that posters of his work are now outselling those of Van Gogh. Vettriano, a self-taught Scottish artist who is collected by celebrities and has become one himself, is portrayed here in photographs and self-portraits as a cross between Harvey Keitel and Bono, with the toughness and virility of one and the fashionable narcissism of the other. The aura of his alluring paintings is delectably noirish, and it's fitting that film-critic Quinn has written the illuminating artist profile that accompanies the lush color reproductions of Vettriano's sexy canvases, each of which is like a movie still, freezing a moment of seduction or confrontation. Elegant men and women, armed with cigarettes and cocktails, enact ritualized scenarios in which no amount of exposed flesh can inspire genuine intimacy. Even in his magical plein air compositions, his stylized figures remain wary and self-conscious. A true romantic, Vettriano paints high-gloss fantasies that gift wrap heartache. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Anova Books
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1862056307
• ISBN 13: 9781862056305
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160