Andrew Graham-Dixon
Personal Information
Description
Andrew Michael Graham-Dixon (born 26 December 1960) is a British art historian, art critic, author and broadcaster. He served as chief art critic at both The Independent and The Telegraph newspapers, and presents art documentaries for the BBC, as well as five series of Italy Unpacked, in which he explored the culture and cuisine of Italy with chef Giorgio Locatelli. He has written a number of books about art and artists, including a biography of Caravaggio, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction.
Books
Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel
"This book is a retelling of the story of the Sistine Chapel for modern times, and an essential companion to one of the artistic wonders of the world."--Jacket.
Caravaggio
"Of all the great Italian painters, Caravaggio speaks most clearly and powerfully to our time. Caravaggio's early paintings of cardsharps, musicians, and street vendors convey his familiarity and fascination with the Roman underworld; his stark and brilliant religious paintings represent, for the first time in European art, the world of the poor, the suffering, and the outcast, and they depict the religious experience of the individual with a directness our age can recognize."--BOOK JACKET. "Caravaggio lived hard and died young, having fled Rome for Sicily, apparently after killing another man in a dispute; his life, involving powerful patrons, sybaritic cardinals, and saints, as well as street boys, prostitutes, and rivalrous painters, is one of the most colorful of any artist's. This biography - the first in English in two generations - shows us Caravaggio's genius with the striking clarity of his own paintings."--BOOK JACKET.
The Beginning
John Virtue
Michael Hue-Williams is delighted to be presenting his first exhibition in sixteen years with John Virtue at Albion Barn, opening 2nd April 2015. This new body of 42 paintings continues the sequence of works made exploring the north Norfolk coast at Blakeney Point. John Virtue continues his practice of once weekly walks along the coastline in all weathers. Making studies in pocket sketchbooks, which go towards the finished paintings in acrylic on canvas and linen. Continuing the tradition of painting the sea, which passes from Turner, Constable to Courbet, these works combine the sentiment of abstraction not dissimilar to the approach of Pollock and Kline with the gestural tradition to be found in Japanese calligraphic painting. A new publication with text commissioned from Andrew Graham-Dixon presents the paintings and the practice of this most determined and focused artist. Unlike his concurrent exhibition at the Towner Art Gallery entitled The Sea, which previously travelled from The Sainsbury Centre and will go on to firstsite in Colchester, these works are more manageable in scale. The Towner exhibition continues until 12th April 2015 and the firstsite exhibition opens on 13th June and runs until 20th September 2015.--www.albionbarn.com.
21st century portraits
With over 150 illustrations from fifty artists, '21st Century Portraits' explores new developments in the representation of the human form and face as well as the continuing appeal of commissioned portraiture. The selection of portraits features cutting-edge new work from the international art community, and reflects an increasing interest in identity worldwide.
Renaissance
Jan Vanriet
The music boy' exhibition at the New Art Gallery Walsall is the artist?s first in the United Kingdom. A 168-page hardback, illustrated catalogue featuring extensive essays by Andrew Graham-Dixon and Martin Herbert, as well as a foreword by Charlotte Mullins was published on the occasion. The exhibition is titled after a quadriptych of paintings depicting the artist?s grandmother and his uncle playing an accordion. Jan Vanriet?s work mainly concerns the memory of history and the construction of pictorial surface. As Martin Herbert writes: ?Vanriet builds up his paintings in layers, and the strata of underpainting have, in his case, a polyvalent quality. In some cases they form glazes that gift the paintings with an internal glow. 00Exhibition: The New Art Gallery Walsall, Walsall, UK (29.01-08.05.2016).