Product Description

This book is about a shared journey made by John and Myfanwy Piper who early on settled down in a small hamlet on the edge of the Chilterns, whence they proceeded to produce work which placed them centre stage in the cultural landscape of the twentieth century. Here, too, they fed and entertained many visitors, among them Kenneth Clark, John Betjeman, Osbert Lancaster, Benjamin Britten, and the Queen Mother. Their creative partnership encompasses not only a long marriage and numerous private and professional vicissitudes, but also a genuine legacy of lasting achievements in the visual arts, literature and music. Frances Spalding also sheds new light on the story of British art in the 1930s. In the middle of this decade John Piper and Myfanwy Evans (they did not marry until 1937) were at the forefront of avant-garde activities in England, Myfanwy editing the most advanced art magazine of the day and John working alongside Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and others. But as the decade progressed and the political situation in Europe worsened, they changed their allegiances, John Piper investigating in his art a sense of place, belonging, history, memory, and the nature of national identity, all issues that are very much to the fore in today's world. Myfanwy Piper is best known as 'Golden Myfanwy', Betjeman's muse and for her work as librettist with Benjamin Britten. John Piper was an extraordinarily prolific artist in many media, his fertile career stretching over six decades and involving him in many changes of style. Having been an abstract painter in the 1930s, he became best known for his landscapes and architectural scenes in a romantic style. This core interest, in the English and Welsh landscape and the built environment, developed in him a sensibility that took in almost everything, from gin palaces to painted quoins, from ruined cottages to country houses, from Victorian shop fronts to what is nowadays called industrial archeology. His capacious and divided sensibility made him defender of many aspects of the English landscape and the built environment, while in his art he became an heir of that great tradition encompassing Wordsworth and Blake, Turner, Ruskin, and Samuel Palmer. He was torn between the pleasures of an abstract language liberated from time and place and those embedded in the locale, in buildings, geography, and history. Today, this expansive contradictoriness seems quintessentially modern, his divided response finding an echo in our own ambivalence towards modernity. Both Pipers created what seemed to many observers an ideal way of life, involving children, friendships, good food, humour, the pleasures of a garden, work, and creativity. Running through their lives is a fertile tension between a commitment to the new and a desire to reinvigorate certain native traditions. This tension produced work that is passionate and experimental. 'Only those who live most vividly in the present', John Russell observed of John and Myfanwy Piper, 'deserve to inherit the past'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4082 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-17
• Original language: German
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Review
She has triumphantly knitted together all the multifarious Piper aspects. (Roderic Dunnett, The Independent )

Brims over with insights and revelations. (Times Higher Education, Timothy Mowl )

This timely book engenders optimism. (Timothy Mowl, Times Higher Education )

Engrossing and scholarly study. (Timothy Mowl, Times Higher Education )

Handsomely produced...Spalding's unrivalled knowledge of the Pipers' world captures the issues clearly, sharply. (Michael White, The Tablet )

Excellent and expert biography...touches of judicious speculation and clear-sighted glosses.

Spalding...presents us with fascinating and gripping biographical material, but also offers us vivid images of a now vanished England. (Val Hennessy, Daily Mail )

Frances Spalding's copious and erudite biography of John and his art critic wife, Myfanwy, describes his art with considerable authority. (Serena Davies, Sunday Telegraph )

A well-executed and meticulously researched work.

Oxford University Press is to be congratulated on publishing this work on the scale the Pipers deserved. (Bevis Hillier, The Spectator )

A fair verdict would be:..."this could not have been done better". (Bevis Hillier, The Spectator )

Spalding comprehensively (but never tediously) covers his work in all its staggering versatility. (Bevis Hillier, The Spectator )

Magnificent... Just occasionally, one comes across a book of which one can say, "This could not have been done better." Spalding's book is in that rare class. (Bevis Hillier, The Spectator )

Customer Reviews

lives in art
This glorious book achieves what the title says: these are lives in art in very great detail.
Unless you are an art scholar (and will no doubt find fault somewhere)the book is best approached first by reading the introduction and then browsing. The index is good for this as usual. The illustrations are superb, and the production as a whole excellent. Not for bedside reading though, but far from just a coffee table book.

This Magnificent Book
The 'Product Description' above says it all. Frances Spalding's book is, quite simply, superb. From start to finish.

To begin with, she writes brilliantly, with an excellent and lively style, and an obvious affection for her subject that keeps the reader turning the pages keen to know what comes next.

And it's quite a story. The names and faces that weave in and out of the pages of this sumptuous volume are like a 'Who's Who' of the British Arts in all their shapes and sizes, and at their very best. John Piper's life was the broadest canvas, encompassing painting, pottery, architecture, sculpture, weaving, music, photography, stage design - and it's also one of the joys of this biography that his multi-talented wife, the "golden Myfanwy" of John Betjeman's poems, is given full acknowledgement as a creative artist in her own right. They were quite a couple.

To anyone even vaguely interested in Frances Spalding's subject, you cannot go wrong with this book - and for the price (as published, or the many variables on Amazon) it's a gift. Well worth having, and a superb and edifying read from cover to cover, with magnificent illustrations that do full justice to their originals.

We should be grateful to everyone who had a hand in its production. This is a worthy monument to both Pipers - one that's built to last.