Grovier, Kelly

  • How Banksy saved art history

    £25.00

    Few would dispute that Banksy is the most famous urban artist in the world today. That he is also one of the most perceptive art historians of our age might come as a surprise to many. Taken together, the myriad memorable works the street artist has created over the course of the past thirty years, since his emergence in the Bristol underground scene in the early 1990s, constitute an audacious commentary on the history of image-making – a captivating critique waiting to be pieced together. Armed with little more than stencils, spray paint and an anonymizing cloak of after-hours darkness, Banksy has forged an alluring identity for himself as an incorrigible prankster who doesn’t embrace tradition, but shreds it. This book provides a new take on the history of art as parodied, reinterpreted and ultimately reinforced by the international phenomenon that is Banksy.

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  • The art of colour

    £30.00

    Did you know that the ultramarine that shimmers at the centre of Vermeer’s Milkmaid connects that masterpiece with 6th-century Zoroastrian paintings found on the walls of cave temples in Bamiyan, Afghanistan? Or that the surging waves that crest and curl in Hokusai’s perilous Great Wave off Kanagawa owe their absorbing blue lustre to an alchemist who was born in Frankenstein’s Castle in 1673? And were the Pre-Raphaelites really obsessed with a murky brown hue derived from the pulverized remains of ancient mummies? Invented by prehistoric cave-dwellers and medieval conjurers, cunning conmen and savvy scientists, the colours of art tell a riveting tale all their own. Over ten chapters, author Kelly Grovier helps bring that tale vividly to life, revealing the astonishing backstories of the pigments that define the greatest works in the history of art.

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