I Know an Artist: The inspiring connections between the world's greatest artists

by Susie Hodge, Sarah Papworth (Illustrator)

Overview

Discover the fascinating connections between the world's greatest artists. 

I Know an Artist introduces some of the most inspirational stories of friendship, love, creativity and shared passions in the world of art. Each of the 84 illustrated profiles reveal the fascinating links between some of the best known artists. Whether through teaching, as in the case of Paul Klee and Anni Albers; a mutual muse, as seen in the flowers of Georgia O’Keeffe and Takashi Murakami; or an inspirational romantic coupling like that of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock.
 
In telling the tales of these creatives lives and achievements – each extraordinary and oftentimes ground-breaking – Susie Hodge exposes the fascinating web of connections that have fostered some of the world’s art masterpieces. Some are well-known, whereas others span both time and place, linking pioneers in art in fascinating and unexpected ways.
 
Illustrated in colourful tribute to each artists’ unique style, I Know An Artist is an illuminating and celebratory account of some of the art world’s most compelling visionaries. A perfect introduction for students, and a source of new and surprising stories for art lovers. 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781318430
Publisher:	White Lion Publishing
Publication date:	04/02/2019
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	649,690
Product dimensions:	7.70(w) x 9.80(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Susie Hodge has written over 100 books on art, art history and artistic techniques, including I Know an Artist, Art Quest: Classic Art Counterfeit, What Makes Great Design, Modern Art Mayhem, Why Your Five Year Old Could Not Have Done That, Art in Detail and Modern Art in Detail. In addition, she hosts lectures, talks and practical workshops, and regularly appears on television and radio, as well as in documentaries. She has twice been named the No. 1 art writer by the Independent.

Read an Excerpt

Sample connections

• After Edouard Manet’s death, John Singer Sargent attended his studio sale and bought the painting Mademoiselle Claus (1868). The subject was Fanny Claus, Manet’s wife’s closest friend, and the work was a study for one of Manet’s most famous paintings, Le Balcon (1868–69). 
• In 1862, Edouard Manet was copying Velázquez’s portrait of the Infanta Margarita in the Louvre and began to chat with another artist who was doing the same. At twenty-seven, Edgar Degas (1834–1917) was three years younger, and also from a wealthy, although less conventional, family. Despite their contrasting personalities and artistic interests, they became friends.
• In 2008, Takashi Murakami reworked Vuitton’s established monogram print and sold it at the Brooklyn Museum rather than in fashion outlets. Another Japanese artist who collaborated with Louis Vuitton is Yayoi Kusama (b.1929). Kusama designed an extensive collection, featuring her signature bold dots.
• Marcel Duchamp became good friends with the American artist Alexander Calder (1898–1976), moved to Paris in 1926. Duchamp described Calder’s kinetic sculptures as ‘mobiles’, and the name stuck.
• Amrita Sher-Gil’s painting Self-Portrait as Tahitian was produced in direct response to a painting by Paul Gauguin called Faa Iheihe (1898), which she had seen during a visit to the Tate in London in 1933.
• Jasper Johns had admired Edvard Munch’s work for decade; after spotting similarities between the bedspread of Munch’s Self-Portrait Between the Clock and the Bed and Johns’s trademark cross-hatched brushstrokes, a friend had sent a postcard of the postcard to Johns. In response, Johns produced his own work Between the Clock and the Bed.
• In her own personal art collection, Jenny Holzer owns various works by other artists, including two Alice Neel (1900–84) drawings, which she has said are her favourites: ‘They are of the dead Che Guevara. She did them darkly, beautifully and sincerely.’
• When she worked for the Works Progress Administration, Neel was one of 3,748 artists who benefited from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Federal Arts Project. The programme did not distinguish between male or female artists but helped them all during an exceptionally difficult time. Another artist who was also aided by the project was Lee Krasner (1908–84), who called it ‘a lifesaver’.
• In 2013, Marlene Dumas (b.1953) held a joint exhibition with Luc Tuymans (b.1958) in Antwerp. Among the works that Dumas displayed was a copy of a Man Ray photograph of Meret Oppenheim.
• Paul Gauguin lived at 8 rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, which was occupied twenty-one years later by Amedeo Modigliani.
• Edvard Munch, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky all had suspected synaesthesia.
• Andy Warhol owned over 30 works by Marcel Duchamp.

Table of Contents

1. Claude Monet
2. Anya Gallaccio
3. John Singer Sargent
4. Édouard Manet
5. Edgar Degas
6. Mary Cassatt
7. Lucy Bacon
8. Paula Modersohn-Becker
9. Kathë Kollwitz  
10. Tamara De Lempicka  
11. Varvara Stepanova  
12. Francis Bacon
13. George Grosz  
14. Hannah Höch  
15. Piet Mondrian  
16. Bridget Riley
17. Ben Nicholson  
18. Barbara Hepworth  
19. Pablo Picasso  
20. Amedeo Modigliani  
21. Diego Rivera  
22. Frida Kahlo  
23. Georgia O'Keeffe  
24. Takashi Murakami
25. Yayoi Kusama
26. Marina Abramovic
27. Cornelia Parker
28. Auguste Rodin
29. Camille Claudel
30. Constantin Brancusi
31. Fernand Léger
32. Sonia Delaunay-Terk
33. Paul Klee
34. Anni Albers  
35. Julie Mehretu
36. Wassily Kandinsky
37. Hilma Af Klint  
38. Agnes Martin
39. Margaret Macdonald
40. Sophie Taeuber-Arp
41. Marcel Duchamp  
42. Alexander Calder
43. Joan Miró
44. Louise Bourgeois
45. Tracey Emin
46. Max Ernst
47. Alberto Giacometti
48. Paul Cézanne
49. Lois Mailou-Jones
50. Amrita Sher-Gil
51. Paul Gauguin
52. Vincent Van Gogh
53. Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec
54. Suzanne Valadon
55. Maurice Utrillo
56. Henri Matisse
57. Pierre Bonnard  
58. Gustav Klimt  
59. Egon Schiele
60. Edvard Munch
61. Jasper Johns
62. Andy Warhol
63. Jean-Michel Basquiat
64. Jenny Holzer
65. Alice Neel
66. Lee Krasner
67. Jackson Pollock
68. Hans Hofmann
69. Helen Frankenthaler
70. Robert Motherwell
71. Yves Tanguy
72. Leonora Carrington
73. Franz Marc
74. Aleksandra Ekster
75. Kazimir Malevich
76. Mikhail Larionov
77. Natalia Goncharova
78. Judy Chicago
79. Meret Oppenheim
80. Marlene Dumas
81. Kara Walker
82. Paula Rego
83. Mona Hatoum
84. Eva Hesse