Alex Danchev Book order

The first major biography for our time, from the celebrated biographer of Cezanne

How can works of the imagination help us to understand good and evil in the modern world? In this new collection of essays, Alex Danchev treats the artist as a crucial moral witness of our troubled times, and puts art to work in the service of political and ethical inquiry.

A translation of the correspondence of Paul Cezanne, known as the father of modern art. This book paints a picture of Cezanne as a singular thinker and an uncompromising seeker after artistic truth qualities that shine through in the letters, but that many of his contemporaries failed to appreciate or comprehend.

Today we view Cezanne as a monumental figure, but during his lifetime (1839-1906), many did not understand him or his work. This book tells the story of an artist who was never accepted into the official Salon: he was considered a revolutionary at best and a barbarian at worst, whose paintings were unfinished, distorted and strange.

This book, newly available in paperback, offers a sustained demonstration of the way in which works of art can help us to explore the most difficult ethical and political issues of our time: war, terror, extermination, torture and abuse.

A collection of 100 manifestos from the last 100 years is cacophony of voices from such diverse movements as Futurism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Destructivism, and Stuckism, taking in along the way film, architecture, fashion, and cookery. It gathers together an international array of artists of every stripe, including Kandinsky, Gilbert and George.