The Life of Bryan: A Celebration of Bryan Robertson

Description

Bryan Robertson (1925-2002) was the greatest director the Tate Gallery never had. In 1952, at the age of 27, and against formidable competition (which included David Sylvester and Lawrence Gowing), he became Director of the Whitechapel Gallery, a post he held until 1969. While there he effected a revolution in the British museum world, bringing the more innovative and radical American and European contemporary artists to the UK, as well as programming a series of exhibitions devoted to British artists in mid-career. He was the first to show Pollock, Rothco, Rauschenberg and Johns in England, matching this with historical re-evaluations of Turner, Stubbs, Bellotto and Rowlandson. Among Europeans he showed Mondrian, de Stael, Malevich and Poliakoff , and the English artists included Barbara Hepworth, Alan Davie, Ceri Richards and Keith Vaughan. Among younger painters and sculptors he identified the New Generation of Caro, Hoyland, Riley, Jones and Caulfield, and stage-managed a flow of exhibitions which transformed the Whitechapel and made it the gallery to visit. Robertson was a man of vision and flair, and this book celebrates his lasting infl uence over the way we look at and think about art, as witnessed through the words of his friends and contemporaries and in excerpts from his own written works.

Andrew Lambirth (born 1959) is a writer, critic and curator. He has written on art for a number of publications including The Sunday Telegraph, The Spectator, The Sunday Times, Modern Painters, The Art Newspaper and RA, the Royal Academy magazine. Among his many books are monographs on Craigie Aitchison, Stephen Chambers, Roger Hilton, Allen Jones, Maggi Hambling, David Inshaw, John Hoyland, Margaret Mellis, LS Lowry and RB Kitaj. He has curated exhibitions of work by Eileen Agar, Peter Blake, Maggi Hambling, Roger Hilton and Cedric Morris for various museums and public galleries. He was art critic of The Spectator 2002-2014 and his reviews have been collected in a paperback entitled A is a Critic. He lives in Wiltshire.

"A rounded and revelatory portrait of this hugely important figure. . . . Much of this book is comprised of the fascinating recollections and insights of Lambirth's many interviewees and correspondents from the worlds of art and culture that Robertson inhabited. They are combined with the author's own contextual interpolations, and selected examples of Robertson's writings on art. Altogether, this much-needed volume presents an engrossing picture of a brilliant maverick: a man by turns immensely generous, hilariously funny and wildly infuriating." -- "Art Newspaper"