The Pursuit of Art: Travels, Encounters and Revelations

(Hardback)

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In the course of a career thinking and writing about art, Martin Gayford has travelled all over the world both to see works of art and to meet artists. Gayford's journeys, often to fairly inaccessible places, involve frustrations and complications, but also serendipitous encounters and outcomes, which he makes as much a part of the story as the final destination. Entertaining and informative, Gayford includes trips to see Brancusi's Endless Column in Romania, prehistoric cave art in France, the museum island of Naoshima in Japan, the Judd Foundation in Marfa, Texas, and a Roni Horn work in Iceland. Interwoven with these accounts are journeys to meet artists - Robert Rauschenberg in New York, Marina Abramovic in Venice, Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris - or travels with artists, such as a trip to Beijing with Gilbert & George. These encounters not only provide insights into the way artists approach and think about their art but also reveal the importance of their personal environments. And in the process, Gayford discusses how these meetings have impacted on his own evolving ideas and tastes.

Reviews

'Gayford is a great travelling companion. Where art criticism can be pompous, wordy and jargon-filled, here hes warm, honest, confiding, intelligent, yes, but never talking down to his reader' - Shiny New Books
'Martin Gayford is a perceptive and informed critic who has been writing about art for several decades and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of his subject Gayfords light touch makes it a thumping good read' - The Artist
'An admirable book one of [Gayfords] talents is the ability to convey the essence of an artists work, a style or an art movement in clear, concise passages that contain no jargon' - Country Life
'A charming short book about [Gayfords] peregrinations and how different contexts have affected his thinking about the art and the artists' - Michael Prodgers Books of the Year, Sunday Times
'The experience of reading Gayfords travelogue is buoyed along by his crisp, lucid prose In its understated way, the book offers a kind of modern-day equivalent to Herodotus with Gayford dutifully trudging the earth, reporting on things both incidental and profound' - Times Literary Supplement

Author Bio

Martin Gayford is art critic for the Spectator. His books include Man with a Blue Scarf, A Bigger Message, Rendez-vous with Art (with Philippe de Montebello) and Modernists & Mavericks. He is also co-author with David Hockney of A History of Pictures.