Book Description

Whereas much has been written on the subject of art, the literature on the figure of the artist has been relatively scant. There are certainly countless biographies as well as essays dedicated to particular aspects of art - for example, the relationship between artists and their patrons - but there is no comprehensive text that puts together the pieces of the puzzle showing how the figure of the artist changed over the millennia. An Artist’s Story of Artists is an attempt to make good this lacuna by retracing the long and often fragmented path of the artist, from the Palaeolithic until this morning, more or less. During this journey, artists assumed and shed many guises. They were magicians, priests, legends, slaves, salaried workers, entrepreneurs, inventors, lunatics, revolutionaries, scientists, patrons and much else besides. They experimented with techniques and ideas, always aiming to find new ways to make art, and overcoming the boundaries determined by society, as well as those established by themselves. Highlights of this story are the complex relationships artists have always had with writing and literature, philosophy, technology, politics, religion and criticism, and the weighty stigma on manual work that for 5,000 years subdued them as they were regarded as halfwits who were good with their hands. This substantial work is divided into five phases, five great periods that witnessed the radical ways in which artists changed as they fought and lost battles among themselves and with society, and the ups and downs they experienced from being revered shamans reduced to reviled labourers, later raised to geniuses and then turned into doomed and damned artists. This book examines the role played by optical instruments, the reasons behind the origins of exhibitions, the paradoxes of art education, the clichés affecting artists, and the influences and interferences that have made them what they are today. The book finally examine