Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in great condition. Pages in excellent condition. Some corner wear. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The following essay was written at some time between 1947 and 1951 and it was intended to accompany a representative number of reproductions of the work of Louis Wain. However the project was not accepted for publication until 1959 when a publishing firm undertook to produce it under the title of Catland. As it happened this firm was taken over just then by another firm. And the agreement for the book was cancelled. The essay is presented now alongside a Louis Wain Exhibition held in the Victoria and Albert Museum during December and January 1972-73 the most comprehensive exhibition of his drawings paintings ceramics and published illustrations so far. The text of 1947-51 was slightly revised in 1959: for the present purpose I have corrected and condensed the opening paragraphs deleted others and altered a passage here and there. Otherwise it is substantially what it was in 1951 written at a time when nothing like the present interest in popular art existed. Indeed it was conceived partly out of dissatisfaction with orthodox and unorthodox approaches to art in the 1940s. George Orwell had indicated in 1941 in Horizon that Donald McGill the postcard designer could give ribaldry an aesthetic fascina- tion; and it could be said that Gillray made spite- fulness fascinating by similar means. I was anxious to do the same for Louis Wain in the belief that his art though classified as Popular was by no means commonplace. For it revealed certain childlike qualities providing as distinct a basis for aesthetic presentation as the surrealistic the primitive. (LL)