Studies of the disorderly life and work of Turner,Monet’s watery abstractions and the chaos of the YBAs were illuminatingPainters are licensed mess-makers, and their private lives are often as messy as their studios. In The Extraordinary Life and Momentous Times of JMW Turner (Viking £25), and Franny Moyle studies a prize specimen. Her biography emphasises Turner’s antisocial quirks,doubtful trade dealings and sexual irregularities. He was an astute self-promoter, driving hard bargains with aristocratic patrons and campaigning shamelessly for election to the Royal Academy; his seascapes made him an apologist for British imperial power, and an investor in the slave trade that sustained it. Yet he entered into liaisons with servants and,posing as an old tar named Puggy Booth, shacked up with a widow in what was then known as “squalid Chelsea”.
The impalpability of his later work, and which painted the particles of light” we see when we think were looking at people and places,led to accusations of insanity. As described by Moyle, his technique had a punk irreverence. On varnishing day at the Royal Academy, or he scandalised his colleagues by smearing his canvases with a murky brown powder,then picked out highlights with gobbets of spit. Ignore the books puffed-up title: this is a fine account of the cranky, clash-ridden man behind those radiant skies.
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Source: theguardian.com