The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art - Smee, Sebastian Review & Synopsis

Synopsis Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee tells the fascinating story of four pairs of artists-Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, Pollock and de Kooning, Freud and Bacon-whose fraught, competitive friendships spurred them to new creative heights. Rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful relationships in history. The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy, and ambition. All eight are household names today. But to achieve what they did, each needed the influence of a contemporary-one who was equally ambitious but possessed sharply contrasting strengths and weaknesses. Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas were close associates whose personal bond frayed after Degas painted a portrait of Manet and his wife. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso swapped paintings, ideas, and influences as they jostled for the support of collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein and vied for the leadership of a new avant-garde. Jackson Pollock's uninhibited style of "action painting" triggered a breakthrough in the work of his older rival, Willem de Kooning. After Pollock's sudden death in a car crash, de Kooning assumed Pollock's mantle and became romantically involved with his late friend's mistress. Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon met in the early 1950s, when Bacon was being hailed as Britain's most exciting new painter and Freud was working in relative obscurity. Their intense but asymmetrical friendship came to a head when Freud painted a portrait of Bacon, which was later stolen. Each of these relationships culminated in an early flashpoint, a rupture in a budding intimacy that was both a betrayal and a trigger for great innovation. Writing with the same exuberant wit and psychological insight that earned him a Pulitzer Prize for art criticism, Sebastian Smee explores here the way that coming into one's own as an artist-finding one's voice-almost always involves willfully breaking away from some intimate's expectations of who you are or ought to be. Praise for The Art of Rivalry "Gripping . . . Mr. Smee's skills as a critic are evident throughout. He is persuasive and vivid. . . . You leave this book both nourished and hungry for more about the art, its creators and patrons, and the relationships that seed the ground for moments spent at the canvas."-The New York Times "With novella-like detail and incisiveness [Sebastian Smee] opens up the worlds of four pairs of renowned artists. . . . Each of his portraits is a biographical gem. . . . The Art of Rivalry is a pure, informative delight, written with canny authority."-The Boston Globe Review Sebastian Smee is an art critic for the Washington Post. He was previously the chief art critic at the Boston Globe, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2011, having been a runner-up in 2008. He joined the Boston Globe's staff from Sydney, where he worked as national art critic forThe Australian between 2004 and 2008. Prior to that, he lived for four years in the UK, where he worked on staff at The Art Newspaper, and wrote for The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, The Financial Times, Prospect Magazine, and The Spectator. He has contributed to five books on Lucian Freud. He teaches non-fiction writing at Wellesley College.chapter 1 FREUD and BACON The thing is, unless you look at those Muybridge figures with a magnifying glass, it's very difficult to see whether they're wrestling or having sex. -�FRANCIS BACON Lucian Freud's 1952 portrait of his friend, the artist Francis Bacon, is the size of a pocket paperback [see Plate 1]. Or it was: It disappeared from the walls of a German museum in 1988 and hasn't been seen since. It showed Bacon head-�on and from very close in. "Everyone thought of him as a blur," Freud would later say, "but he had a very specific face. I remember wanting to bring Bacon out from behind the blur." In the finished picture, Bacon's famously jowly cheeks expand to fill the frame, and his ears almost touch the edges. His eyes are cast down-�though not to the floor. They have a pensive, faraway look, a suggestion of inward retreat. It is an elusive but unforgettable expression, one that combines self-�mourning with a strange hint of inner fury. Freud went on to achieve worldwide renown for the fleshy amplitude of his pictures and for his use of thick, oily paint, lavishly applied. But in 1952, when he painted Bacon, his style was very different. He specialized in surface tension. Working on a small scale, he kept the paint as smooth as possible-�no visible brushstrokes. Control was paramount. So was an evenness of attention, fastidiously maintained across the entire surface of his pictures. Even so, the contrast between the left and right sides of Bacon's distinctive, pear-�shaped head is odd-�and becomes more remarkable the longer you study it. The right (Bacon's right), cast lightly in shadow, is a study in placidity. Over on the left, however, everything is slipping and skidding about. An S-�shaped lick of hair-�you can count the strands-�casts a dashing shadow on Bacon's brow. The whole left side of his mouth twists upward, triggering a pouchy swelling, like the body's response to a sting, at the corner of his mouth. A sheen of sweat shines from that side of his nose. Even the left ear seems to convulse and squirm. Most striking of all is the way Bacon's left eyebrow extends its powerful arabesque into the furrow at the center of his forehead. This has nothing to do with "realism" if you take that term literally; no eyebrow behaves this way. But it's the engine that powers the whole portrait, �just as the portrait itself is the key to the story of the most interesting, fertile-�and volatile-�relationship in British art of the twentieth century. In 1987, thirty-�five years after it was painted, and just months before it disappeared, this tiny picture was sent to Washington, DC. If it hadn't been painted on copper, one could have put a stamp and address on the back and sent it as a postcard. Instead, it was carefully packaged and crated and sent along with eighty-�one other works to the US capital. It was to be part of a Freud retrospective, organized by Andrea Rose of the British Council, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, situated on the National Mall. Despite its size, the portrait of Bacon was one of the show's most charismatic objects. It helped, undoubtedly, that the subject himself was famous. Bacon, who was still alive at the time (he died in 1992), was a far better-�known artist than Freud himself. Since the 1960s, major exhibitions of his work had been mounted not only in London, where he lived, but also in places like the Grand Palais in Paris and the Guggenheim and Metropolitan museums in New York. No British artist of the twentieth century had received more sustained critical acclaim. None had plumbed the darker recesses of the popular imagination with a body of work so bold and broadly influential. Bacon was a bona fide international star. Freud was a different kind of artist. He was, as the critic John Russell described him, "a worrisome and disquieting presence"-�stubborn, perverse, hardworking, immune to fashion. He had exhibited regularly from his early twenties all the way into his sixties (he was now sixty-�six), and was enough of a presence in England to be made a Companion of Honour in 1985. But outside the British Isles, he barely registered. And in the United States he was quite unknown. Less audacious (at least ostensibly) than Bacon's work, Freud's also appeared more conventional in its fidelity to appearances. His kind of painting-�figurative, objective, anchored in observation-�had been out of fashion for almost a century. His clearest predecessors were not Pollock and de Kooning (the Dutch-�born American painter with whom Bacon was most often compared), much less Duchamp and Warhol, the dominant influences on artists in the 1970s and early '80s. They were nineteenth-�century painters such as Courbet, Manet, and especially Degas. His work, what's more, was ugly. His manner of painting-�unflinching realism, prolonged scrutiny, a beady-�eyed focus on humid, blotched skin and sagging flesh-�was a turnoff. It was raw and rash-�ridden. Sweaty. You could almost smell it. It certainly didn't fit with the American museum world's notion of advanced art, which, since the 1960s, had tended to be minimal, abstract, conceptual, and altogether more hygienic. And yet, for all Freud's peculiarity-�for all the sense that he was some kind of throwback-�a growing number of people in Britain (critics, dealers, fellow artists) had come to feel that he was nearing the height of his powers as an artist. For the best part of two decades, he had been producing paintings of such visceral impact, such sustained intensity and conviction, that although they did not fit into any obvious category or narrative of contemporary art, they were impossible to dismiss. Keen, then, to extend his reputation beyond the UK, the British Council had organized an exhibition of Freud's work they could send abroad. Organizers at the British Council selected the works and negotiated the loans (most of Freud's works were in private collections). They produced a handsome catalog, too, with an insightful introductory essay by Robert Hughes, the influential Time magazine art critic. Hughes homed in on Freud's portrait of Bacon in the essay's very first sentence. The portrait's even light, he wrote, had "something Flemish" about it; its size conjured the Gothic world of the "miniature"; it was "tight, exact, meticulous and (most eccentrically, when seen in the late fifties, a time of urgent gestures on burlap), it was painted on copper." But what made the picture truly mesmerizing, stressed Hughes, was that it was also uncannily modern. Freud "had caught a kind of visual truth," he wrote, "at once sharply focused and evasively inward, that rarely showed itself in painting before the twentieth century." He had somehow given Bacon's "pear-�shaped face the silent intensity of a grenade in the millisecond before it goes off." The British Council secured venues for the show in Paris, London, and Berlin. But they had trouble finding a US venue. Freud wasn't well enough known, American museum curators claimed. His fleshy, indecorous work would be disconcerting to the general public. He was too British, too old-�school, too real. The American curator Michael Auping later recalled the general consensus: Confronting Freud's work in the context of American postwar avant-�garde art, he wrote, was "like discovering pungent moulds on the pristine white walls of the museum." But the British Council wouldn't give up. They contacted James Demetrion, the director of the Hirshhorn, part of the family of museums in Washington, DC, operated by the Smithsonian Institution. They explained the predicament. Demetrion listened. He was surprised, he later recalled, that no New York museum was interested. "Apparently Freud was not well-�known outside of Britain, which kind of baffled me," he said. He agreed to take the show. And his decision turned out to be a coup, not only for himself and the Hirshhorn, but-�in a major way-�for Freud. The show opened at the Hirshhorn-�the first of four international venues-�on September 15, 1987. Freud would be turning seventy in five years. And yet this was the first major representation of his work outside Great Britain. Against all expectations, it turned into a blockbuster. Strong reviews in major newspapers, weekly magazines, and art journals up and down the eastern seaboard, along with Hughes's essay (which was published independently in The New York Review of Books), and a profile in The New York Times Magazine, all helped promote it as a major, galvanizing event. Freud's career took off. Before long, he had dropped his English dealer and was selling his works exclusively through two prestigious New York galleries. And within ten years, he was being acclaimed as the most famous living painter not just in Britain but, arguably, in the world. In May 2008, one of his paintings, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, became the most expensive work by a living artist, selling to the Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich for $33.6 million. (Another painting of the same subject, Sue Tilley, sold for $56.2 million in 2015.) After its spell at the Hirshhorn, the exhibition left the United States for stints at prominent museums in Paris and London. Its final stop was in Berlin, where it opened at the end of April 1988. The venue, here in the city where Freud was born and grew up, was the Neue Nationalgalerie. Other museums in Germany had expressed interest in taking the show, and had been willing to meet all the costs, but Freud, according to Andrea Rose, "wouldn't hear of it." He insisted that the show be held in Berlin-�or not in Germany at all. Unfortunately, the Neue Nationalgalerie was reluctant to get involved. They refused to meet the majority of the exhibition costs, remained aloof from the production of the catalog, and sent no one to see the exhibition in Washington, DC, Paris, or London. Worried about the show's reception in Germany, Rose had to insist that their curator come to London while the show was on at the Hayward. It was only then, she recalled, "that they realized that the show was much bigger than they had anticipated, and had to reconfigure the galleries to accommodate it." (They had originally designated the museum's graphics gallery for the show-�about a quarter of the size needed.) A glass-�and-�steel building-�the last completed commission of the legendary modernist architect Mies van der Rohe-�the Neue Nationalgalerie is situated in a vast, leafy culture precinct studded with museums, concert halls, science centers, and libraries. The Tiergarten, Berlin's great park, runs along its northern border, the Landwehr Canal along the south. The actual tiergarten-�the zoo-�is situated to the west of the museum, with Potsdamer Platz less than a ten-�minute walk away to the east. Until he was eight and moved to England, Freud had lived in two successive apartments in this neighborhood. He used to play in the Tiergarten as a boy, and once fell through the ice while skating there ("It was very exciting," he later recalled). He used to swap cigarette cards with dealers around Potsdamer Platz: "You could swap three Marlene Dietrichs for one Johnny Weissmuller, that kind of thing," he said. Freud's family had been forced to flee Germany when Hitler rose to power. Freud had had the chance to see the dictator only once, in the very square where Freud's family lived, right across from where the Neue Nationalgalerie now is. "He had huge people on either side of him," he recalled; "he was tiny." Freud's show opened on April 29, 1988. The Berlin Wall was still a year from falling, the city still divided. The exhibition was reviewed very well in the West German newspapers and art press, and the catalog sold out within the first few weeks. If the response was not as momentous as it had been in the United States, the welcome afforded this long-�lost son of Berlin was nonetheless sincere and appreciative. Attendances were higher than expected. But a month after the opening-�it was a Friday, late in the afternoon-�a visitor to the museum noticed something awry. Right near the beginning of the Freud exhibition, the part that showed works from the early part of his career, there was an empty space on the wall where it was quite clear there should have been a painting. This was startling. But who should be notified? Security at the museum at that time was slack to the point of invisibility. There hadn't been a single guard on duty in the exhibition between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., according to one report. The portrait was so small that it would have been easy to slip it into an inside coat pocket and proceed out of the exhibition without anyone noticing. The visitor found a member of the museum's staff and reported the missing painting. The news went swiftly up the chain of command. The police were called. They sealed the building and systematically questioned and searched every visitor still inside the museum. But it was all to no avail. Gradually, it dawned on everyone-�museum staff and police alike-�that they were too late. The thief, or thieves, had slipped through the net. Or more likely, they had left the scene before the net was even in place. The Neue Nationalgalerie's director, Dieter Honisch, was deeply embarrassed, as were his staff. Nonetheless, they wanted to keep the show open until the scheduled finishing date, still three weeks off. Freud and the British Council organizers wouldn't have it. There was lobbying from those on the German side-�and also from the British ambassador to Germany-�to keep it open; but when Freud threatened to ask all the show's private lenders to withdraw their works, they relented, and the show was shut down. It was agreed with the police and the British Council organizers that a small reward should be offered. Ports and airports were alerted. A couple of tip-�offs were pursued. But none of it panned out. There was nothing about the theft to suggest the work of organized professionals. There had been no break-�in, no weapons, no speedy getaway. The crime seemed basically opportunistic. But neither was it the work of bungling amateurs. The painting had not been yanked from its fittings. The thief had had to use a tool, presumably a screwdriver, to remove the mirror plates fastening the frame to the wall. This suggested a certain amount of premeditation. But if the crime had been planned, it was strange that no ransom demand ever materialized, as often happens in such cases. Then again, just as often it doesn't. The whole affair was mystifying. One thing was widely noted. When the picture was stolen, the museum had been filled with students. In Germany, as elsewhere, the portrait's subject, Francis Bacon, was hugely admired. One of modern art's most vivid personalities, he had, among young people in particular, what amounted to a cult following. He was certainly more popular than Freud, who was still to most Germans-�even art lovers-�a stranger. Only his family name (he was the grandson of Sigmund Freud) was familiar. So perhaps it was one of the students who stole it-�or several �working together . . . ? When Robert Hughes tried to console Freud with the thought that the theft was a perverse kind of compliment-�someone, he offered, had evidently loved his painting enough to steal it-�Freud demurred. "Oh, d'you think so?" he said. "I'm not sure I agree. I think somebody out there really loves Francis." The Art of Rivalry Pulitzer Prize–winning art critic Sebastian Smee tells the fascinating story of four pairs of artists—Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, Pollock and de Kooning, Freud and Bacon—whose fraught, competitive friendships spurred them to new creative heights. Rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful relationships in history. The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy, and ambition. All eight are household names today. But to achieve what they did, each needed the influence of a contemporary—one who was equally ambitious but possessed sharply contrasting strengths and weaknesses. Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas were close associates whose personal bond frayed after Degas painted a portrait of Manet and his wife. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso swapped paintings, ideas, and influences as they jostled for the support of collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein and vied for the leadership of a new avant-garde. Jackson Pollock’s uninhibited style of “action painting” triggered a breakthrough in the work of his older rival, Willem de Kooning. After Pollock’s sudden death in a car crash, de Kooning assumed Pollock's mantle and became romantically involved with his late friend’s mistress. Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon met in the early 1950s, when Bacon was being hailed as Britain’s most exciting new painter and Freud was working in relative obscurity. Their intense but asymmetrical friendship came to a head when Freud painted a portrait of Bacon, which was later stolen. Each of these relationships culminated in an early flashpoint, a rupture in a budding intimacy that was both a betrayal and a trigger for great innovation. Writing with the same exuberant wit and psychological insight that earned him a Pulitzer Prize for art criticism, Sebastian Smee explores here the way that coming into one’s own as an artist—finding one’s voice—almost always involves willfully breaking away from some intimate’s expectations of who you are or ought to be. Praise for The Art of Rivalry “Gripping . . . Mr. Smee’s skills as a critic are evident throughout. He is persuasive and vivid. . . . You leave this book both nourished and hungry for more about the art, its creators and patrons, and the relationships that seed the ground for moments spent at the canvas.”—The New York Times “With novella-like detail and incisiveness [Sebastian Smee] opens up the worlds of four pairs of renowned artists. . . . Each of his portraits is a biographical gem. . . . The Art of Rivalry is a pure, informative delight, written with canny authority.”—The Boston Globe . You leave this book both nourished and hungry for more about the art, its creators and patrons, and the relationships that seed the ground for moments spent at the canvas.”—The New York Times “With novella-like detail and ..." Summary of The Art of Rivalry – [Review Keypoints and Take-aways] The summary of The Art of Rivalry – Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art presented here include a short review of the book at the start followed by quick overview of main points and a list of important take-aways at the end of the summary. The Summary of The book "The Art of Rivalry," published in 2016, provides an in-depth examination of the extraordinary achievements of several of the best artists in the annals of human history, as well as the personal relationships with their contemporaries that helped propel them to the top of their fields. These ideas explain how competition between artists encourages innovation and how relationships have been essential to the development of the arts in general. The Art of Rivalry summary includes the key points and important takeaways from the book The Art of Rivalry by Sebastian Smee. Disclaimer: 1. This summary is meant to preview and not to substitute the original book. 2. We recommend, for in-depth study purchase the excellent original book. 3. In this summary key points are rewritten and recreated and no part/text is directly taken or copied from original book. 4. If original author/publisher wants us to remove this summary, please contact us at support@mocktime.com. The Art of Rivalry summary includes the key points and important takeaways from the book The Art of Rivalry by Sebastian Smee. Disclaimer: 1. This summary is meant to preview and not to substitute the original book. 2." Art and Rivalry The unauthorized biography of Canada's most famous artist couple and the rivalry that drove them. She painted as if with pure light, radiant colours making quotidian kitchen scenes come alive with sublimated drama. He painted like clockwork, each stroke precise and measured with exquisite care, leaving no angle unchecked and no subtlety of tone unattended. Some would say Mary Pratt was fire and Christopher, ice. And yet Newfoundland's Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera (or Jackson Pollack and Lee Krasner...) presented their marriage as a portrait of harmony and balance. But balance off the canvas rarely makes great art, and the Pratts' art was spectacular. As a youth at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Mary pursued her future husband, a prodigious art talent, and supported his determination to study painting instead of medicine. They married and removed themselves to a Newfoundland outport where his painting alone provided the means to raise a family. But as Mary's own talents became evident and she sought her own hours at the easel, when not raising their four children, and as rumours of Christopher's affair with a young model spread, the Pratts' harmonious exterior slowly cracked, to scandal in Newfoundland and fascination across the country. A marriage ended, and gave way to a furious competition for dominance in Canadian art. Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions / Beaverbrook Art Gallery, 2006. Smee , Sebastian . The Art of Rivalry : Four Friendships , Betrayals and Breakthroughs in Modern Art . New York: Random House, 2016. Silcox, David P. Christopher Pratt: ..." Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World One of The Christian Science Monitor’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2018 “An engrossing read…a historically and psychologically rich account of the young Picasso and his coteries in Barcelona and Paris” (The Washington Post) and how he achieved his breakthrough and revolutionized modern art through his masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. In 1900, eighteen-year-old Pablo Picasso journeyed from Barcelona to Paris, the glittering capital of the art world. For the next several years he endured poverty and neglect before emerging as the leader of a bohemian band of painters, sculptors, and poets. Here he met his first true love and enjoyed his first taste of fame. Decades later Picasso would look back on these years as the happiest of his long life. Recognition came first from the avant-garde, then from daring collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein. In 1907, Picasso began the vast, disturbing masterpiece known as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Inspired by the painting of Paul Cézanne and the inventions of African and tribal sculpture, Picasso created a work that captured the disorienting experience of modernity itself. The painting proved so shocking that even his friends assumed he’d gone mad, but over the months and years it exerted an ever greater fascination on the most advanced painters and sculptors, ultimately laying the foundation for the most innovative century in the history of art. In Picasso and the Painting That Shocked the World, Miles J. Unger “combines the personal story of Picasso’s early years in Paris—his friendships, his romances, his great ambition, his fears—with the larger story of modernism and the avant-garde” (The Christian Science Monitor). This is the story of an artistic genius with a singular creative gift. It is “riveting…This engrossing book chronicles with precision and enthusiasm a painting with lasting impact in today’s art world” (Publishers Weekly, starred review), all of it played out against the backdrop of the world’s most captivating city. This is the story of an artistic genius with a singular creative gift." Boom The meteoric rise of the largest unregulated financial market in the world -- for contemporary art -- is driven by a few passionate, guileful, and very hard-nosed dealers. They can make and break careers and fortunes. The contemporary art market is an international juggernaut, throwing off multimillion-dollar deals as wealthy buyers move from fair to fair, auction to auction, party to glittering party. But none of it would happen without the dealers-the tastemakers who back emerging artists and steer them to success, often to see them picked off by a rival. Dealers operate within a private world of handshake agreements, negotiating for the highest commissions. Michael Shnayerson, a longtime contributing editor to Vanity Fair, writes the first ever definitive history of their activities. He has spoken to all of today's so-called mega dealers -- Larry Gagosian, David Zwirner, Arne and Marc Glimcher, and Iwan Wirth -- along with dozens of other dealers -- from Irving Blum to Gavin Brown -- who worked with the greatest artists of their times: Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, and more. This kaleidoscopic history begins in the mid-1940s in genteel poverty with a scattering of galleries in midtown Manhattan, takes us through the ramshackle 1950s studios of Coenties Slip, the hipster locations in SoHo and Chelsea, London's Bond Street, and across the terraces of Art Basel until today. Now, dealers and auctioneers are seeking the first billion-dollar painting. It hasn't happened yet, but they are confident they can push the price there soon. Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art Michael Shnayerson ... Smee , Sebastian . The Art of Rivalry : Four Friendships , Betrayals , and Breakthroughs in Modern Art . New York: Random House, 2016. Solomon, Deborah." Legacies of Power in American Music This volume honors and extends the contributions of educator and scholar Dr. Michael J. Budds to the field of musicology, particularly the study of American music. As the longtime editor of two book series for the College Music Society, Budds nurtured a wide range of scholarship in American music and had a lasting impact on the field. This book brings together scholars who worked with Budds as a colleague, editor, or mentor to carry on his legacy of passionate engagement with America’s rich and varied musical heritage. Ranging through jazz, gospel, Americana, and film music to American classical, and addressing music’s social contexts and analytical structure, the research gathered here attests to the diversity of the mosaic that is American music and the numerous scholarly approaches that have been taken to the subject. Smee , Sebastian . The Art of Rivalry . Four Friendships , Betrayals , and Breakthroughs in Modern Art . New York: Random House, 2016. Spellman, A.B. “Cecil Taylor.” In Four Jazz Lives, 1–76. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004." Wanting * Financial Times Business Book of the Month * Next Big Idea Club Nominee * A groundbreaking exploration of why we want what we want, and a toolkit for freeing ourselves from chasing unfulfilling desires. Gravity affects every aspect of our physical being, but there’s a psychological force just as powerful—yet almost nobody has heard of it. It’s responsible for bringing groups of people together and pulling them apart, making certain goals attractive to some and not to others, and fueling cycles of anxiety and conflict. In Wanting, Luke Burgis draws on the work of French polymath René Girard to bring this hidden force to light and reveals how it shapes our lives and societies. According to Girard, humans don’t desire anything independently. Human desire is mimetic—we imitate what other people want. This affects the way we choose partners, friends, careers, clothes, and vacation destinations. Mimetic desire is responsible for the formation of our very identities. It explains the enduring relevancy of Shakespeare’s plays, why Peter Thiel decided to be the first investor in Facebook, and why our world is growing more divided as it becomes more connected. Wanting also shows that conflict does not arise because of our differences—it comes from our sameness. Because we learn to want what other people want, we often end up competing for the same things. Ignoring our large similarities, we cling to our perceived differences. Drawing on his experience as an entrepreneur, teacher, and student of classical philosophy and theology, Burgis shares tactics that help turn blind wanting into intentional wanting--not by trying to rid ourselves of desire, but by desiring differently. It’s possible to be more in control of the things we want, to achieve more independence from trends and bubbles, and to find more meaning in our work and lives. The future will be shaped by our desires. Wanting shows us how to desire a better one. Charleston, SC: Nabu, 2012. Smee , Sebastian . The Art of Rivalry : Four Friendships , Betrayals , and Breakthroughs in Modern Art . New York: Random House, 2017. Solon, Olivia. “Richard Dawkins on the Internet's Hijacking of the Word 'Meme." Merleau-Ponty at the Gallery A study of the significance of the visual arts in Merleau-Ponty's aesthetics in relation to the work of five artists not known or discussed by him. Merleau-Ponty's phenomenological ontology engages deeply with visual art, and this aspect of his work remains significant not only to philosophers, but also to artists, art theorists, and critics. Until recently, scholarly attention has been focused on the artists he himself was inspired by and wrote about, chiefly Cézanne, Klee, Matisse, and Rodin. Merleau-Ponty at the Gallery expands and shifts the focus to address a range of artists (Giorgio Morandi, Kiki Smith, Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell, and Ellsworth Kelly) whose work came to prominence in the second half of the twentieth century and thus primarily after the philosopher's death. Véronique M. Fóti does not confine her analyses to Merleau-Ponty's texts (which now importantly include his late lecture courses), but also engages directly with the art. Of particular concern to her is the art's ethical bearing, especially as related to animal and vegetal life. The book's concluding chapter addresses the still-widespread rejection of beauty as an aesthetic value. Véronique M. Fóti is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of several books, including Tracing Expression in Merleau-Ponty: Aesthetics, Philosophy of Biology, and Ontology and Epochal Discordance: Hölderlin's Philosophy of Tragedy, also published by SUNY Press. It was the critic Harold Rosenberg who initially foregrounded the event character of mid-twentieth-century American painting. See Sebastian Smee , The Art of Rivalry : Four Friendships , Betrayals , and Breakthroughs in Modern Art (New ..." A Writer of Our Time The first intellectual biography of the life and work of John Berger. John Berger was one of the most influential thinkers and writers of postwar Europe. As a novelist, he won the Booker Prize in 1972, donating half his prize money to the Black Panthers; as a TV presenter he changed the way we looked at art in Ways of Seeing; as a storyteller and political activist he defended the rights and dignity of workers, migrants and the oppressed around the world. In 1953 he wrote: 'Far from dragging politics into art, art has dragged me into politics.' He remained a revolutionary up to his death in January, 2017. In A Writer of Our Time, Joshua Sperling places Berger's life and works within the historical narrative of postwar Britain and beyond. The book also explores, through the work, the larger questions that vexed a generation: the purpose of art, the nature of creative freedom, the meaning of commitment. Drawing on extensive interviews, close readings and a wealth of archival sources only recently made available, the book brings the many different faces of John Berger together and shows him as one of the most vital, and brilliant, thinkers and storytellers of our time. 5. Richard Appignanesi, 'The Screenwriter as Collaborator: An Interview with John Berger', Cinéaste 10: 3 (Summer 1980). 6. Sebastian Smee , The Art of Rivalry : Four Friendships , Betrayals , and Breakthroughs in Modern Art (New York: ..." The Best Australian Essays 2017 ‘When a group of essays get together in a room they start talking to each other, often in surprising ways ... The existence of these voices – stylish, vital frequently wise – is a source of hope.’ —Anna Goldsworthy The Best Australian Essays showcases the nation’s most eloquent, insightful and urgent non-fiction writing. In her debut as editor of the anthology, award-winning author Anna Goldsworthy chooses brilliant pieces that provoke, unveil, engage and enlighten. From the election of Donald Trump to digital disruption, from the passing of rock gods to the wonders of Australian slang, these essays get to the heart of what’s happening in Australia and the world. Contributors include Shannon Burns, Barry Humphries, Stan Grant, Keane Shum, Richard Cooke, Nick Feik, Michael Adams, Micheline Lee, Mandy Sayer, Tim Flannery, Sonya Hartnett, Harriet Riley, John Clarke, Jennifer Rutherford, Amanda Niehaus, Sam Vincent, Lech Blaine, Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Moreno Giovannoni, Janine Mikosza, Melissa Howard, Helen Garner, James Wood, J.M. Coetzee, Robert Skinner, Sebastian Smee and Anwen Crawford. Anna Goldsworthy is the author of Piano Lessons, Welcome to Your New Life and the Quarterly Essay Unfinished Business: Sex, Freedom and Misogyny. Her writing has appeared in the Monthly, the Age, the Australian, the Adelaide Review and The Best Australian Essays. She is also a concert pianist, with several recordings to her name. Sebastian Smee is the author of The Art of Rivalry : Four Friendships , Betrayals , and Breakthroughs in Modern Art (Penguin Random House, 2016). He has worked as an art critic for newspapers and magazines in the US, the UK and Australia." Picasso The author describes her friendship with Picasso, traces the artist's life and career, and analyzes his approach to painting The author describes her friendship with Picasso, traces the artist's life and career, and analyzes his approach to painting" Bloody Jack Reduced to begging and thievery in the streets of London, a thirteen-year-old orphan disguises herself as a boy and connives her way onto a British warship set for high sea adventure in search of pirates. Reduced to begging and thievery in the streets of London, a thirteen-year-old orphan disguises herself as a boy and connives her way onto a British warship set for high sea adventure in search of pirates."