Keith Vaughan

Overview

Keith Vaughan (1912-77) was a major figure in post-war British art who is known for his searching portraits of the male nude and his association with the Neo-Romantic painters. This book provides for the first time a definitive, illustrated account of his life and work, exploring his wide-ranging achievement as a modern British artist. Drawing on Vaughan's considerable writings, Philip Vann explores the many aspects of the artist's personal, professional and philosophical-inner life. His text interweaves art-critical and biographical exploration to reveal a figure for whom art was inseparable from the nature of its creator. He reviews Vaughan's large body of paintings, drawings and illustrations: his early Neo-Romantic paintings of male bathers and boys in semi-abstracted landscapes, his post-war illustrations of young men immersed in elegiac contemplation of the landscape, and his later gouaches and landscapes. A fascinating essay by Gerard Hastings provides a close-up examination of Vaughan's gouache technique. Published in the year of Vaughan's centenary, this book will be essential reading for all Modern British Art specialists, collectors and enthusiasts.

Reviews

"Keith Vaughan occupies a unique position in British art owing to his desire to marry eroticism with 'permanent, formal, classical values'. A complex, conflicted character, he dismissed Bacon's 'spiv-existentialist outlook' and instead stripped down the human figure in such a way as to bring out man's dignity and self-possession. This book will contribute to the growing interest in this artist, while Gerard Hastings's essay on the gouaches draws attention to a previously overlooked aspect of Vaughan's work." —Frances Spalding, art historian and writer

"A gorgeous new book . . . published to celebrate Vaughan's centenary, is filled with Vaughan's oils and gouaches. His work is certainly distinctive." —David McGillivray, screenwriter and film critic 

"Provides more insight into the historical and cultural context for Vaughan's art . . . a much needed reconsideration of the value and significance of an artist whose work has remained on the margins for too long." —The Gay & Lesbian Review

Author Biography

Philip Vann is a writer and art critic whose many publications include Dora Holzhandler and Face to Face: British Self-Portraits in the 20th Century. Gerard Hastings is an artist, teacher, collector and leading expert on the work of Keith Vaughan. His book Drawing to a Close: The Final Journals of Keith Vaughan was published in March 2012.