What do you think?
Rate this book
English Graphic
English Graphic is a book of essays on the subject of illustration, with the focus entirely on English artists using graphic media; drawings, prints and watercolours. The pieces are largely drawn from Tom Lubbock’s weekly Great Works column for the Independent, with some longer pieces originally published as reviews or catalogue essays.
The historical span of the book is broad – from the Uffington White Horse to the Winchester Psalter Hellmouth to Harry Beck’s London Underground Map and beyond. The high point of English Graphic art in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century makes up the heart of the book, with Fuseli, Blake, Bewick and Palmer all the subject of extended essays.
The fifty or so images range from the visionary to the empirical, from folk art to caricature. Connecting and overlapping ideas on line and shape run through the book; maps, islands, clouds, swarms, wombs, skins, dots, contours and boundaries. Energetic, coherent and strange, English Graphic presents an electrical storm of ideas and illuminations provocatively argued by one of our most brilliant writers on art.
The historical span of the book is broad – from the Uffington White Horse to the Winchester Psalter Hellmouth to Harry Beck’s London Underground Map and beyond. The high point of English Graphic art in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century makes up the heart of the book, with Fuseli, Blake, Bewick and Palmer all the subject of extended essays.
The fifty or so images range from the visionary to the empirical, from folk art to caricature. Connecting and overlapping ideas on line and shape run through the book; maps, islands, clouds, swarms, wombs, skins, dots, contours and boundaries. Energetic, coherent and strange, English Graphic presents an electrical storm of ideas and illuminations provocatively argued by one of our most brilliant writers on art.
- GenresArt
208 pages, Hardcover
First published October 9, 2012
2 people are currently reading
27 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 8, 2018
Tom Lubbock is always worth reading on art - he had a gift of describing pictures that makes you feel like you're the genius of perception and ekphrasis. After 'Great Works' I found this a little disappointing - a bit like a B-sides collection. But his entries on the Uffington White Horse, Blake, and Bewick's vignettes (which I didn't know but want to see) amongst others, are exemplary.
April 20, 2020
Lovely entry-level book into the study of literary graphics and art, with lots of familiar faces. Most of the essays are only a couple of pages long, allowing the more casual reader to pick and chose the ones they want to read.
May 30, 2021
this was lovely and meandering but i do struggle to cope with the fact that in 200 pages of the history of english graphics we got one (1) female artist
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews