Eileen Cooper: Between the Lines

by Martin Gayford

Focusing on Eileen Cooper RA, this title spans the entire breadth of her career, from her early days as a singular figurative voice in British art, and her exploration of ideas of feminism and femininity in painting, to her mature work, characterized by uninhibited colors bursting with energy, contained by her expressive use of line.

This long-overdue publication on Eileen Cooper RA spans the entire breadth of her career, from her early days as an eminent figurative voice in British art, and her exploration of feminism and femininity in painting, to her current mature work, characterized by uninhibited colors bursting with energy, contained by her expressive use of line. This comprehensive book places Cooper in the context of British art over the last three decades - a period during which she has attracted attention from critics, collectors and museums around the world. In a substantial and wide-ranging essay, Martin Gayford resumes his ongoing investigation of Cooper's work, aided by extracts from a recent series of interviews with the artist. In addition, an essay by the artist's-print specialist Sara Lee covers Cooper's significant contribution to the contemporary printmaking practice, an area of Cooper's work that played a significant part in her teaching career until her appointment as Keeper of the Royal Academy of Arts in 2011.

288 pages, Paperback

First published March 18, 2014

About the author

Martin Gayford is an art critic and art historian. He studied philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art at the University of London. Over three decades, he has written prolifically about art and music in a series of major biographies, as well as contributing regularly to newspapers, magazines and exhibition catalogues. In parallel with his career as an art historian, he was art critic of The Spectator magazine and The Sunday Telegraph newspaper before becoming Chief Art Critic for the international television network, Bloomberg News. He has been a regular contributor to the British journal of art criticism, Modern Painters.

His books include a study of Van Gogh and Gauguin in Arles, The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles (Little Brown, 2006), which was published in Britain and the USA to critical acclaim, and has been translated, to date, into five languages; Constable in Love: Love, Landscape, Money and the Making of a Great Painter (Penguin, 2009), a study of John Constable’s romance with Maria Bicknell and their lives between 1809 and 1816; and A Bigger Message: Conversations with David Hockney (Thames and Hudson, 2011).

Reviews

[Yousseif Abdellatif · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eileen Cooper: Between the Lines is a masterclass from Martin Gayford in spotting how financial leverage is applied to silence critical voices long before they reach a podium.

[Yousseif Abdellatif · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a sharp, street-smart pragmatism in Eileen Cooper: Between the Lines that makes Martin Gayford's breakdown of ideological capture impossible to ignore.