Ways of Life :Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard Artists
Ways of Life :Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard Artists
hardback
Published:
18 May, 2023
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Description
This first biography of the Kettle's Yard artists reveals the life of a visionary who helped shape twentieth-century British art and explores a thrilling moment in the history of modernism
'The beautiful, revelatory biography we have been waiting for. I loved it'
EDMUND DE WAAL
'This book is the legacy Jim Ede might have wished for'
OBSERVER
The lives of Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard artists represent a thrilling tipping point in twentieth-century modernism: a new guard, a new way of making and seeing, and a new way of living with art. The artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Alfred Wallis and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska were not a set like the Bloomsbury Set or Ravilious and his friends. But Jim Ede recognised in each of the artists he championed something common and kindred, some quality of light and life and line.
Jim Ede is the figure who unites them. His vision continues to influence the way we understand art and modern living. He was a man of extraordinary energies: a collector, dealer, fixer, critic and, above all, friend to artists. For Ede, works of art were friends and art could be found wherever you looked - in a pebble, feather or seedhead. Art lived and a life without art, beauty, friendship and creativity was a life not worth living. Art was not for galleries alone and it certainly wasn't only for the rich. At Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, he opened his home and his collection to all comers. He showed generations of visitors that learning to look could be a whole new way of life.
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9781787331907 |
| ISBN10 | 1787331903 |
| Number Of Pages | 400 |
| Item Weight | 1188 g |
| Product Dimensions | 178 x 247 x 36 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | Vintage Publishing |
| Format | hardback |
Media Reviews
The beautiful, revelatory biography of Jim Ede and Kettle's Yard that we have been waiting for. I loved it -- Edmund de Waal
Freeman's attention falls on each particular of Ede's life and turns it over like a polished pebble in a jacket pocket. Along with his gallery, this book is the legacy he might have wished for * Observer *
Gorgeously written * The Times, *Books of the Year* *
A captivating biography * House & Garden *
If ever the spirit of a gallery is captured within hard covers, it is Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, in this beautiful, original biography of its founder... Freeman's writing has Ede's flair, grace and insight * Financial Times, *Best Books of 2023* *
If you know and love Kettle’s Yard, a place that redefined 20th-century British art and I would say also interiors, or at least ways of living (and seeing), this is the book that finally does it justice... [An] outstanding and enviably well-written biography. Strongly recommend. -- India Knight
An impassioned biography * The Times, *Top 50 Non-Fiction Books* *
An excellent biography of Jim Ede. Reading Laura Freeman's luminous study of the curator and collector, I can't help but picture the gallery and house he built - the haven of Kettle's Yard in Cambridge * Daily Telegraph *
Beautifully written... A book I have always hoped someone would write. -- Nigel Slater
Freeman has done a wonderful job here in conveying with absolute precision why Ede mattered and what made him different from his Bloomsbury contemporaries * Sunday Times *
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Laura Freeman is chief art critic of The Times. She has written for the Spectator, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, TLS, Apollo and World of Interiors. Her first book The Reading Cure, a memoir about hunger and happiness, addiction, obsession and recovery, was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2018. She studied history of art at Magdalene College, Cambridge.