Life, Times and Work of William Gillies, 1898-1973

by Andrew McPherson

2024 · Edinburgh University Press

For seventy years, William Gillies has been seen as a placid painter of landscape and decorative still life. Andrew McPherson explodes this view to reveal a modernist whose response to the instabilities and violence of modernity touched universals of human experience. Gillies' idiom was shaped by institutions for artistic production unique to Scotland. But it was the politics of Scotland's connections to the rest of the British Isles that produced his mythic and misleading reputation.New paintings and new meanings are uncovered placing the micro-effects of modernity on mental health, family and community in the wider contexts of war, nationalism and public patronage. McPherson also shows how this changing world led Gillies towards new applications of modernist expression. Lavishly illustrated, and referencing almost one thousand works, this major reappraisal is an indispensable source on the cultural politics of a four-nation state and the reception of moder nism in Britain.

Still the Greatest

by Andrew Grant Jackson

2012 · Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

As recommended by USA Today and excerpted on Rolling Stone.com! More than forty years after breaking up, The Beatles remain the biggest-selling and most influential group in the history of popular music. Fans endlessly replay their songs, craving more, while thousands of cover versions of their songs have been recorded and performed. Band biographies, pop music histories, song books, and academic titles on the Fab Four clutter shelves. But never has there been a definitive guide to the finest songs of The Beatles after they called it quits. Still the Greatest is a love song to the songwriting and recording achievements of Paul, John, George, and Ringo after each struck out on his own. In this creative history, Jackson selects the best songs in each solo career and organizes them into fantasy albums they might have formed had the legendary group stayed together. This romp through the post–Beatles history of each artist delves into the circumstances behind the composition, recording, and reception of each work, offering a refreshing take on how spectacular much of The Beatles' second act truly is. Jackson assesses the more than seventy albums and nine hundred songs the four collectively released, selecting the crème de la crème of their output. Still the Greatest brims with facts (release dates, writing and performing credits, and information about production techniques) and insightful analyses of the music and lyrics. In telling the stories behind the songs, Jackson recounts the remarkable influence the Post Fab Four continued to have long after the big split. Both a handy reference and an engrossing cover-to-cover read, Still the Greatest is an invaluable companion for those who thought it all ended with the 1970 album Let It Be.

Bringing Art to Life

by Andrew Horrall

2009 · McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Only thirty-nine when he took over the National Gallery in 1955, Jarvis already had an extraordinary record of achievement and social mobility at home and in England: he had trained with Canada's greatest artists, won a Rhodes scholarship, lunched at the Algonquin Round Table in New York, managed an aircraft factory, written a bestseller, produced films, run a slum settlement, and moved in a London social circle that included Noël Coward and Vivien Leigh. As head of the National Gallery, Jarvis was a provocative public educator, advocating his idea of "a museum without walls" in countless public appearances. Instrumental in bringing modern art to the National Gallery, he shook artists and the art-minded public out of a period of national complacency. This first detailed account of the controversy surrounding his time at the gallery provides an important context for the ongoing and contested role of publicly supported arts and art institutions in this country.