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Product Description
Product Description
During the past 20 years, over 20,000 artists have entered the prize, which has attracted over 3 million visitors. This new book brings together some of these portraits in a celebration of our enduring fascination with different human faces. This beautifully produced compendium features 500 paintings from many of the best figurative artists active over the last twenty-one years. Reflecting the diverse methods of contemporary portrait practice, the book includes a dazzling array of styles, from immaculate photorealism to intense expressionism. The BP Portrait Award is one of Britain's most prestigious art prizes, and each year nearly 300,000 people visit the exhibition based on the competition. It has acted as a springboard for many painters' careers, notably the prize-winners who have been subsequently commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to paint an eminent sitter. This book includes full-colour reproductions of many of those commissions - including paintings of Dame Helen Mirren, J.K. Rowling, Sir Michael Caine, Fiona Shaw, Sir Ian McKellen, Sir Paul Smith and Dame Cicely Saunders. As well as these high-profile commissions, the book features an inspiring wealth of subjects: unflinching self-portraits, warm portrayals of children and babies,conversation pieces, studies of people at home and at work - a rich and varied selection of hundreds of faces by some of the finest portrait painters of our time. Published to coincide with the BP Portrait Award exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London from 16 June to 18 September 2011, and touring the UK in 2011-12. This book is a key reference work for everyone who is interested in the history of the award and its impact on the status of portraiture and figurative art in the UK.
About the Author
Sandy Nairne is Director of the National Portrait Gallery. He was previously Director: Programmes at Tate, London and is well known for his innovative television series and book State of the Art.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is the book if you want to know what's happening in the portrait world 1990 to 2010.
Good size to handle by that I mean it's under A4 with well over 300 pages, packed with beautiful colour photos of portraits. A short write up on the 1st. 2nd. and 3rd. prize winners.
I am so pleased I bought this book,I really enjoy having a quick look or studying the portraits at my leisure. I would recommend this book if you are an art lover, artist or just interested in portraits
Good size to handle by that I mean it's under A4 with well over 300 pages, packed with beautiful colour photos of portraits. A short write up on the 1st. 2nd. and 3rd. prize winners.
I am so pleased I bought this book,I really enjoy having a quick look or studying the portraits at my leisure. I would recommend this book if you are an art lover, artist or just interested in portraits
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I love this book.I refer to it all the time and it provides me with plenty of ideas and inspiration when I paint portraits of my own. I do agree with previous reviewers though - it isn't much help if you're trying to scrutinise technique. On most pages there are three portraits and fine detail is lost because they are reproduced on such a small scale. However, for studying composition its really handy. I wouldn't be without it.
Whether you're an artist or just someone who admires art, I recommend you browse this book. my copy never gets put away and I'm already looking forward to the next volume (2011-2020)!
Whether you're an artist or just someone who admires art, I recommend you browse this book. my copy never gets put away and I'm already looking forward to the next volume (2011-2020)!
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
You have to give this book five stars, because there isn't any competition (nor likely to be); but it's not without its limitations; too much crammed into too small a space. The majority of decent portraits are BIG, and the vast majority of these illustrations are tiny. If you're looking at art in a book you want the illustrations to be as big as possible - and this is a small format book to start with, only around 10"x8", and if I tell you that you may find a 6ft, a 3t and a 2ft picture stuffed onto a single page, and still with plenty of empty white space, too, you will see what I mean. The suffers are the photo-realists - their works - which are often big - look more like photographs than photographs. As for examining brushwork - forget it. So in effect, it's a book of thumbnails. Nevertheless, it IS a 21-year history of this prestigious art competition, and if you're interested in that, this is the (only) book for you.
Large compendiums of portraits make for depressing viewing; sitters cannot sit with a fixed grin for hours on end (and if you see a smiling portrait, it's 9999 to 1 it's been painted from a photograph; which is OK) so the overall effect is one of dourness, even depression. It doesn't end there, though; some of the portraits are either hideous or repellent or, you would have to say, totally pointless or, even, not portraits. These categories tend to feature most in the nineties; towards the end of the 21-year period, whilst the dourness remains, the hideousness, repulsion and pointlessness diminishes (although not diappearing entirely by any means)- reflecting, one supposes, the changing of the guard on the judges' bench... And a jolly good thing, too. Perhaps in the next 20 years, we can swing the pendulum even more towards beauty, confidence, inspiration and hope, before it starts swinging back to ugliness, poverty, sickness, misery and death. Art is for decorating walls; I wouldn't want a deathbed portrait on my wall (unless it was by Hogarth or suchlike).
Large compendiums of portraits make for depressing viewing; sitters cannot sit with a fixed grin for hours on end (and if you see a smiling portrait, it's 9999 to 1 it's been painted from a photograph; which is OK) so the overall effect is one of dourness, even depression. It doesn't end there, though; some of the portraits are either hideous or repellent or, you would have to say, totally pointless or, even, not portraits. These categories tend to feature most in the nineties; towards the end of the 21-year period, whilst the dourness remains, the hideousness, repulsion and pointlessness diminishes (although not diappearing entirely by any means)- reflecting, one supposes, the changing of the guard on the judges' bench... And a jolly good thing, too. Perhaps in the next 20 years, we can swing the pendulum even more towards beauty, confidence, inspiration and hope, before it starts swinging back to ugliness, poverty, sickness, misery and death. Art is for decorating walls; I wouldn't want a deathbed portrait on my wall (unless it was by Hogarth or suchlike).
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