The painter Jack Vettriano emerged form the unlikely background of the Scottish coalfields - unknown and untutored - and has seen his canvases hung in the Royal Scottish Academy. His first exhibition sold out, as did the second and he has since become Scotland's most successful contemporary artist. Vettriano's images are neo-realist - real in the sense that he portrays recognizable people in believable situations, yet heightened to that level of dramatic or romantic intensity which fuelled the fiction of the Hollywood dream factory or the novels of Raymond Chandler or F. Scott Fitzgerald. They are tales without text, storyboards about love and lust, possession and longing, pursuit and conquest. He seems to understand perfectly the stylish sexiness and intrigue that occurs when high life and low life collide. His men are predators, gamblers - hard-edged but possibly soft-centred, Bogartian in period and attitude. His women are vulnerable, pliable, probably playthings if the price is right. And beyond the implied narrative of his paintings there is a curious remembrance of times past and lost, of squandered youth on blissful beaches. Critics have linked Vettriano with the bleak paintings of Hopper, the sleazy photographs of Brassai, yet he is unique, identifiable at fifty yards. Anthony Quinn has written an elegant biographical portrait of the man from childhood to present, encompassing his family, schooling and career as well as pausing at significant moments in his career.
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"The text is intriguing - less biography than apology, an attempt to dismiss the mass of political opinion with a success story and include Vettriano in the cultural mainstream" (The Glasgow Herald)
About the Author
Jack Vettriano was born in Scotland in 1954. He left school at fifteen, became an apprentice mechanical engineer the following year and worked for five years in the Fife coalfields. He began painting in his spare time at the age of 21. In 1989 he submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy annual exhibition: both pieces were accepted, hung and sold. This exposure led to his first solo exhibition in 1992 - since then he has had exhibitions in London, South Africa and Hong Kong. He has been featured in many radio programmes, including The Usual Suspects, Home Truths, Postscript and Midweek on Radio 4. His work was featured in BBC 2's coverage of the 1995 Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh Nights. His first book, Fallen Angels, named after his 1993 exhibition, is also published by Pavilion Books.
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First Sentence
NIGHT-TIME. A young woman sits at a bar, her face in pensive profile, a cigarette drooping disconsolately from her hand. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
NIGHT-TIME. A young woman sits at a bar, her face in pensive profile, a cigarette drooping disconsolately from her hand. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
I would have liked to give this beautiful book 5 stars as the quality of the art was exactly as I would have expected of Jack Vettriano, it looses a star because of the layout of the gallery section of the book where a number of the paintings are layed out across the centre crease. I would rather have a smaller reproduction on one side of paper than a larger reproduction part of whose detail is lost in the book's crease.
But don't let my critism put you off this book, there are a lot of painting reproduced on a single side and therefore have not spoilt by the book's formatting.
26 of 27 people found the following review helpful
By Phjils
If anyone out there once had the oppertunity to purchase one of this man's paintings, but passed on it because you couldn't afford it and eat at the same time, this book is a real treat. Jack Vettrano's paintings are possibly some of the best art work to come out of the 20th Century, and, as the introductions states, now outsell any other poster images available. Quite right too. Each painting is a captured moment in time. The back story is yours to define and the moments after are too. What he manages to capture is that amazing turning point in a story, where, for a moment, you can't imagine what's going to happen.
As you can now find his pictures on everything from calenders and biscuit tins to mouse mats and coasters, this book is a wonderful insight into the man and his painings, reprducing far more than you will ever find in the art cards section in Smiths. From his beautiful beach settings, to the more erotic, sometimes disturbing nightlife scenes, you are taken to a place that could have existed if George Orwell and Edward Hopper ever went into business together. (Surreal I know, but...)
A note to the publishers however: Please don't print across two pages, we want to see the whole picture without breaking the book's spine!
Other than that, this is a wonderful book. If only I had the money to buy that painting all that time ago...
By Hollyg
Amazon Verified Purchase
Great book shows many prints not seen before, love it. Bit of reading at front but i mainly got it to see what different prints are/could be available.
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