In Pieces Writings on Art, Etc.

by Dillon, Brian

• ISBN13: 9783956792878
• ISBN10: 3956792874
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2021-06-29
• Publisher: Sternberg Press

Summary

Essays and criticism on artist, writers, and living as a European writer in the midst of Brexit.

In Pieces offers critical, polemic, and personal essays written by Brian Dillon in the past decade. Writing about such major artists as Diane Arbus, Claude Cahun, and William Eggleston, Dillon investigates the slippages between life, work, and reputation. He attends to the formal strangeness of the art of Julia Margaret Cameron, Hannah Höch, Eileen Gray, and Loie Fuller. And he finds contemporary echoes of their dissident modernism in the sculpture of Helen Marten, Eva Rothschild, and Enrico David.

In writing about such contemporary writers as Eimear McBride and Claire Louise Bennett, he looks for the kind of formal adventure he is convinced can and must accompany the personal or political. Dillon's personal essays include his memories of the Prozac craze of the 1990s, a discussion of the influence of David Bowie, and a piece about a family member's paranoid relationship with photography. Finally, Dillon reflects on England and Englishness, offering direct and oblique perspectives on living as a European writer in the midst of the Brexit crisis.

Author Biography

Brian Dillon's books include Essayism, In the Dark Room, Objects in This Mirror, and Sanctuary. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, the London Review of Books, the Guardian, frieze, and Artforum. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Queen Mary, University of London, and Visiting Professor in Writing at the Royal College of Art.