Reviews
This is not the moment to rehearse that
story, nor to comment on Kitaj’s way of
directly relating the death of his wife,
Sandra, to what he calls ‘my Tate War’. The
near-unanimity of the critics was not
entirely unexpected, though a unique
event. (Thanks to the extra time and space
available to me in writing for Modern
Painters, I was able to develop what I think
was a balanced and particular review,
neither all-out praise nor censure.) What-
ever explanations one might offer for it, it
wounded the artist deeply and resonates in
his mind and work to this day. Lambirth’s
book counts for Kitaj as ‘Sandra 10’ in a
sequence of publications, is dedicated
to her as he required and opens with a
portrait photograph of that strong and
beautiful woman. The second image is a
recent colour photograph of Kitaj sitting
in his LA studio, sad and perhaps
perplexed at the age of 70 or thereabouts.
There follow about 60 other illustra-
tions, including more photographs of
the artist with and without his family or
friends, but mostly of his paintings and
drawings.These begin with examples from
the early 1960s, but the majority represent
his most recent work. He returned to
America in 1997; several of the illustra-
tions are of paintings done since 2000.
Many of these reflect on what he calls ‘the
Man-Woman story’ (‘the greatest story
ever told’), and celebrate his 25 years with
Sandra and her continuing vividness in his
dreams and thoughts.
Andrew Lambirth has contributed
two texts, a relatively brief account of the
artist’s life and work, and an assemblage
of interviews he had with the artist via
written answers and questions. This omi-
nous-sounding dialogue works surpris-
ingly well since the questions and answers
are generally quite short, and Lambirth
has a deft way of picking up on what Kitaj
had written on other occasions or in
earlier replies, so that the exchange avoids
becoming too systematic. Kitaj never
hesitates to air his obsessions, whether
constructive: his all-out admiration for
Michelangelo’s Last Judgment and for
Cézanne; his increasingly scholarly as well
as emotional involvement in being a Jew,
which he began to display in the 1980s;
and his love of Sandra – or destructive: his
view of himself as an outsider, signalled by
his choice of surname; his ‘Tate War’ and
his conviction that Sandra’s death was
caused by it. Yet he clearly wants to be ‘the
most controversial easel painter alive’,
46 The Art Book volume 12 issue 2 may 2005 r bpl/aah
while also admitting that ‘all good artists
are bloated egoists’. He has always been
free with his opinions, as well as eloquent
and passionate. He is not the only artist to
know that he is right. What if all the world
agreed with him?
The result is a very revealing introduc-
tion to Kitaj, his studio practices as much
as his adventurous mental life and wide-
ranging attachments to the history of art,
to a selection of great writers and to
the movies. ‘From Movies to Stillies!’, he
writes; ‘It would take a great Freudian to
do justice to how Movies mark my often
fantastical Stillies’. The illustrations ac-
companying all this are of high quality
and my only complaint is that they fail to
support the text. For example, Lambirth
mentions If Not, Not (1975–6) and its roots
in Giorgione, T S Eliot and Joseph
Conrad, but the painting is not repro-
duced, and nor are other important works
to which Lambirth refers. That other great
painting of the same years, Land of Lakes, is
illustrated but not, it seems, mentioned in
this short, indexless book. One’s impres-
sion is that the illustrations were decided
on by others, without much regard for the
author’s and reader’s needs, so much so
that it comes as a great surprise, almost a
blessing, to find Los Angeles No.17 (2002)
reproduced opposite Kitaj’s words about
it, its debt to Giotto and its reference to
Barnett Newman. A profoundly moving
image, it shows Kitaj’s and Sandra’s faces
pressed close together, lips and eyes
making all possible contact, very much
the faces of Joachim and Anna in Giotto’s
Scrovegni Chapel fresco.
norbert lynton
Professor Emeritus, Sussex University
THE COMPLETE WORLD OF GREEK
MYTHOLOGY
richard buxton
Thames and Hudson 2004 d24.95
256 pp. 139 col/191 mono illus
isbn 0-500-25121-5
G
o into any large bookshop and you
will find a number of publications
with titles such as ‘The Complete
World of. . .’ or ‘The Complete Book
of. . .’. Several of these may relate to the
classical world: for a reviewer to select just
one might appear to be something of a
lucky dip approach, or the start of a very
long investigation into the comparative
merits of publishers’ commissioning
skills, subject coverage or design qualities.
When an authoritative scholar such as
Richard Buxton turns his hand to a title
like this, however, especially after teaching
the subject for some years to under-
graduates, then the combination of knowl-
edge of the subject and knowledge of how
best to convey it results in a particularly
informative and useful publication.
This book is for anyone seeking a
definitive account of the Greek myths and
the world in which they developed, and
how they have been reinterpreted over the
centuries up to the present day. The study
starts with a punchy first page of text and
a splendid juxtaposition of two images
of Herakles/Hercules in almost identical
poses, one in a sixth-century vase painting
and the other in the 1997 Disney cartoon
film Hercules.
Buxton is not primarily an art historian.
His teaching and research interests lie in
Greek drama, poetry and mythology, and
his publications include the much-trans-
lated Imaginary Greece: the Contexts of Mythol-
ogy (CUP 1994), a study of Greek mythology
in relation to its original contexts, and the
editorship of From Myth to Reason? Studies in
the Development of Greek Thought (OUP 1999).
Nonetheless, The Complete World is both
accessible to the non-specialist and yet
detailed enough to go beyond the over-
general publications that serve only as
introductions to the subject.
A considerable and concentrated am-
ount of material is well organised into
chapters covering both the themes and
the actual stories. First, in ‘Contexts,
sources, meanings’, he answers the ques-
tions ‘What is a myth?’ and ‘Where was
Greece?’. In ‘Myths of origin’, Buxton
traces the mythological origins of the
cosmos, the first gods, humans and
communities, and in ‘The Olympians:
Power, honour, sexuality’ he discusses
the powers and activities of all the main
divinities, and their connection with ideas
of divine honour and divine sex. ‘Heroic
exploits’ tells the tales of the great heroes
Perseus, Jason, Theseus and Herakles, and
covers the Trojan War; ‘Family sagas’
recounts the dramas and catastrophes that
befall heroes and heroines; and ‘A land-
scape of myths’ explores the mountains,
caves, seas and rivers of Greece, as well
as the landscapes of Crete, Troy and the
Underworld. In ‘Greek myths after the
Greeks’ there is a detailed examination of
the retelling of myths through the cen-

turies, ending with present-day computer
games. Buxton is forward-looking in his
own attitude to his subject, concluding
that ‘retellings should not be taken as a
sign that the ‘‘true meaning’’ of the myths
has been forgotten or falsified. On the
contrary; they are a sign of vigour, and
should be welcomed as such’.
The illustrations are excellent, chosen
for impact as well as information: sweep-
ing landscape views, close-ups of objects,
genealogical tables of gods and heroes,
maps, and a wide-ranging selection of
images made since the myths were first
created. We see how Peter Breughel the
Elder interpreted the myth of Icarus
(c 1567), how Daumier depicted the
immersion of Achilles in the river Styx
(1842) and how filmmakers of the twen-
tieth century interpreted the stories of
Oedipus and Antigone. The book is
extremely well designed, avoiding the
over-busy layout that sometimes occurs
when photographic images, diagrams and
maps overlap each other on a page. A
publisher’s blurb describes it as the ‘most
authoritative illustrated guide to the world
of Greek mythology’ and for once it seems
to be an accurate description of a publica-
tion that is providing the best account
possible of subjects and allusions that can
be all too familiar in works of art, but only
partially understood by the viewer.
patricia r andrew
University of Edinburgh
JOOS VAN CLEVE
THE COMPLETE PAINTINGS
john oliver hand
Yale University Press 2004 d50.00 $65.00
230 pp. 48 col/116 mono illus
isbn 0-300-10578-9
T
hey do make them like they used to.
This book is just the kind of relia-
ble monograph-cum-catalogue of a
worthy old master painter that seemed
to have vanished from the world of pub-
lishing. Yale University Press are to be
congratulated – and rewarded with sales
success – for producing this handsome
volume on an important painter from
sixteenth-century Antwerp.
Joos van Cleve, active from 1505/8 to
1540/1, is probably not a household name,
nor are there likely to be monographic
museum exhibitions in his honour, such
as the recent installation and catalogue
dedicated to Gerard ter Borch (Washing-
ton and Detroit, catalogue also distributed
by Yale). Yet he was a serious, well-
connected painter of both religious
images and portraits, in the very centre
of Flemish art. His sitters included Francis
I, King of France, Henry VIII of England
and Emperor Maximilian I of Austria,
as well as a roster of socially prominent
Antwerp locals. After a beginning with
collaborative projects in sculpted altar-
piece ensembles and iconic Madonna
images, van Cleve eventually began to
export works to Genoa and to adopt the
imagery of Leonardo da Vinci. Taken
together, his output can be seen as a
representative cross-section of the major
art movements that crisscrossed in the
busy port of Antwerp during his produc-
tive lifetime.
No scholar is better prepared to offer
authoritative scholarship on Joos van
Cleve than John Hand. The artist provided
the subject of his Princeton doctoral
dissertation, and since then Hand has
never wavered from his singular attention
to this oeuvre, even while he served as the
curator of Northern Renaissance Paintings
at the National Gallery of Art,Washington.
Hand’s vast experience as the compiler of
meticulous collection catalogues has been
employed here to produce the definitive
reference work on Joos van Cleve.
Numerous connections and discoveries
emerge from first to last. As his name
implies, van Cleve began in the Lower
Rhineland in the orbit of the little-known
Jan Joest, whose wings for the high altar
of the church of St. Nicolai of Kalkar
(1508–9) form a touchstone for the young-
er painter and provide a valuable bonus
discussion at the outset (though Hand
should update the name of the sculptor
of the retable’s centre to Ludwig Jupan,
1492–1500, replacing ‘Meister Arnt’, who
died in 1491/2). Hand also points to arti-
stic connections linking van Cleve to
Bruges, especially the work of the local
artistic leader, Gerard David. A final tie
connects Joest and van Cleve to the
Cologne painter Barthel Bruyn, whose work
continues to show influence of Nether-
landish forms. Remarkably, a self-portrait
of van Cleve already appears in the back-
ground of Joest’s Raising of Lazarus; such
self-portraits recur in a variety of later
images.
Settled in Antwerp, where he registered
as a master in 1511, van Cleve soon
assimilated and emulated the favoured
visual conventions: rocky landscapes close
volume 12 issue 2 may 2005 r bpl/aah The Art Book
Reviews
to Patinir’s, Madonna types like those
of Quinten Massys, as well as crowded
scenes of the Adoration of the Magi like
those of anonymous ‘Mannerist’ work-
shops. Hand considers the association
with Patinir to include free exchange of
landscape motifs or patterns, but he does
not entertain the possibility of actual
collaboration, like Patinir’s with Massys.
The magi theme encapsulated the destina-
tion site of Antwerp’s port for merchants
of the entire world; indeed, merchants
formed one major source of patronage for
Joos van Cleve as well as for Patinir. The
early phase of van Cleve’s career also
involves dialogue with the revered masters
of the fifteenth century, including both
Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden.
From their work he developed his own
favourite theme of the Holy Family,
featuring St. Joseph, whose emerging
theological role Hand discusses well.
Another major node of activity, the city
of Genoa, also tied to other Flemish paint-
ers – earlier than Gerard David and later
than van Dyck – receives its just attention
in Hand’s discussion, following Cécile
Scailliérez. This region promises much for
future research (and the interested reader
should also consult the newly published
catalogue raisonné, also published by Yale,
on van Dyck, including an essay on the
artist and Genoa by Susan Barnes). In the
case of van Cleve, this export link partly
explains the serious, ongoing incorpora-
tion of Italianate elements among the
forms of his pictures. Joos was not the
pioneer of such assimilation, which already
begins (again within a context of produc-
tion for Italian patrons) with Hans Meml-
ing in Bruges in the later fifteenth century.
Especially in the later 1520s, however, van
Cleve and Massys begin to absorb the
figures of Leonardo, especially for Madon-
na types, as well as more thoroughly under-
stood classical spatial vocabulary, such as
barrel vaults and perspectivally integrated
tile floors. Hand’s text tends to be more
descriptive than analytical about this
development, as he articulates his artist’s
career chiefly by chronology.
Good discussion of works that survive
in multiple versions (St. Jerome in his Study
or Madonna of the Cherries) complements
sensitive discussion of Joos’ considerable
portrait output. A terse catalogue and
itemised original-language Flemish docu-
ments follow the general prose discus-
sion; however, no wider contexts or
general conclusions are offered here.
47