Walker Evans: Starting from Scratch

"Artist biographies have been a staple in this editorial department. Regular readers will already be familiar with the magisterial biographies on Andy Warhol and Lucian Freud that have featured previously on Five Books. (Watch this space for forthcoming interviews on Goya, the Arts & Crafts movement and William Morris.) My current bedside table reading is a biography on American photographer Walker Evans, subtitled Starting from Scratch, by the notable art historian Svetlana Alpers. Evans approached his craft with the sensibility of a painter, Alpers argues, which may be why he is so close to my heart. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter In August 2020 Luchita Hurtado died, an artist associated with a vast network of internationally renowned artists and intellectuals, including members of the Dynaton group, the Mexican muralists, and the Surrealists. To mark her centenary, Hauser & Wirth have published an account of her extraordinary life, as related in a series of interviews with art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist , from beginnings in Venezuela, to New York, Mexico, and finally to California and New Mexico. Hurtado made the Time list of 100 most influential people, and crossed paths with some of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, such as Leonora Carrington, Marcel Duchamp, Arshile Gorky, Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Agnes Martin, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, Man Ray, Mark Rothko, and Rufino Tamayo, all of whom are referenced and remembered in this beautiful book , available via the publisher."