Members-Only Book Club

Join fellow Alliance members in the virtual sphere to explore literature – both fiction and non-fiction – revolving around art, artists, art history, and art appreciation. Participate in thoughtful group discussions and expand your appreciation and knowledge of the world of art!

The Members-Only Book Club meets from 6:30-8:30 p.m. on the third Tuesday of every month. Club members must purchase their own copy of each book, but an active Alliance membership is all that’s required. To become a member, click here.

THIS MONTH’S BOOK

The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art by Sebastian Smee

Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic Sebastian Smee tells the fascinating story of four pairs of artists–Manet and Degas, Picasso and Matisse, Pollock and de Kooning, Freud and Bacon–whose fraught, competitive friendships spurred them to new creative heights.

Rivalry is at the heart of some of the most famous and fruitful relationships in history. The Art of Rivalry follows eight celebrated artists, each linked to a counterpart by friendship, admiration, envy, and ambition. All eight are household names today. But to achieve what they did, each needed the influence of a contemporary–one who was equally ambitious but possessed sharply contrasting strengths and weaknesses.

Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas were close associates whose personal bond frayed after Degas painted a portrait of Manet and his wife. Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso swapped paintings, ideas, and influences as they jostled for the support of collectors like Leo and Gertrude Stein and vied for the leadership of a new avant-garde. Jackson Pollock’s uninhibited style of “action painting” triggered a breakthrough in the work of his older rival, Willem de Kooning. After Pollock’s sudden death in a car crash, de Kooning assumed Pollock’s mantle and became romantically involved with his late friend’s mistress. Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon met in the early 1950s, when Bacon was being hailed as Britain’s most exciting new painter and Freud was working in relative obscurity. Their intense but asymmetrical friendship came to a head when Freud painted a portrait of Bacon, which was later stolen.

Each of these relationships culminated in an early flashpoint, a rupture in a budding intimacy that was both a betrayal and a trigger for great innovation. Writing with the same exuberant wit and psychological insight that earned him a Pulitzer Prize for art criticism, Sebastian Smee explores here the way that coming into one’s own as an artist–finding one’s voice–almost always involves willfully breaking away from some intimate’s expectations of who you are or ought to be.

Please note: This event will take place in the Alliance for the Arts Gallery. Face coverings are required when indoors at the Alliance for the Arts until further notice. 

Upcoming Books: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Dai Sijie (October 19), Leonardo and the Last Supper by Ross King (November 16), Looking for Lorraine – The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry by Imani Perry (December 21), Under a Wild Sky: John James Audubon and the Making of Birds of America by William Souder (January 18), The Architect’s Apprentice by Elif Sharfak (February 15), Bohemians, Bootleggers, Flappers and Swells by Grayson Carter (March 15).