img

Lost, Stolen or Shredded

Rick Gekoski

Like Sherlock Holmes' dog in the night time, sometimes the true significance of things lies in their absence. Rick Gekoski tells the very human stories that lie behind some of the greatest losses to artistic culture - and addresses the questions such disappearances raise.

Some of the items are stolen (the Mona Lisa), some destroyed (like Philip Larkin's diaries) and some were lost before they even existed, like the career of the brilliant art deco architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which floundered amid a lack of cash - but behind all of them lies an often surprising story which reveals a lot about what art means to us.

Gekoski explores the greater questions these tremendous losses raise - such as the rights artists and authors have over their own work, the importance of the search for perfection in creativity, and what motivated people to queue to see the empty space where the Mona Lisa once hung in the Louvre.

  • Classification : History
  • Pub Date : APR 1, 2014
  • Imprint : Profile Books
  • Page Extent : 304
  • Binding : PB
  • ISBN : 9781846684920
  • Price : INR 650
image

Rick Gekoski

Rick Gekoski came from his native America to do a DPhil at Oxford, and went on to teach English at the University of Warwick. In 1982, he decided to become a full-time rare book dealer, specialising in important twentieth-century first editions and manuscripts. He lives in Salisbury and spends time each year in New Zealand.

Discover more books

To search by Publisher, Imprint, Category and Subject, please use Advanced Search