THE ARTIST'S JOURNEY - Travis Elborough


Art is so often a product of the artist's surroundings.  Throughout history, still lifes and the natural world are probably the most common subjects for artists. Where an artist lives and to where an artists travels is likely to be represented in the art.  Author Travis Elborough picks up on this and provides a brief biography and travelogue for thirty influential artists to reveal "the repercussions of those travels on the painters’ personal lives and the broader cultural landscape" with the intent to bring "each of these trips to life with fascinating insights into the stories behind the creation of some of the world’s most famous paintings" (quotes from the book description on Goodreads).

The brief narratives are well researched and nicely presented though you probably need to have some knowledge of the artist and their background to understand what their journey meant to them. Elborough does a rough sketch of this background, but for me, it definitely made more sense for the artists whose work I knew better to begin with.

Each chapter/artist includes a map of the artist's travels - whether travelling internationally or simply to multiple locations within one town. I appreciated the maps as they helped place the artists, geographically.  For those who were only painting in a small region (within a town, for instance) it would have been nice to see that town in relation to the region. I don't know my geography well enough to immediately place a location.

My real problem with the book, however, is the actual lack of connection for the individual artist, their work, and the location.  Once in awhile there was a mention of how a place influenced the artist and once in awhile there might be a photo of a place and a painting it inspired.  But not often.

I wanted to see these places.  Photos - how it looks now or old pictures from when the artist visited - and then reproductions or photos of the art that it inspired. We get this mostly (and seemingly accidentally - not as though it were planned) with Katsushika Hokusai and Mount Fuji.  We see the mountain in a photo and we see one of the more famous works of Hokusai's.

It really could have been any grouping of people whose travels were being written about.  Thirty poets? Thirty auto mechanics? Without the visuals to compare, it didn't really matter that this was thirty artists.

Perhaps the author/publisher couldn't get the reprint rights for the art that was created on most of these journeys, but the book concept didn't live up to what it purports to be about.

This book contains the following:

Jean-Michel Basquiat Seeks Connections in Cote d'Ivoire and Benin
Caravaggio Legs It to Malta
Mary Cassatt Makes an Impression in Paris
Paul Cezanne Arches for Aix-en-Provence
Salvador Dali Takes Manhattan by Surrealist Storm
Marcel Duchamp Becomes Obsess with Chess in Buenos Aires
Albrecht Durer Has a Whale of a Time in the Netherlands
Helen Frankenthaler Soaks Up Provincetown
Caspar David Friedrich Replenishes Himself on Rugen
David Hockney Goes La-la Over Los Angeles
Katsushika Hokusai Scales Mount Fuji
Tove Jansson Summers in the Pellinki Archipelago
Fria Kahlo and Diego Rivera Honeymoon in Cuernavaca
Wassily Kandinsky Finds His Artistic Calling in the Province of Vologda
Alexander Keirincx Paints All the King's Castles in Yorkshire and Scotland
Paul Klee Is Transformed by Tunisia
Gustav Klimt Gets Scenic on the Attersee
Oskar Kokoschka Takes Refuge in Polperro
Henri Matisse Fends Off the Rain in Morocco
London Makes a Big Impression on Claude Monet
Berthe Morisot Accepts a Proposal in Normandy
Edvard Munch Summer by the Sea at Asgardstrand
Isamu Noguchi Takes a Monumental World Tour
Marianne North Goes South to Paint Indian Flora
Georgia O'Keefe Goes West
Pablo Picasso Falls for the South of France
John Singer Sargent Sinks into Venice
Joaquin Sorolloa y Bastida Goes Canvassing across Spain
J.M.W. Turner Takes a Final Tour of Switzerland
Vincent van Gogh Has Quite a Year in Provence

Looking for a good book? The Artist's Journey by Travis Elborough is a good concept that doesn't follow through. The research is good and while it is interesting to learn a little about each artist's trip, how it impacted the art is missing.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.

2-1/2 stars

* * * * * * 

The Artist's Journey

author: Travis Elborough

publisher: White Lion Publishing

ISBN: 9780711268715

Kindle Edition, 304 pages


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