Main description:

Illustrated with Barbara Hepworth's abstract stone carving, with other works of art, and with fascinating vignettes from Adrian Stokes's writing, this biography highlights his revolutionary emphasis on the materials-led inspiration of architecture, sculpture, painting, and the avant-garde creations of the Ballets Russes. In also detailing Stokes's role as catalyst of the transformation of St Ives in Cornwall into an internationally-acclaimed centre of modern art, and his falling in love again in his early forties, this biography shows how Stokes used all these experiences, together with his many years of psychoanalytic treatment by Melanie Klein, in forging insights about ways the outer world gives form to the inner world of fantasy and imagination.

Contents:

Preface , Childhood and Youth , Early years , Oxford , East and west , Sitwell protege , Sigismondo Malatesta and Ezra Pound , Psychoanalysis and Fame , Treatment , Stone alive , Carving , Ballets Russes , Colour and form , Euston Road , Outer and Inner Life , Transforming St Ives , Inside out , Love and divorce , Outside in , Psychoanalytic Aesthetics , Smooth and rough , Psychoanalysing Michelangelo , Klein's portrait , Hampstead again , Chaos contained , Reflections on the nude , More about Ariadne , Renewed fame