An illuminating exploration of the intersection between life, art and
the sea from the award-winning author of Leviathan, or The Whale.
Albrecht Durer changed the way we saw nature through art.
From his prints in 1498 of the plague ridden Apocalypse - the first
works mass produced by any artist - to his hyper-real images of animals
and plants, his art was a revelation: it showed us who we are but it
also foresaw our future.
It is a vision that remains startlingly
powerful and seductive, even now. In Albert & the
Whale, Philip Hoare sets out to discover why Durer's art endures. He
encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors
and queer soul rebels, ambassadorial whales and enigmatic pop artists.
He witnesses the miraculous birth of Durer's fantastical rhinoceros
and his hermaphroditic hare, and he traces the fate of the star-crossed
leviathan that the artist pursued. And as the author swims from Europe
to America and beyond, these prophetic artists and downed angels provoke
awkward questions. What is natural or unnatural? Is art a fatal
contract? Or does it in fact have the power to save us? With its wild
and watery adventures, its witty accounts of amazing cultural lives and
its delight in the fragile beauty of the natural world, Albert & the
Whale offers glorious, inspiring insights into a great artist, and his
unerring, sometimes disturbing gaze.
Albert and the Whale - Philip Hoare
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£10.00