Hitting the Nail on the Head

John Piper was one the most articulate and interesting artists, known for his simple but perceptive language, his breadth and vision and integrity as an artist and who lived through changing and evolving art times and movements - 1903-1992. The Complete Writings of John Piper offers for the first time a comprehensive range of views of one of the greatest and most varied (like Picasso in diversity and quality) British painters of the 20th Century. It includes all his writings, and provides a remarkable, vivid and uniquely personal and erudite view of the human controversies, art movements, concerns and exhibitions in literary and artistic circles, and by an author whose integrity and intelligence, development and thoughtfulness, despite the hostility of others, remained true and unique to his own inner voice.

The writings show, from major works like the books and seminal writings all the way to simple prefaces, how deeply Piper looked, cared and thought about what he was writing. For anyone interested in the arts across the broadest spectrum from theatre design, to stained glass, to music, to literature, to art politics, from marijuana to the death penalty, from abstraction to romanticism, from what it is to be an artist and true to oneself and resist commercial pressure, to the Royal Academy and to publishing its all here. Furthermore Piper wrote as he painted, to share. As he said anything that is to be kept as a secret is not worth keeping.

A monumental undertaking over many years these ten volumes are for anyone interested in the 20th Century and in being an artist.

About the Author

Based in Oxford, England and the Luberon Valley, Provence orde is an international art historian, lecturer, author, playright, poet, painter and inventor. He is an expert on John Piper and on the Writings of Daniel Henry Kahnweiler. He is a published author of more than seventeen books and the publications range from African Art and Artists, to John Piper and “Art, An Adaptive function”. He has made a number of “Conversations” including with Henry Moore and Professor Sir Richard Sorabji.

His uncompleted doctoral thesis was on the writings of Daniel Henry Kahnweiler (he is currently working on a book on Kahnweiler’s writings) and his poem Ndilapa Nkosi was described by the late Samuel Beckett as a “moving feat”. More recently Orde has focused on analysis of Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ with special focus on traditional depictions of Shylock compared to the original text. He has been invited speak on this topic at number Shakespeare conferences worldwide. The culmination of this is two works ‘The Rialto Dialogues’ and ‘Shylock the Magnificent’, both of which are scheduled to be published in 2019.