Australian Gothic: A Life of Albert Tucker by Janine Burke

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Ex library book with external stickers removed. Remnant of date due slip and borrower card on inside page. Dust jacket has some chipping on right edge and has been reinforced with book tape. Some creasing of jacket at top and tail. Pages are sunned.

Australian Gothic is the first biography of Tucker, one of Australia's most significant and influential artists. A member of the 'Angry Penguins' group which included Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Joy Hester, Tucker is best remembered for his paintings of wartime Melbourne: Images of Modern Evil. He showed the city streets as they had never been shown before – as the site of evil, carnality and darkness.

Burke's research also analyses the influence of fellow artist Joy Hester on Tucker's career. Passionate, earthy and gifted, Hester was Tucker's great love and muse. Controversially, Burke argues that following Hester's abandonment of Tucker, his art changed irrevocably.

Author, curator and art historian, Janine Burke, enjoyed a 22-year association with Tucker, and her biography draws on hours of conversations and interviews she conducted with him. (publisher blurb)