A groundbreaking account of the meaning of abstract painting From Mondrian's bold geometric forms to Kandinsky's use of symbols to Pollock's "dripped paintings," the richly diverse movement of abstract painting challenges anyone trying to make sense of either individual works or the phenomenon as a whole. Applying his insights as an art historian and a painter, John Golding offers a unique approach to understanding the evolution of abstractionism by looking at the personal artistic development of seven of its greatest practitioners. He re-creates the journey undertaken by each painter in his move from representational art to the abstract—a journey that in most cases began with cubism but led variously to symbolism, futurism, surrealism, theosophy, anthropology, Jungian analysis, and beyond. For each artist, spiritual quest and artistic experimentation became inseparable. And despite their different techniques and philosophies, these artists shared one goal: to break a path to a new, ultimate pictorial truth. The book first explores the works and concerns of three pioneering European abstract painters—Mondrian, Malevich, Kandinsky—and then those of their American successors—Pollock, Newman, Rothko, and Still. Golding shows how each painter sought to see the world and communicate his vision in the purest or most expressive form possible. For example, Mondrian found his way into abstraction through a spiritual response to the landscape of his native Holland, Malevich through his apprehension of the human body, Kandinsky through a blend of religious mysticism and symbolism. Line and color became the focus for many of their creative endeavors. In the 1940s and 50s, the Americans raised the level of pictorial innovation, beginning most notably with Pollock and his Jung-inspired concept of action. Golding makes a powerful case that at its best and most profound, abstract painting is heavily imbued with meaning and content. Through a blend of biography, art analysis, and cultural history, Paths to the Absolute offers remarkable insights into how a sense of purpose is achieved in painting, and how abstractionism engaged with the intellectual currents of its time. Please note: All images in this ebook are presented in black and white and have been reduced in size.

In 1953, William Golding was a provincial schoolteacher writing books on his breaks, lunch hours and holidays. His work had been rejected by every major publisher—until an editor at Faber and Faber pulled his manuscript off the rejection pile. This was to become Lord of the Flies, a book that would sell in the millions and bring Golding worldwide recognition. Golding went on to become one of the most popular and influential British authors to have emerged since World War II. He received the Booker Prize for the novel Rites of Passage in 1980, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. Stephen King has stated that the Castle Rock in Lord of the Flies continues to inspire him, so much so that he named his entertainment company after it and has placed the Golding novel prominently in his novels Hearts in Atlantis and Cujo. Golding has been called a British Vonnegut—disheveled and darkly humorous, perverse when it would have been easier to be bitter, bitter when it would have been easier to be lazy, sometimes more disturbing than he is palatable and above all fascinating beyond measure. Yet despite the fame and acclaim, the renowned author saw himself as a monster—a reclusive depressive ruled by his fears and a man who battled alcoholism throughout his life. In addition to being a schoolteacher, Golding was a scientist, a sailor and a poet before becoming a bestselling author, and his embitterment and alienation, his family, the women in his past, along with his experiences in the war, inform his work. This is the first book to unpack the life and character of a man whose entire oeuvre dealt with the conflict between light and dark in the human soul, tracing the defects of society back to the defects of human nature itself. Drawing almost entirely on materials that have never before been made public, John Carey sheds new light on Golding. Through his exclusive access to Golding’s family, Carey uses hundreds of letters, unpublished works and Golding’s intimate journals to draw a revelatory and definitive portrait. An acclaimed critic, Carey enriches crucially our appreciation of the literary work of Golding, bringing us, as the best literary biographies do, back to the books. And with equal parts lyricism and driving emotion, Carey brings to light a life that is extraordinary to the point of transcendent and a writer who trusted the imagination above all things.

This volume is the catalogue for the spring 1997 exhibition at the Royal Academy in London and at the summer 1997 exhibition at the Menil Collection in Houston. The exhibition focuses on Braque's late works including the Interiors, Billiard Tables and the late Bird paintings.

"We went into the general election with an unelectable leader, in a state of chaos with a manifesto that might have swept us to victory in cloud cuckoo land, but which was held in contempt in the Britain of 1983." It is said that those who do not learn from past mistakes are doomed to repeat them, and though Golding was describing the Labour Party of the early 1980s, he could just as easily have been talking about its situation today. A lurch to the left and a party in turmoil — the ascension of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader will, for many, trigger only unhappy memories of the dark days of the 1970s and '80s, when the party was plagued by a civil war that threatened to end all hopes of re-election. In that battle, moderate elements fought the illiberal hard left for the soul of Labour; that they won, paving the way for later electoral successes, was down to men and women like John Golding. In this visceral, no-holds-barred account, Golding describes how he took on and helped defeat the Militant Tendency and the rest of the hard left, providing not only a vivid portrait of political intrigue and warfare, but a timely reminder for the party of today of the dangers of disunity and of drifting too far from electoral reality.

John Golding (1929-2012) was a British artist, scholar and curator.Perhaps best known for his seminal book, Cubism: A history and an Analysis 1907-1914 (1959) he actually considered himself primarily a painter and exhibited extensively both in the UK and internationally during a career that spanned almost six decades. In retrospect, his reputation as a notable art historian somewhat, arguably, overshadowed his own practice as an artist. So, this new monograph endeavours to reveal and celebrate the other side of his oeuvre.'Golding's knowledge of Renaissance painting, especially the great Venetians [...] informed his own work as he moved out of figuration and into abstract canvases in which light was the subject. He painted vertical streaks of colour down his canvases like pleated light (as he put it) and occasionally on, say, a misty blue, he would scatter clusters of gold pigment to reflect the actual light. After the end of the 20th century, he started to structure his paintings so that they appeared to be based on photographs from thousands of feet above the Earth, with 'roads' and 'bridges' and 'canals'...' - Michael McNay, 2012 (The Guardian)Golding's work was additionally shown alongside Bridget Riley, John Hoyland, Frank Auerbach, Peter Blake and David Hockney in important group exhibitions in London such as, British Painting 74' at Hayward Gallery and, British Painting 1952-77 at the Royal Academy of Arts.

A small tribe of Neanderthals find themselves at odds with a tribe comprised of homo sapiens, whose superior intelligence and agility threatens their doom.

Succumb to one churchman's apocalyptic vision in this prophetic tale by the radical Nobel Laureate and author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding (recorded by Benedict Cumberbatch as an audiobook). There were three sorts of people. Those who ran, those who stayed, and those who were built in. Dean Jocelin has a vision: that God has chosen him to erect a great spire. His master builder fearfully advises against it, for the old cathedral was miraculously built without foundations. But Jocelin is obsessed with fashioning his prayer in stone. As his halo of hair grows wilder and his dark angel darker, the spire rises octagon upon octagon, pinnacle by pinnacle, watched over by the gargoyles - until the stone pillars shriek, the earth beneath creeps, and the spire's shadow falls like an axe on the medieval world below ... 'Astounding ... So recklessly beautiful, so sad and so strange ... Holds such a place in my soul that it's more or less a sacred text.' Sarah Perry 'A kind of miracle ... Genius.' Guardian ' Quite simply, a marvel.' NYRB ' Superb ... A classic.' Rebecca West 'A master fabulist .. An iconoclast.' John Fowles 'A visionary ... His masterwork [of] faith, folly and desperate desire ... Golding at his best.' Benjamin Myers