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Narrated by Paul Hilliar
Philip HoareUnabridged — 9 hours, 12 minutes
Narrated by Paul Hilliar
Philip HoareUnabridged — 9 hours, 12 minutes
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"Hoare’s deep and illuminating responses to Du¨rer’s iconic self-portraits and empathic portraits of animals inspire questions of sexuality and of our use and abuse of other species, especially whales. In contemplating Du¨rer’s virtuoso skills and gripping 'vision of the dark, the beautiful, and the strange' and sharing his own immersive appreciation of nature and art, Hoare forges a new, reorienting, and exhilarating perspective."
"This idiosyncratic account of the life, work, and afterlife of the Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer considers how art imagines our world. Hoare shows Dürer’s responsiveness to his times, and places his subject in a surprising lineage of artists including William Blake, Marianne Moore, Thomas Mann, and Andy Warhol. These comparisons elucidate Dürer’s radicalism, and establish him as a revolutionary and thoroughly modern artist. Hoare writes, 'Before Dürer, dragons existed; after him, they did not.'"
"Marvelous, unaccountable. Its strange charisma, the book’s fluidity, the unpredictability of which disrupts everything, transmuting whatever is steeped in it into something rich and strange."
"In Albert and the Whale Hoare moves beyond his own hand, which has hitherto brought hybrid biographies, memoirs and tremendous books on the sea and whales, to make something reckless, marvelous and unforgettable. Dürer would have loved it. So will you."
"This beautifully eclectic book is so much more than a biography of the great artist. This is a book to immerse you. Like the sea in which its author swims daily, it braces and embraces. It beckons us ever on."
"A masterpiece, a riot, a meditation, an illumination, and most definitely for reasons that will be apparent when you live inside its pages, a day at the beach."
"From Dürer to David Bowie, a delightfully eclectic study of the natural world and art."
I loved this new book by Philip Hoare. It’s a rare adventure in reading, drawing us into a swirl of narratives that mingle and resonate. The author is always there, as art critic, historian of culture, naturalist, biographer, and memoirist. His supple voice grounds the stories, with images and refractions of Albrecht Dürer rarely far from view. The rhythms of the prose are deft, seductive. What a fine achievement!
"Although it centers on Dürer's life and work, Hoare summons up numerous other figures - from Luther and Shakespeare to David Bowie - and somehow makes them relevant to the Renaissance painter. A book of dazzling insight and liquid beauty, Albert and the Whale is Hoare's greatest work yet."
"Albert and the Whale is visionary: a tone poem put together from the lives of others. This book is all about shockwaves... Hoare is intoxicated by Dürer’s version of the natural world, which threatens to be more vivid, more essential than the real thing. This harmonious and enviably conceived book manages it with full marks."
"A magnificent new book. Hoare summons [historical figures] like Prospero, his writing the animating magic that brings the people of the past directly into our present and unleashes spectacular visions along the way."
"In his typically allusive and impish style, Hoare has unfurled a whole tapestry of lives connected to Dürer’s work and its themes. He extrapolates an entire cosmology, a way of seeing the world every bit as rich and penetrating as Dürer’s."
"If Albert and the Whale were a room, it would be an alchemist’s laboratory with a stuffed crocodile suspended from the ceiling, full of freaks and fascinations, reef-encrusted in time. Hoare’s lush imaginings sweep you through 500 years on a sea of connections."
"More slippery than a straight biography, the book instead swoops cormorant-like into Dürer’s life and times. Albert and the Whale glitters with arresting details."
You can feel the delight Hoare takes in being unbound by anything but his enthusiasms. He is alternately precise and concealing. His biographical sections are both elliptical and redolent of entire lives. Somehow, Hoare’s frequent cuts between the present, the recent(ish) past and more distant history end up feeling like no cuts at all; instead of whiplash or disorientation, what results is an almost calm feeling of all these times existing simultaneously, in the moment of reading. Albert and the Whale will pull you in like the tide.
"I doubt that any other writer has grasped so deeply the feral, sensual undercurrent of Dürer’s art or has felt so acutely the artist’s attunement to the fierce animals that live in his works: the bony, narrow-headed dogs; the hirsute walrus, seemingly as ancient as the world itself; the armored rhino, as big as a house, menacing in its hardened, ornamented glory. Albert and the Whale is full of such unexpected insights into Dürer’s art, expressed with epigrammatic force and clarity. It is perhaps Dürer’s greatest achievement (and now also Mr. Hoare’s) to have shown us that this fantastical world is not so strange after all, that, in its fearsome splendor, it must be ours too."
"A visionary, encyclopedic, erudite and poetic book."
Hoare’s work is rigorous, something every serious student of whales – and, more widely conceived, of the natural world – will want to have at hand.
Praise for Philip Hoare and The Whale:
Genius. Hoare is always on the lookout for the revealing detail. He also has a finely tuned sense of perspective and pacing.
One of the most sublime reading experiences you’ll have this year.
2021-02-02
An examination of the works and influences of the German Renaissance painter.
In his latest, Hoare—the author of biographies of Stephen Tennant, Oscar Wilde, and Noël Coward, among other books—explores the works of renowned painter and printmaker Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). The book features striking renditions of the artist’s popular paintings and sketches, but the text is florid and often difficult to follow, jumping from analyses of Dürer’s artwork to lengthy discussions of other individuals with little apparent connection to the artist. Furthermore, Hoare doesn’t include clear attributions when quoting the artist, and the connection between the artist and a whale, as indicated by the book’s title, is exaggerated. According to the author, Dürer sailed to Zeeland in hopes of viewing a whale; however, the trip was not a success, and whales never became a subject of his artwork. In an attempt to create a connection, Hoare digresses from his study of his biographical subject to the topic of whales, including discussions of Moby-Dickand the works of writers and other artists who depicted whales. (Readers interested in the author’s explorations of whales should consult his engaging 2010 book The Whale.) “Had Dürer seen even one whale,” writes Hoare, “his art would have preempted Melville’s mutterings about how you can’t tell the true nature of the whale from its bones alone, and how no one ever painted a less monstrous picture of a whale, despite the fact that the writer was born, half Dutch, in New Amsterdam, and claimed his eyes were tender as young sperms. The pale usher of Moby-Dick tells us the word whale came from the Dutch wallen, to roll, to wallow. We wallow in our ignorance.” For fans of art history, the portions of the book directly related to Dürer and how his interactions with nature influenced his art are fascinating.
An intermittently intriguing yet baroque investigation of an artist that leaves readers wanting more.
| BN ID: | 2940176459272 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Tantor Audio |
| Publication date: | 01/25/2022 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
