Jonathan Yeo In The Flesh

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British artist Jonathan Yeo is one of the world's most renowned portrait painters. For the last twenty-five years he's been painting some of the best known figures in contemporary society, including the actors Kevin Spacey, Dennis Hopper and Helena Bonham Carter, model-turned-actor Cara Delevingne, artist Damien Hirst, former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and peace activist Malala Yousafzai. His work, instantly recognisable for its highly skilled figurative depictions, against bold, abstract backgrounds, stylistically bridges the traditional and contemporary. This monograph with its silkscreen printed hard cover, was published to coincide with the largest retrospective of Yeo's to date at the National Museum of History in Denmark and follows the spectacular unveiling of his most recent portrait of Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood, at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington. The fully illustrated book includes all of Yeo's most iconic works as well as two sections dedicated to his newest works, including a series of portraits of Cara Delevingne, painted over an eighteen month period, and the portrait of Kevin Spacey as President Underwood and its preparatory studies. Accompanying the beautifully reproduced paintings are many behind the scenes photographs, which provide unique insight into the working methods of the artist and of the sittings, which take place in his London studio, with some of Yeo's best known subjects. The book includes a foreword by Kevin Spacey, which comprises of personal anecdotes, whilst elucidating on what its like to be painted by the artist, and an essay written by the highly acclaimed art historian Richard Cork, which places Yeo's art in the context of modern British painting and discusses the concepts behind Yeo's series of unconventional portraits of Cara Delevingne. There is also a substantial interview between the artist and Mette Skougaard, Director of the Museum of National History in Denmark.