Clive Bell and the Making of Modernism

Author Mark Hussey
Narrator Richard Trinder
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
Run Time 17 hours and 11 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Biography and non-fiction prose, Biography: general, History of art, The Arts.

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What to expect

'Amusing, charming, stimulating, urbane' - THE TIMES

'Revelatory' - GUARDIAN

'Restores Clive Bell vividly to life' - Lucasta Miller
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Clive Bell is perhaps better known today for being a Bloomsbury socialite and the husband of artist Vanessa Bell, sister to Virginia Woolf. Yet Bell was a highly important figure in his own right: an internationally renowned art critic who defended daring new forms of expression at a time when Britain was closed off to all things foreign. His groundbreaking book Art brazenly subverted the narratives of art history and cemented his status as the great interpreter of modern art. Bell was also an ardent pacifist and a touchstone for the Wildean values of individual freedoms, and his is a story that leads us into an extraordinary world of intertwined lives, loves and sexualities.

For decades, Bell has been an obscure figure, refracted through the wealth of writing on Bloomsbury, but here Mark Hussey brings him to the fore, drawing on personal letters, archives and Bell’s own extensive writing. Complete with a cast of famous characters, including Lytton Strachey, T. S. Eliot, Katherine Mansfield, Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, Clive Bell and the Making of Modernism is a fascinating portrait of a man who became one of the pioneering voices in art of his era.

Reclaiming Bell’s stature among the makers of modernism, Hussey has given us a biography to muse and marvel over – a snapshot of a time and of a man who revelled in and encouraged the shock of the new.

'A book of real substance written with style and panache, copious fresh information and many insights' - Julian Bell

Critics Review

Amusing, charming, stimulating, urbane
The Times
[A] meticulously researched and well-informed account … Revelatory … Hussey’s patient recuperative work is important in reminding us that the significant players in last century’s art history often refuse to fit our sentimental requirements
Guardian
Offers a missing piece in the familiar Bloomsbury jigsaw … Mark Hussey … moves around the complex history of the Bloomsbury Group with near-faultless command. He is also a suave and sophisticated historian, able to link Bell’s life very effectively with the historical moment
Literary Review
This spirited, urbane figure emerges engagingly from the shadow of his more famous contemporaries in this first definitive biography
Town & Country, Book of the Week
With this entertaining and nuanced biography, Hussey has filled in a valuable piece of the Bloomsbury jigsaw, providing rich new insight into a major player in the story of 20th-century art
Apollo
A book of real substance written with style and panache, copious fresh information and many insights. Throughout, one senses that a strong mind is in control of the material – the whole literary performance is persuasive and confidence-inducing
Julian Bell
This sympathetic and painstakingly researched portrait restores Clive Bell vividly to life, both as a man and as a cultural figure whose art criticism influenced a generation
Lucasta Miller
Hussey gives us a … nuanced, complex portrait of Clive Bell, celebrating his accomplishments without obscuring the less appealing aspects of his character … Perceptive … [A] remarkable book … There could not be a more fitting tribute to Clive Bell and his life’s work
Literature Cambridge

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