About this Book

St Ives is unique in British art history. Between the Second World War and the 1960s, a large number of progressive artists chose to work and, in many cases, settle in and around this remote Cornish port. As a result, St Ives became, as Patrick Heron observed, the only small town in Britain to give its name to an international art movement.The individual careers of Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton, Patrick Heron, Terry Frost and other major artists associated with St Ives have received much individual attention in recent years. Yet in broader historical terms, St Ives art is still often perceived as a largely self-contained phenomenon, isolated from the spirit of the times. This book opens up new ground in exploring connections - often unexpected - between the St Ives artists and contemporary developments in other fields. It looks at how artists paradoxically combined an obsession with the ancient forms and changing moods of the West Cornwall landscape with a confidence in their role in post-war Britain's cultural vanguard.For the first time, this book integrates the St Ives artists into the cultural narrative of the 1950s - a decade whose austere image as monochrome precursor of the Swinging Sixties is now being overturned. In the process it recaptures the creative energy, idealism and excitement of those years. The artists themselves emerge as vivid presences - forceful actors in St Ives' intense arena, where different artistic agendas led as often to bitter conflict as to any sense of a unified movement. The distinctive character of St Ives at this period, and its mythologizing in art and fiction, are memorably analysed.Place and Time: The St Ives Artists draws extensively on little-known and new archival research and interviews to cast new light on the St Ives artists, setting their careers in the context of rapid social and cultural change in the post-war decades. It reflects on the significance of their work and values in terms of the present-day influence of cultural tourism and the media-domination of visual culture.