Hitting the Nail on the Head

John Piper was one the most articulate and interesting artists, known for his simple but perceptive language, his breadth and vision and integrity as an artist and who lived through changing and evolving art times and movements - 1903-1992. The Complete Writings of John Piper offers for the first time a comprehensive range of views of one of the greatest and most varied (like Picasso in diversity and quality) British painters of the 20th Century. It includes all his writings, and provides a remarkable, vivid and uniquely personal and erudite view of the human controversies, art movements, concerns and exhibitions in literary and artistic circles, and by an author whose integrity and intelligence, development and thoughtfulness, despite the hostility of others, remained true and unique to his own inner voice. The writings show, from major works like the books and seminal writings all the way to simple prefaces, how deeply Piper looked, cared and thought about what he was writing. For anyone interested in the arts across the broadest spectrum from theatre design, to stained glass, to music, to literature, to art politics, from marijuana to the death penalty, from abstraction to romanticism, from what it is to be an artist and true to oneself and resist commercial pressure, to the Royal Academy and to publishing its all here. Furthermore Piper wrote as he painted, to share. As he said anything that is to be kept as a secret is not worth keeping. A monumental undertaking over many years these ten volumes are for anyone interested in the 20th Century and in being an artist.