Last Light, Richard Lacayo
Last Light, Richard Lacayo
List: $29.99 | Sale: $21.00
Club: $14.99

Last Light
How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph

Author: Richard Lacayo

Narrator: Mack Sanderson

Unabridged: 13 hr 12 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/11/2022

Categories: Nonfiction, Art


Synopsis

One of the nation’s top art critics shows how six great artists made old age a time of triumph by producing some of the greatest work of their long careers—and, in some cases, changing the course of art history.

Ordinarily, we think of young artists as the bomb throwers. Monet and Renoir were still in their twenties when they embarked on what would soon be called Impressionism, as were Picasso and Braque when they ventured into Cubism. But your sixties and the decades that follow can be no less liberating if they too bring the confidence to attempt new things. Young artists may experiment because they have nothing to lose; older ones because they have nothing to fear. With their legacies secure, they’re free to reinvent themselves…sometimes with revolutionary results.

Titian’s late style offered a way for pigment itself—not just the things it depicted—to express feelings on the canvas, foreshadowing Rubens, Frans Hals, 19th-century Impressionists, and 20th-century Expressionists. Goya’s late work enlarged the psychological territory that artists could enter. Monet’s late waterlily paintings were eventually recognized as prophetic for the centerless, diaphanous space developed after World War II by abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Phillip Guston. In his seventies, Matisse began to produce some of the most joyful art of the 20th century, especially his famous cutouts that brought an ancient craft into the realm of High Modernism. Hopper, the ultimate realist, used old age on occasion to depart into the surreal. And Nevelson, the patron saint of late bloomers, pioneered a new kind of sculpture: wall-sized wooden assemblages made from odds and ends she scavenged from the streets of Manhattan.

Though these six artists differed in many respects, they shared one thing: a determination to go on creating, driven not by the bounding energies of youth but by the ticking clock that would inspire them to produce some of their greatest masterpieces.

About Richard Lacayo

Richard Lacayo was a longtime writer and editor at Time, and from 2003 to 2016 the magazine’s art and architecture critic. He has also contributed articles on those subjects to People, Foreign Policy, and Graydon Carter’s new online publication Air Mail. He is the coauthor, with George Russell, of Eyewitness: 150 Years of Photojournalism. In 2013, he delivered one of the annual Clarice Smith Lectures at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, on artists in old age.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Joann on July 08, 2024

Six artists who, in their twilight years, had to develop new ways of creating due, in most cases to physical disabilities. I was completely hooked and could hardly set the book aside. Titian to Nevelson (thankfully there was a female represented) bios which could have benefited from more examples of......more

Goodreads review by Julie on January 26, 2023

Definitely for art nerds. As one closing in on old age (well, depends on how you define it, I guess), I have an interest in how one's art might change - for the better or worse - as age advances. Lacayo chooses six artists from the Renaissance to modern days: Titian, Goya, Monet, Matisse, Hopper, an......more

Goodreads review by Richard on June 04, 2023

A few months ago I read a book called "From Strength to Strength" about how the brain changes with age so that though we don't become dumber, the kinds of things that we are good at change. Therefore, in order to flourish as we age, we need to let go of our old ways and play to the strengths of matu......more

Goodreads review by Dick on November 30, 2022

Listened on Audible to the book Last Light by Richard Lacayo. He writes of six artists whose work flourished in their older years. He tells of Titian adopting a looser style than that used for his earlier much-acclaimed Renaissance works. And he seemed to appreciate the strokes for their tactile aes......more

Goodreads review by Bernadette on January 29, 2023

Last Light is a beautiful and perfect title for Richard Lacayo's well-researched, empathetic and inspiring take on the productive last years of six great artists. I'm not a student of art, but I have some appreciation from visits to art galleries and museums. I knew I had to read this book when I sa......more


Quotes

"With his resonant voice and perfect diction, Sanderson takes the listener into the lives of Titian, Goya, Monet, Matisse, Hopper, and Nevelson. He lightens his tone for direct quotes from the artists and others, and offers French and Italian pronunciations for names and places."