LUCIE-SMITH, (John) Edward (McKenzie) 1933-

PERSONAL: Born February 27, 1933, in Kingston, Jamaica; son of John Dudley (a British civil servant) and Mary Frances (Lushington) Lucie-Smith. Education: Merton College, Oxford, B.A., 1954. Hobbies and other interests: The Internet, "malice."

ADDRESSES: Home—24 Sydney St., London SW3, England. Agent—Rogers, Coleridge & White, 20 Powis Mews, London W11 1JN, England.

CAREER: Advertising copywriter in London, England, 1956–66; freelance writer, 1966–. Founder of Turret Books, 1965; curator of art exhibitions in Britain and the United States.

MEMBER: Royal Society of Literature (fellow), PEN (English committee), Societe Europeénne de la Culture, Academie de Poesis Europeénne.

AWARDS, HONORS: Shared John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, and Arts Council Triennial Award for best first or second book of poems, both 1961, both for A Tropical Childhood, and Other Poems.

WRITINGS:

(Author of introduction and notes) Raffaele Sanzio, Raphael, Batchworth Press (London, England), 1961.

(Author of introduction and notes) Peter Paul Rubens, Rubens, Marboro Books (New York, NY), 1961.

(Editor, with Philip Hobsbaum) A Group Anthology, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1963.

(Editor) The Penguin Book of Elizabethan Verse, Penguin (Baltimore, MD), 1965.

What Is a Painting?, Macdonald & Co. (London, England), 1966.

Gallipoli, Fifty Years After, limited edition, Turret Books (London, England), 1966.

(Editor and author of introduction) A Choice of Browning's Verse, Faber (London, England), 1967.

(Editor and author of introduction) The Penguin Book of Satirical Verse, Penguin (Baltimore, MD), 1967.

(Translator from the French) Paul Claudel, Five Great Odes, Rapp & Carroll, 1967, Dufour (Chester Springs, PA), 1970.

(Translator from the French) Claudel, The Muses, Turret Books (London, England), 1967.

Borrowed Emblems, Turret Books (London, England), 1967.

(Translator from the French) Jean Paul de Dadelsen, Jonah: Selected Poems, Swallow Press, 1967.

(Translator from the French) Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues, Hyacinths, limited edition, Collection Paroles Peintes (Paris, France), 1967.

(Editor) The Liverpool Scene, Rapp & Whiting (London, England), 1967, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1968.

Thinking about Art: Critical Essays, Calder & Boyars (London, England), 1968.

Late Modern: The Visual Arts since 1945, Praeger (New York, NY), 1969, 2nd edition, 1976, published as Movements in Art since 1945, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1969, revised and expanded edition, 1984.

(Compiler) Holding Your Eight Hands: An Anthology of Science-Fiction Verse, Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1969.

(With Patricia White) Art in Britain, 1969–70, Dent (London, England), 1970.

(Editor and author of introduction) British Poetry since 1945, Penguin (Harmondsworth, England), 1970, revised edition, 1985.

(Compiler) Primer of Experimental Poetry, Bobbs-Merrill (Indianapolis, IN), 1971.

(Compiler) A Garland from the Greek: Poems from the Greek Anthology in Versions, Turret Books (London, England), 1971.

A Concise History of French Painting, Praeger (New York, NY), 1971.

(Editor and author of introduction, with Simon Watson Taylor) French Poetry Today: A Bilingual Anthology, Schocken (New York, NY), 1971.

Eroticism in Western Art, Praeger (New York, NY), 1972.

Symbolist Art, Praeger (New York, NY), 1972.

(With Donald Carroll) Movements in Modern Art, Horizon Press (New York, NY), 1973.

Image of Reality and Supereality, London Arts Council (London, England), 1973.

World of the Makers: Today's Master Craftsmen and Craftswomen, Paddington Press (London, England), 1974.

The First London Catalogue, Paddington Press (London, England), 1974.

The Burnt Child: An Autobiography, Gollancz (London, England), 1975.

The Invented Eye: Masterpieces of Photography, 1839–1914, Paddington Press (London, England), 1975.

The Walking Dream: Fantasy and the Surreal in Graphic Art, 1450–1900, Knopf (New York, NY), 1975.

(With Celestine Dars) How the Rich Lived: The Painter as Witness, 1870–1914, Paddington Press (London, England), 1976.

Joan of Arc, Allen Lane (London, England), 1976, Norton (New York, NY), 1977.

Toulouse-Lautrec, Phaidon (Oxford, England), 1977, revised and enlarged edition, 1983.

Art Now: From Abstract Expressionism to Superrealism, Morrow, 1977, published as Art Today: From Abstract Expressionism to Surrealism, Phaidon (Oxford, England), 1977, new edition, 1995.

Henri Fantin-Latour, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1977, published as Fantin-Latour, Phaidon (Oxford, England), 1977.

The Dark Pageant: A Novel about Gilles de Rais, Blond & Briggs (London, England), 1977.

(With Celestine Dars) Work and Struggle: The Painter as Witness, 1870–1914, Paddington Press (London, England), 1977.

Outcasts of the Sea: Pirates and Piracy, Paddington Press (London, England), 1978.

A Cultural Calendar of the Twentieth Century, Phaidon (Oxford, England), 1979.

Super Realism, Phaidon (Oxford, England), 1979.

Furniture: A Concise History, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1979.

Art in the Seventies, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1980.

The Story of Craft: A History of the Craftsman's Role in Society, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1981.

The Art of Caricature, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1981.

The Real British: An Anthology of the New Realism in British Painting, Fischer Fine Art (London, England), 1981.

The Body: Images of the Nude, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1981.

Jan Vanriet, Van Gennep (Amsterdam, Netherlands), 1982.

The Sculpture of Helaine Blumenfeld, photography by David Buckland, S. Browne (London, England), 1982.

(With Beryl Cook) Bertie and the Big Red Ball, Gallery Five (London, England), 1982.

A History of Industrial Design, Van Nostrand Reinhold (New York, NY), 1983.

Masterpieces from the Pompidou Centre, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1983.

The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1984, 2nd edition 2004.

Beasts with Bad Morals, with drawings by Leonard Baskin, Leinster Fine Books (London, England), 1984.

American Art Now, Phaidon (Oxford, England), 1985.

(Interviewer) Michael Leonard, Paintings, foreword by Lincoln Kirstein, GMP (London, England), 1985.

Art of the 1930s: The Age of Anxiety, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1985.

(Editor, author of introduction) British Poetry since 1945, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1985.

(Editor and author of introduction) The Male Nude: A Modern View: An Exhibition, organized by Francois de Louville, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1985.

(With Paul J. Smith) Craft Today: Poetry of the Physical, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (New York, NY), 1986.

Lives of the Great Twentieth-Century Artists, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1986.

Sculpture since 1945, Universe (New York, NY), 1987.

(With Sean Kelly) The Self-Portrait: A Modern View, Sarema Press (London, England), 1987.

(Editor and author of introduction) The Essential Osbert Lancaster: An Anthology in Brush and Pen, Barrie and Jenkins (London, England), 1988.

(With Carolyn Cohen and Judith Higgins) The New British Painting, Phaidon (Oxford, England), 1988.

Impressionist Women, Harmony Books (New York, NY), 1989.

Art Deco Painting, C. N. Potter (New York, NY), 1990.

(With Curtis L. Carter and Jack W. Burnham) Richard Lippold, Sculpture, Patrick and Beatrice Haggerty Museum of Art (Milwaukee, WI), 1990.

Art in the Eighties, Phaidon (Oxford, England), 1990.

Fletcher Benton, Abrams (New York, NY), 1990.

Sexuality in Western Art, Thames & Hudson (London, England), 1991.

Rustin: Drawings, T. Heneage (London, England), 1991.

Harry Holland: The Painter and Reality, Art Books International (London, England), 1991.

Andres Nagel, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1992.

Alexander, Art Books International (London, England), 1992.

Wendy Taylor, Art Books International (London, England), 1992.

The Faber Book of Art Anecdotes, Faber & Faber (London, England), 1992.

Art and Civilization, H. N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1993.

British Art Now: A Personal View, Art Books International (London, England), 1993.

Fritz Scholder: A Survey of Paintings, 1970–1993, Nazraeli Press (Munich, Germany), 1993.

Latin American Art of the 20th Century, Thames & Hudson (New York, NY), 1993, 2nd edition 2004

Race, Sex, and Gender: In Contemporary Art, H. N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1994.

Elizabeth Frink: Sculpture since 1984 and Drawings, Art Books International (London, England), 1994.

(With Elizabeth Frink) Frink: A Portrait, Bloomsbury (London, England), 1994.

John Kirby: The Company of Strangers, Mainstream (London, England), 1994.

American Realism, Abrams (New York, NY), 1994.

Visual Arts in the 20th Century, Prentice Hall (Upper Saddle River, NJ), 1996.

The Art of Albert Paley: Iron, Bronze, Steel, H. N. Abrams (New York, NY), 1996.

Lin Emery: Borrowing the Forces of Nature, New Orleans Museum of Art (New Orleans, LA), 1996.

Art Erotica: An Arousing History of Erotic Art, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1997.

Adam: The Male Figure in Art, Rizzoli (New York, NY), 1998.

Zoo, Watson-Guptill (New York, NY), 1998.

(Coauthor) Women and Art: Contested Territory, Watson-Guptill (New York, NY), 1999.

Judy Chicago: An American Vision, Watson-Guptill (New York, NY), 2000.

Albert Huie: Father of Jamaican Painting, Ian Randle Publishers (Kingston, Jamaica), 2001.

Chris Booth: Sculpture in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, Godwit (Auckland, New Zealand), 2001.

Flora: Gardens and Plants in Art and Literature, Watson-Guptill (New York NY), 2001.

Art Tomorrow, Terrail (Paris, France), 2002.

Artists of the Ideal: Nuovo Classicismo, Skira (Milan, Italy), 2003.

Julio Larraz, Electa (Milan, Italy), 2002.

Author of introductions to books, including Textures: Photographs by Warren Truitt, GMP Publishers (London, England), 1990, The British Imagination: Twentieth-Century Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings, Hirschl and Adler Galleries (New York, NY), 1990, and Luis Caballero: Paintings and Drawings, Editions Aubrey Walter (London, England), 1992.

POETRY

A Tropical Childhood, and Other Poems, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1961.

(With others) Jack Clemo, Edward Lucie-Smith, [and] George MacBeth, Penguin, 1964.

Confessions and Histories, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1964.

Jazz for the N.U.F., Turret Books (London, England), 1965.

Three Experiments, Turret Books (London, England), 1965.

Silence, Trigram Press (London, England), 1967.

Towards Silence, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1968.

(With others) Jupiter and Turret at the Wigmore, Turret Books (London, England), 1968.

Snow Poem, Turret Books (London, England), 1968.

Egyptian Ode, limited edition, Daedalus Press (Norfolk, VA), 1969.

Six Kinds of Creature, Turret Books (London, England), 1969.

Lovers: A Poem, Sceptre Press (Frensham, Surrey, England), 1970.

Six More Beasts, Turret Books (London, England), 1970.

A British Folio, Unicorn Press (Santa Barbara, CA), 1970.

Two Poems of Night, Turret Books (London, England), 1972.

The Rabbit, Turret Books (London, England), 1973.

The Well-Wishers, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1974.

Poems for Clocks, Bernard Stone (London, England), 1986.

OTHER

Also author of prefaces and introductions to catalogs for museum exhibits in New York and London, including Animal Drawings from the XV to XX Centuries, 1962, and The Little Press Movement in England and America, 1968. Contributor to periodicals, including Critical Quarterly, New Statesman, Listener, Sunday Times, and Encounter.

SIDELIGHTS: Edward Lucie-Smith made his mark both as an art historian and a poet, as well as winning recognition for his novels and translations. He was born in Jamaica, where his ancestors had come with the first wave of white settlers in the 1600s. Lucie-Smith was raised in the privileged world of the colonial ruling class, but moved with his mother to England when he was still a youth, following the death of his father. After graduating from Oxford University he worked in advertising and as a journalist and broadcaster. He has stated that he was determined not to advance in his career, and in his early thirties he gave up his other pursuits to concentrate on his poetry.

In 1956, Lucie-Smith was invited by Philip Hobsbaum to join an influential avant-garde poetry salon known as "the Group." Hobsbaum strongly encouraged Lucie-Smith's writing, and his staunch support led to the poet's first published collection, A Tropical Childhood. The award-winning collection cemented his reputation, and he was soon recognized as an influential figure in his own right. According to Roger Garfitt in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, A Tropical Childhood has the "virtues of clarity, concreteness, and naturalness of speech within a tight literary form." Lucie-Smith eventually became the chairman of the Group, which also included Peter Redgrove, George MacBeth, Peter Porter, and Fleur Adcock.

Lucie-Smith's second collection, Confessions and Histories, showed the movement that the Group as a whole was making toward a more energetic style and an emphasis on the speaking voice. Confessions and Histories presented poetic monologues, in which the author sometimes interjected his comments as an art critic. Lucie-Smith eventually became bored with this form, however, and refashioned his style, taking his cues from Elizabethan verse. "Quantified verse offered him what he needed, a musical structure," mused Garfitt. "He aspired to the condition of opera, where an author's timings persist across the centuries because they are built into the music." While the prosody of these poems is complex, its effects are "spare and scalpel-like." Typical examples of the author's work in this period are found in Towards Silence and The Well-Wishers. Reviewing The Well-Wishers, a Choice critic recommended the poems "for the general reader of competent, attractive and rather traditional modern poetry," and commented that the volume will "bring quiet pleasure" and "provides surprise and joy on almost every page."

During the mid-1970s, Lucie-Smith's poetic output dropped considerably. He turned his talents to fiction in his novel The Dark Pageant, wrote an autobiography, The Burnt Child, and became more prolific in the field of art history. His contributions to art history are considered highly influential. Of The Invented Eye, another Choice critic wrote: "This book of outstanding intellectual quality is reflective of the most contemporary thinking about the medium [of photography.]" Reviewing Art Now, a New York Times Book Review writer called attention to Lucie-Smith's "unconventional judgments" and commented: "What makes Lucie-Smith's assessments valuable is that even when he is wrong" is his "creative type of provocation, one that shakes the reader out of the standard mode of thinking to a serious reconsideration of what was previously taken for granted."

In yet another genre shift, Lucie-Smith also wrote a unique biography of Joan of Arc, one which prompted Times Literary Supplement contributor Paul Johnson to remark on the author's achievement in covering "this well-trodden ground with considerable skill. He makes admirable use of the published sources, has visited all the places associated with Joan, and provides fascinating photographs of them." An Economist critic commented that the author "triumphs by taking the simplest view of Joan as an extraordinary and yet an ordinary teenage girl." "For lovers of Joan, there is plenty in his book to knock the halo sideways; but her detractors too may pause for thought before they reach for their firebrands."

Lucie-Smith has written many museum exhibition catalogs, chronicled decades and movements in the art world, and set down biographies of many artists, in books such as Fletcher Benton, Judy Chicago: An American Vision, and Lives of the Great Twentieth-Century Authors. The last-named volume, according to Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman, is a great example of the author's commitment to produce "art books that are both accessible and sophisticated, inclusive and rigorous." One hundred influential artists are profiled, including Edvard Munch, Kathe Kollwitz, Pablo Picasso, March Chagal, and Marcel Duchamps. The entries are all based on "in-depth research and knowledge, and alight with discernment and conviction." Besides writing the biography of Judy Chicago, Lucie-Smith collaborated with her on Women and Art: Contested Territory, which explores women both as subjects and creators in the history of art. It is "an animated and enlightening dialogue," remarked Donna Seaman in Booklist, one which will "undoubtedly change perceptions of art and of women."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 40: Poets of Great Britain and Ireland since 1960, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.

Lucie-Smith, Edward, The Burnt Child: An Autobiography, Gollancz (London, England), 1975.

Schmidt, Michael, and Grevel Lindop, editors, British Poetry since 1960, Carcanet Press (Manchester, England), 1972.

PERIODICALS

American Craft, April, 1997, review of The Art of Albert Paley, p. 24.

American Libraries, May, 1986, review of The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms, p. 354.

Bloomsbury Review, March, 1998, review of Art Today, p. 20; November, 1999, review of Lives of the Great Twentieth-Century Artists, p. 14.

Booklist, May 15, 1994, Donna Seaman, review of Race, Sex, and Gender in Contemporary Art, p. 1657; December 1, 1994, Donna Seaman, review of American Realism, p. 649; October 15, 1995, Donna Seaman, review of Art Today, p. 378; February 15, 1999, Ray Olson, review of Adam: The Male Figure in Art, p. 1023; September 1, 1999, Donna Seaman, review of Lives of the Great Twentieth-Century Artists, p. 55; December 15, 1999, Donna Seaman, review of Women and Art: Contested Territory, p. 748; May 15, 2000, Donna Seaman, review of Judy Chicago: An American Vision, p. 1719.

Books and Bookmen, August, 1975; July, 1977; August, 1978.

Bookwatch, July, 1994, review of Race, Sex, and Gender in Contemporary Art, p. 7.

Burlington, January, 1996, review of Elisabeth Frink: Sculpture since 1984 and Drawings, p. 40; May, 1997, review of Art Today, p. 344; September, 1997, review of Art Deco Painting, p. 641.

Choice, September, 1975; November, 1975; October, 1993, review of Latin-American Art of the Twentieth Century, p. 280; October, 1994, review of Race, Sex, and Gender in Contemporary Art, p. 273; July, 1997, review of Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century, p. 1792.

Economist, October 2, 1976.

Harper, October, 1977.

Hispanic American Historical Review, May, 1996, review of Latin-American Art of the Twentieth Century, p. 322.

Kliatt, May, 1994, review of Toulouse-Lautrec, p. 37.

Lambda Book Report, July, 1994, review of Race, Sex, and Gender in Contemporary Art, p. 46.

Library Journal, May 15, 1993, review of Art and Civilization, p. 67; July, 1993, review of Latin-American Art of the Twentieth Century, p. 77; May 1, 1994, review of Race, Sex, and Gender, in Contemporary Art, p. 100; December, 1994, review of American Realism, p. 89; November 15, 1995, review of Art Today, p. 73; November 15, 1996, review of Art Deco Painting, p. 93; June 15, 1997, Heidi Martin Winston, review of Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century, p. 64; September 1, 1999, Mary Hamel-Schwulst, review of Women and Art: Contested Territory, p. 186, Stephen Allan Patrick, review of Lives of the Great Twentieth-Century Artists, p. 188; May 1, 2000, Mary Hamel-Schwulst, review of Judy Chicago: An American Vision, p. 108.

Listener, December 8, 1977; September 21, 1978.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 14, 1980; December 2, 1995, review of Art Today, p. 9.

New Statesman, March 14, 1975; November 18, 1977; November 23, 1979; October 28, 1994, review of American Realism, p. 45.

New York Times, November 27, 1995, review of Art Today, p. C15.

New York Times Book Review, December 4, 1977; January 10, 1982; September 4, 1994, review of Race, Sex, and Gender in Contemporary Art, p. 16.

Observer (London, England), November 20, 1994, review of American Realism, p. 17; May 16, 1999, review of Lives of the Great Twentieth-Century Artists, p. 14; September 5, 1999, review of Art Today, p. 14.

People, April 13, 1987, Campbell Geeslin, review of American Craft Today, p. 17.

Publishers Weekly, October 19, 1990, Genevieve Stuttaford, review of Fletcher Benton, p. 46; November 30, 1992, review of Andres Nagel, p. 41; June 25, 1993, review of Art and Civilization, p. 68; November 18, 1996, review of The Art of Albert Paley, p. 60; February 17, 1997, review of Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century, p. 207; August 30, 1999, review of Lives of the Great Twentieth-Century Artists, p. 69.

Reference & Research Book News, November, 1997, review of Visual Arts in the Twentieth Century, p. 131; May, 2001, review of Judy Chicago, p. 187.

Saturday Review, November 26, 1977.

School Arts, March, 1999, Kent Anderson, review of Zoo: Animals in Art, p. 51; September, 2004, Ken Marantz, review of The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Art Terms, p. 60; February, 2005, Ken Marantz, review of Latin American Art of the Twentieth Century, p. 57.

Spectator, May 29, 1976; January 14, 1995, American Realism, p. 30; November 25, 1995, review of American Realism, p. 47.

Time, December 12, 1977.

Times Literary Supplement, November 19, 1976; November 18, 1977; February 17, 1978; October 13, 1995, review of American Realism, p. 21.

Washington Post Book World, September 12, 1993, review of The Faber Book of Art Anecdotes, p. 13.

World Literature Today, July-September, 2003, Cyril Dabydeen, review of Changing Shape: New and Selected Poems, p. 85.