Set on a remote island, Shakespeare’s The Tempest is an ideal subject for the artist Rose Wylie, whose work frequently references classic stories and well-known characters.
Likely the last play written entirely by Shakespeare, The Tempest brings together various themes the Bard explored in his prior plays, including magic, revenge and forgiveness, order and society, and nature versus art. The shipwreck and remote island, the spirits, and the dukes and their children offer rich material for Wylie’s works on paper and canvas.
As the third title in David Zwirner Books’s Seeing Shakespeare series, this book pairs a complex narrative with equally layered works by a contemporary artist who approaches the play and art making from a unique perspective. Also included is an introduction by the writer Katie Kitamura.
About the Author
British artist Rose Wylie (b. 1934) paints uniquely recognizable, colorful, and exuberant compositions that at first glance are instantly accessible, not seeming to align with any discernible style or movement, but on closer inspection are revealed to be wittily observed and subtly sophisticated meditations on the nature of visual representation itself. As curator Clarrie Wallis notes, "[Wylie's] large pictures are painted in a kind of visual shorthand that is direct and legible. The ability to elicit a range of responses is made possible precisely because of her reduction of form to an essential vibrancy that incorporates, via the very physicality of her medium, not just what the artist sees but an accompanying multitude of thoughts, feelings, and memories. Wylie's work is a sophisticated transmutation, or sifting of perceptual experience, carrying as it does a wealth of affective and allusive resonances, into the painted form."
Katie Kitamura’s most recent novel is Intimacies (2021). Her previous novel, A Separation (2017), was a finalist for the Premio von Rezzori. She has twice been a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award and has received fellowships from the Lannan and Santa Maddalena Foundations. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages and is being adapted for film and television. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.
Praise For…
“She developed her own visual language by 'unlearning.' It is a result of strongly observing the subject and interpreting it in her own way." — Kwon Mee-Yoo
“Wylie fearlessly tackles the thorniest topics head-on, committing her thoughts and questions about politics, religion, fame, love, history, money and nature to canvas.” — Charlotte Brook
“The ordinary is important to Wylie: she can get her inspiration anywhere.” — Louis Wise
“Wylie paints freewheeling pictures, often with words loosely scrawled across them, that are gloriously big and crude, and full of a certain dry British humor that sends up any whiff of orthodoxy or pretension.” — The New York Times Style Magazine
