Lincoln Perry's Charlottesville

Front Cover
University of Virginia Press, 2005 - Art - 88 pages

Lincoln Perry is justly celebrated for his murals and edgy narrative figure paintings, with their saturated palette and multifaceted architectural compositions--Poussin refracted through de Chirico. This beautiful new book showcases his images of Charlottesville, Virginia--many of them multipanel compositions featuring the University of Virginia and its environs--accompanied by an essay and interview by his wife, the writer Ann Beattie.

Perry's mural The Student's Progress, which depicts a woman's education and social experience from matriculation through graduation, is familiar to U.Va. students, faculty, and visitors, but Perry has been painting Charlottesville subjects on and off since 1985, when he first moved to town. From his early explorations of the complex relationships between professors and students, played out against the backdrop of Jefferson's Lawn, through his intriguing depictions of the city's domestic interiors, buildings, and streets, Perry illuminates a different side of a place widely appreciated for its history and natural beauty.

Charlottesville, writes Beattie, "both disturbs and calls to [Perry]: it's a paradoxically comfortable and uncomfortable not-quite-home he has been drawn to many times for reasons he can't easily articulate.... I think that Lincoln likes the town's quirkiness and its lack of uniformity. It's also a place that allows him to practice the x-ray vision so many visual people have for underpinnings: the contradictions that can be drawn upon and aesthetically dramatized.... The place sparks his imagination, and with his paintbrush, he sparks it, charging the air with a bit of unexpected--but very recognizable--light."

Together, Perry and Beattie give us a view of Charlottesville, of place and artistic production, that carries with it the warmth of recognition and the thrill of discovery.

Publication made possible by generous support from the W. L. Lyons Brown Jr. Charitable Foundation

 

Common terms and phrases

24 in./gouache Collection Alison Innes Ann Beattie architect artists balcony Bill Stevenson building Cabell Hall mural Cabell murals canvas Collection canvas Courtesy canvas Private collection character Charitable Foundation Collection of Don Collection of Prue Courtesy of Les Don and Alison drawn envy feel figure Geoff Dyer ginia idea in./etching Private collection in./oil on canvas in./oil on masonite Jane Haslem Lawn LINCOLN PERRY LINCOLN PERRY'S CHARLOTTESVILLE Lincoln's paintings look lottesville Lyons Brown Jr maquette Mary Lee Settle masonite Collection masonite Courtesy masonite Private collection multipanel painting Music narrative non sequitur paintbrush painter Paintings by Lincoln protagonist Prue Brown rapid reporter recognizable-light redhead reporter or traveler Ruth Cross sequitur sketches someone sort space Student's Progress tell there's things town's quirkiness tree unex University of Vir University of Virginia visual W. L. Lyons Brown wedding what's write x 7 in./oil Yeux du Monde

About the author (2005)

Ann Beattie was born in Washington, D.C. on September 8, 1947. She received a B.A. from American University in 1969 and an M.A. from the University of Connecticut in 1970. She began her writing career when she was just twenty-five, with the short story A Platonic Relationship, published in The New Yorker. Regular contributions to the magazine resulted in her first collection of short stories, Distortions, published in 1976. Her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, was also published that year. Later works include Park City, Another You, Where You'll Find Me, and Walks with Men. Her work was honored with a Guggenheim fellowship in 1978, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1980, and the Rea Award for the Short Story in 2005. She has taught at Harvard College, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Virginia.

Bibliographic information

TitleLincoln Perry's Charlottesville
AuthorsLincoln Frederick Perry, Ann Beattie
Editionillustrated
PublisherUniversity of Virginia Press, 2005
ISBN0813925037, 9780813925035
Length88 pages
Subjects ›  ›  › 

Art / History / General
Art / Individual Artists / Monographs
Art / Movements / Modernism
Art / Subjects & Themes / General
Art / Techniques / Painting / General
  
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