Humankind: Ruskin Spear
Class, culture and art in 20th-century Britain

Award-winning biographer Tanya Harrod mines Spear’s career and background in order to explore what it meant to be a British artist in the 20th century. Using Spear’s life to unlock the coded standards of the 20th-century art world, she reflects on a range of themes, taking in popular press debates linked to the annual Royal Academy Summer Exhibition; the changing preferences of the institutionalised avant-garde from the Second World War onwards; the battles fought within colleges of art as a generation of post-war students challenged the skills and commitment of their tutors; and the changing status of figurative art in the post-war period.

Format: Hardback
Size: 24.5 x 18.5 cm
Extent: 320 pp
Publication date: 13 January 2022
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
ISBN: 9780500971192