Bob Thompson

A colorful, fantastical, and musical body of work by the painter Bob Thompson 'Thompson, who finally seems to be on fame’s doorstep, invents in much the same way: he makes you feel how it might have felt to see a picture of an angel for the first time.' — The New Yorker Influenced by jazz music, Bob Thompson painted spirited, colorful compositions that feature an interplay of bodies, allegories, and natural landscapes while reconfiguring European masterworks. Though his career as a painter spanned only a brief period, from 1958 to his untimely death at age twenty-eight in 1966, Thompson left behind a singular and influential body of figurative work that remains vitally resonant. Looking at his particular consideration of color, line, and figuration—developed during a period when abstraction was the dominant trend in American art—this intimate exhibition catalogue, the seventh volume in the Clarion series, pays homage to the friction Thompson generated between his proximity to and deviation from canonical sources. The phrase 'So let us all be citizens,' taken from a speech the artist gave as a teenager, forecasted his passion for the tenets of freedom and expression, and encapsulates the power of Thompson’s work in widening the scope of what is imaginable in contemporary painting and for whom. With an introduction by Ebony L. Haynes, this publication expands upon Thompson’s dynamic practice and features works that spotlight his signature high-contrast palette. About Clarion The Clarion series of illustrated publications is positioned as an extension of each exhibition at the groundbreaking gallery space 52 Walker, curated by Ebony L. Haynes. The program focuses on showcasing conceptual and research-based artists from a range of backgrounds and at various stages in their careers. The series title is derived from the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop, the oldest of its kind, at the University of California, San Diego. Octavia Butler attended this workshop in the 1970s. Butler’s writing has been influential in the conceptual framework of the program and the Clarion series. With a sleek design influenced by encyclopedias, each publication features color reproductions of the works on view, alongside an introduction by Haynes, commissioned essays, artist texts, archival materials, and more.

In the ride-along tradition of Sarah Vowell, Tony Horwitz and Bill Bryson, this insightful history revisits the pivotal figures and key turning points of the American Revolutionary War. Revolutionary Roads takes readers on a time-traveling adventure through the crucial places American independence was won and might have been lost. You'll ride shotgun with Bob Thompson as he puts more than 20,000 miles on his car, not to mention his legs; walks history-shaping battlefields from Georgia to Quebec; and hangs out with passionate lovers of revolutionary history whose vivid storytelling and deep knowledge of their subject enrich his own. Braiding these elements together into a wonderfully entertaining whole - and with a reporter's abiding concern for getting the story straight - he has written an American Revolution book like no other. The Revolutionary War is one of the greatest stories in all history, an eight-year epic filled with self-sacrificing heroes, self-interested villains, and, more interestingly, all the shades of complex humanity in between. It boasts large-scale gambles that sometimes paid off but usually didn't, as well as countless tiny, fraught tipping points like a misunderstood order in a South Carolina cow pasture that could have altered the course of the war. The drama is magnified when you consider what was at stake: the fate of a social and political experiment that would transform the world. Yet we don't know this story as well as we should, or how easily the ending could have changed.

Jesus Rojo is used to being unpopular. As the youngest investigating judge ever appointed he had already ruffled the feathers of those who place seniority over talent. When he is handed a case of institutional corruption that has been lying in the long grass for years, he suspects that he is being set up to fail.With his small team of detectives, he begins to unpick the case and uncovers a money trail linking the main suspect with a top-quartile investment fund in the City of London that seems to invest in criminal activity as a means of diversification. In particular, the role played by the CEO of the fund, Derek Sanderson, comes under scrutiny.Separately, the National Crime Agency is investigating Sanderson and the fund's links with an operation in Brighton that sells Spanish villas off-plan. The local police suspect that this is a scam and that the deposits paid will disappear along with the perpetrators. The two investigations intertwine as the detectives in the UK and Spain close in on the suspects.description here

A country tale of cream teas, craft stalls, pagan giants, nuns, demons and alpacas.

From the buzhashi horsemen in Afghanistan and Mongolia, to the dancing horses of Mali and the mounted Oromo spearmen of Ethiopia, Bob Thompson has spent decades travelling to the most difficult outreaches of the world to discover the last remaining tribal horse games of Asia and Africa. He covers gilgit polo, visits the Ethiopian national stud, watches cirit and tent-pegging, and his journey takes him to such exotic places as Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Iran and Pakistan. Bob Thompson travels to some of the world's most remote places to fulfil his passion for seeing, while they still remain, the last vestiges of the skills of the war horse.

Pioneer. Congressman. Martyr of the Alamo. King of the Wild Frontier. As with all great legends, Davy Crockett's has been retold many times. Over the years, he has been repeatedly reinvented by historians and popular storytellers. In Born on a Mountaintop, Bob Thompson combines the stories of the real hero and his Disney-enhanced afterlife as he delves deep into our love for an American icon. In the road-trip tradition of Sarah Vowell and Tony Horwitz, Thompson follows Crockett's footsteps from his birthplace in east Tennessee to Washington, where he served three terms in Congress, and on to Texas and the gates of the Alamo, seeking out those who know, love, and are still willing to fight over Davy's life and legacy. Born on a Mountaintop is more than just a bold new biography of one of the great American heroes. Thompson's rich mix of scholarship, reportage, humor, and exploration of modern Crockett landscapes bring Davy Crockett's impact on the American imagination vividly to life.

Features 75 period photographs from "The Francis Frith Collection" with captions and full introduction. This work is suitable for tourists, local historians and general readers.