Art, Psychoanalysis, and Adrian Stokes

Book excerpt: Illustrated with Barbara Hepworth's abstract stone carving, with other works of art, and with fascinating vignettes from Adrian Stokes's writing, this biography highlights his revolutionary emphasis on the materials-led inspiration of architecture, sculpture, painting, and the avant-garde creations of the Ballets Russes. In also detailing Stokes's role as catalyst of the transformation of St Ives in Cornwall into an internationally-acclaimed centre of modern art, and his falling in love again in his early forties, this biography shows how Stokes used all these experiences, together with his many years of psychoanalytic treatment by Melanie Klein, in forging insights about ways the outer world gives form to the inner world of fantasy and imagination.