Lily Le Brun Interviewed by Kelly Grovier

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Writer and cultural historian Lily le Brun paints a picture of the 20th century through ten pivotal artworks of the sea.

Le Brun says portrayals of the sea reveal different ways of seeing by artists. She looks at works including Vanessa Bell’s Studland Beach, one of the first modernist paintings in Britain, Paul Nash’s work bearing the scars of his time in the trenches, and Martin Parr’s photographs of 1980s seaside resorts, which raised controversial questions of class. The different works raise questions about 20th-century history and culture, from modernism and the sublime to the impact of world wars, colonialism, nationhood and the environment.

Le Brun has written on art for Art Quarterly, the Financial Times and the Economist and won a Royal Society of Literature Giles St Aubyn Award for the early chapters of Looking to Sea. Here she talks to poet, historian and art critic Kelly Grovier, author of The Art of Colour: The History of Art in 39 Pigments.