Michael Bird (author)

Michael Bird (born 12 April 1958) is a British author and art historian. He was born in London and educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School and Merton College, Oxford, where he read English.After teaching at Sherborne School he worked in publishing, including a stint on the editorial team of the Macmillan Dictionary of Art (now Oxford Art Online). Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Bird published poetry, essays and reviews. He has also written on modern British art. His books include monographs on the artists Sandra Blow (2005), Bryan Wynter (2010) and Lynn Chadwick (2014), and The St Ives Artists: A Biography of Place and Time (2008, 2nd edn. 2016).

Bird has written for The Times, The Guardian, Modern Painters, Tate Etc and PN Review. His work for radio includes contributions to the BBC arts programmes Kaleidoscope, Night Waves and The Essay, and features for BBC Radio 4, including The Wreck of the Alba (2009), based on a painting by Alfred Wallis, and Lanyon's Last Flight (2011).

Bird is a visiting lecturer at Falmouth University.^[1] and lives in Cornwall with his wife, the artist Felicity Mara.

Select bibliography

Books

• Sandra Blow (2005). Lund Humphries. ISBN 978-0853319214
• The St Ives Artists: A Biography of Place and Time (2008). Lund Humphries. ISBN 978-0853319566
• Bryan Wynter (2010). Lund Humphries. ISBN 978-1848220096
• 100 Ideas that Changed Art (2012). Laurence King Publishing. ISBN 978-1856697958
• Lynn Chadwick (2014). Lund Humphries. ISBN 978-1848221352

Selected essays and articles

• ‘The perception of symmetry’, Tate Etc. (Spring 2004)
• 'In character: Alexander Mackenzie and Landscape', Alexander Mackenzie (exhib. cat., London: Austin/Desmond Fine Art, 2007)
• ‘The transformed total: the constructions of Margaret Mellis’, Margaret Mellis (exhib. cat., London: Austin/Desmond Fine Art, 2008)
• ‘I have heard of your paintings: an artist in rehearsal’, Lisa Wright: The Histories (exhib. cat., London: Beardsmore Gallery/Roundhouse, 2008)
• ‘Myth and continuity: Peter Lanyon’s Porthmeor’, Porthmeor: A Lanyon Mural Rediscovered, exhib. cat. (Bath: Victoria Art Gallery, 2008)
• ‘Questions of balance: Sandra Blow’, Sandra Blow (exhib. cat., Beaux Arts London, 2009)
• 'Janet Leach, William Marshall, Jason Wason (exhib. cat. essay on Jason Wason) (London: Austin Desmond Fine Art, 2011)

References

External links

• Michael Bird website
• Interview with Michael Bird
• Article for Tate Etc.
• The Flower Fields, feature for BBC Radio 4