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We are very excited to collaborate with our dear friends at CHAPTER 34, an independent bookshop just round the corner from us in Shoreham by Sea. Each month they are handpicking a small curated selection for our customers at Neighbourhood Store.
Every aspect of CHAPTER 34 is designed to help you discover new books, ideas, and encourage you to look beyond what you usually read. Their shelves are arranged according to themes such as ‘The Self Shelf’ and ‘Wanderlust’, so you can discover new stories, ideas and wonders.
Chapter 34 stands against racism sexism, homophobia, transphobia and the oppression of all marginalised communities. They do this by carrying and promoting books by a diverse range of authors, over a diverse range of subjects. If you are in town you simply must pop in, be prepared to overstay a 'pop in' mind. The serve coffee too so get comfortable and enjoy!
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Now about this book...
The Beverly Hills Housewife offers a panoramic view of 1960s Los Angeles and Californian culture through the eyes of artist and subject: the youthful fascination of David Hockney and the seasoned gaze of enigmatic socialite Betty Freeman.
In the summer of 1966, David Hockney paid a visit to a wealthy Los Angeles art collector. Her name was Betty Freeman. He had intended to paint her swimming pool, but was rapidly entranced by Freeman herself.
Hockney, soon to embark on a series of Los Angeles paintings that would become icons of their time and place, immortalized Freeman in Beverly Hills Housewife (1966–67), a sunlit vision of the collector on the terrace of her modernist home. Evoking the light and easy glamour of 1960s Los Angeles, the painting is one of the artist’s most seductive works, but it has always carried an air of mystery. Who was the woman in pink?
Like Hockney driving through the Hollywood Hills, James Cahill meanders—interweaving the artist’s discovery of Los Angeles with Freeman’s own evolution from aspiring pianist to photographer, philanthropist, and collector—but never loses focus on the art. Oscillating between art history and anecdote, this is an eclectic study of an artist, his enigmatic muse, and the beginning of a friendship that would shape the course of each of their lives.
