Catalogue produced for the exhibition Gods and Monsters: John Deakin's Portraits of British Artists at Pallant House Gallery from 2 October 2010 to 10 January 2011.
Author: Robin Muir

John Deakin (1912-72) flourished at Vogue magazine in the 1950s. However, he resisted his talent fiercely, treating success with mistrust and greeting failure with deference. A habitue of the artistic bohemia that congregated around the pubs and clubs of London's Soho district, he never took his career with Vogue seriously and never expected it to make him a living. He really wanted to be a painter like his friends Francis Bacon, Robert Colquhoun, Lucian Freud and Michael Andrews but history (and even the staunchest of these friends) has judged his own efforts harshly.

Instead, his photographic portraits of celebrities for Vogue magazine have been recognised belatedly as masterpieces of post war British photography. They remain incisive documents of his time. And all of them, his portraits of artists, also taken for Vogue, are his triumph. They are published here for the first time, together with an example of each artist's work from Pallant House Gallery's collection and selected private collections.

• RRP: £8.95
• Author: Robin Muir
• Published: 2010
• Publisher: Pallant House Gallery, Chichester
• Edition: First
• Format: Paperback
• Height: 20cm
• Pages: 60
• Illustrations: Illustrated in colour and black and white throughout
• ISBN: 978-1-869827-09-0