David Lloyd's book explores Samuel Beckett's lifelong engagement with painting and its influence on his theater

David Lloyd's 2016 book 'Beckett's Thing–Painting and Theatre' examines Samuel Beckett's deep interest in visual art, arguing that his literary aesthetic stemmed from a lifelong devotion to painting. Beckett, from his youth in Dublin visiting the National Gallery to his later years in Paris, actively sought out art, including during a 1936-37 tour of Germany amid Nazi suppression of abstract works. Lloyd focuses on three artists Beckett admired: Jack B. Yeats, Bram van Velde, and Avigdor Arikha, analyzing how their approaches to representation resonated with Beckett's own work. Beckett rejected the view of Yeats as a 'national painter,' instead valuing his stormy landscapes that subsumed figures, as seen in works like 'Above the Fair' (1946). He praised van Velde for painting 'bereft of occasion' and was captivated by the borderland between figuration and abstraction in his art. Arikha, after seeing Caravaggio in 1965, shifted to drawing from life, with Beckett describing his work as 'Siege laid again to the impregnable without.' Lloyd contends that Beckett's political effect lies in dismantling representation, with these artists providing material and fellowship for his theater, such as in 'Not I.' The book includes 49 color illustrations and was published by Edinburgh University Press.