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William Boyd
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Nat Tate: An American Artist: 1928-1960 Hardcover – May 3, 2011

by William Boyd (Author)
3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 209 ratings
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When William Boyd published his biography of New York modern artist Nat Tate, a huge reception of critics and artists arrived for the launch party, hosted by David Bowie, to toast the late artist's life. Little did they know that the painter Nat Tate, a depressive genius who burned almost all his output before his suicide, never existed. The book was a hoax, and the art world had fallen for it.
Nat Tate is a work of art unto itself-an investigation of the blurry line between the invented and the authentic, and a thoughtful tour through the spirited and occasionally ludicrous American art scene of the 1950s.
William Boyd is the author of nine novels, including A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; and Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year Award.
Praise for Nat Tate:
"William Boyd's description of Tate's working procedure is so vivid that it convinces me that the small oil I picked up on Prince Street, New York, in the late '60s must indeed be one of the lost Third Panel Triptychs. The great sadness of this quiet and moving monograph is that the artist's most profound dread-that God will make you an artist but only a mediocre artist-did not in retrospect apply to Nat Tate."-David Bowie
"A moving account of an artist too well understood by his time."-Gore Vidal

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  1. Print length
    72 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Bloomsbury USA
  4. Publication date
    May 3, 2011
  5. Dimensions
    6.18 x 0.49 x 8.34 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1608195805
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1608195800
  8. See all details
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About the Author

William Boyd is the author of nine novels, including A Good Man in Africa, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Award; An Ice-Cream War, winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize and shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Brazzaville Beach, winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; and Restless, winner of the Costa Novel of the Year Award.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury USA (May 3, 2011)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 72 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1608195805
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1608195800
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.18 x 0.49 x 8.34 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.8 3.8 out of 5 stars 209 ratings

About the author

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William Boyd

William Boyd

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WILLIAM BOYD has received world-wide acclaim for his novels which have been translated into over thirty languages. They are: A Good Man in Africa (1981, winner of the Whitbread Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize) An Ice Cream War (1982, shortlisted for the 1982 Booker Prize and winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Stars and Bars (1984), The New Confessions (1987), Brazzaville Beach (1990, winner of the McVitie Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize) The Blue Afternoon (1993, winner of the 1993 Sunday Express Book of the Year Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, 1995), Armadillo (1998) and Any Human Heart (2002, winner of the Prix Jean Monnet). His novels and stories have been published around the world and have been translated into over thirty languages. He is also the author of a collection of screenplays and a memoir of his schooldays, School Ties (1985); three collections of short stories: On the Yankee Station (1981), The Destiny of Nathalie 'X' (1995) and Fascination (2004). He also wrote the speculative memoir Nat Tate: an American Artist -- the publication of which, in the spring of 1998, caused something of a stir on both sides of the Atlantic. A collection of his non-fiction writings, 1978-2004, entitled Bamboo, was published in October 2005. His ninth novel, Restless, was published in September 2006 (Costa Book Award, Novel of the Year 2006) followed by, Ordinary Thunderstorms (2009), Waiting for Sunrise (2012), Solo (a James Bond novel – 2013) and Sweet Caress (2015). His fourth collection of short stories entitled The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth appeared in 2017. His fifteenth novel, Love is Blind, was published in September 2018. Trio, appeared in October 2020 and his seventeeth novel, The Romantic was published in 2022. The Mirror and the Road: Conversations with William Boyd (edited by Alistair Owen) was published in 2023.

Born in Accra, Ghana, in 1952, Boyd grew up there and in Nigeria. He was educated at Gordonstoun School and attended the universities of Nice (Diploma of French Studies) and Glasgow (M.A.Hons in English and Philosophy) and Jesus College, Oxford, where he studied for a D.Phil in English Literature. He was also a lecturer in English Literature at St. Hilda's College, Oxford, from 1980-83. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, and an Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He has been presented with honorary Doctorates in Literature from the universities of St. Andrews, Stirling, Glasgow and Dundee. In 2005 he was awarded the CBE.

His many screenwriting credits include Stars and Bars (1987, dir. Pat O'Connor), Mr Johnson (1990, dir. Bruce Beresford), Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter (1990, dir. Jon Amiel), Chaplin (1992, dir. Richard Attenborough) A Good Man in Africa (1993, dir. Bruce Beresford), The Trench (1999, which Boyd also directed) and Man to Man (2005, dir. Régis Wargnier). He adapted Evelyn Waugh's Scoop for television (1988) and also Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy (2001). His own three-part adaptation of his novel Armadillo was screened on BBC 1 in 2001 as was his adaptation of his novel Restless (2012). His film about Shakespeare and his sonnets -- A Waste of Shame -- was made in 2005 for BBC 4. His 5-hour adaptation of his novel Any Human Heart (Channel 4 2010) won the BAFTA for “Best Series”. He has written two original TV films about boarding-school life in England -- Good and Bad at Games (1983) and Dutch Girls (1985). His six-hour Cold War spy thriller, Spy City (Miramax, ZDF) was broadcast and streaed internationally at the end of 2020.

Boyd also writes for the theatre. His first play was SIX PARTIES that premiered at the Cottesloe Theatre as part of the National Theatre’s New Connections series in 2009. This was followed by LONGING, in 2013, on the main stage at Hampstead Theatre, an adaptation of two short stories by Anton Chekhov. LONGING is currently playing in repertoire in St Petersburg, Russia, and in Tallinn, Estonia. THE ARGUMENT, a dark comedy, is his first play with a wholly contemporary setting. It was premiered at Hampstead Downstairs(2016) and has recently had a new production at the Theatre Royal Bath.

He is married and divides his time between London and South West France.

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3.8 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Hailwood1965
    5.0 out of 5 stars I was sad the day I heard he had jumped off the ...
    Reviewed in the United States on October 28, 2017
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    I knew Nate Tate, if you can call drinking with him in dive bars in NYC and sharing a cab with him as the sun came up, usually one of us puking out the passenger window as an irate cabbie screamed. Was he troubled artist? What artist isn't troubled? Was he a pain in the ass? Yes he really was.

    This is a solid account of his life. I was sad the day I heard he had jumped off the bridge. Saddened, not surprised.
    4 people found this helpful
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  • Rose City Reader
    4.0 out of 5 stars Nat Tate
    Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2011
    The New York art world feted William Boyd on the 1998 publication Nat Tate: An American Artist, 1928 - 1960. David Bowie hosted the launch party; critics and artists flocked to celebrate the life of the tragic genius.

    The hitch was that Nat Tate never existed. Named after two London museums - the National Gallery and the Tate - Boyd had invented the artist and his life. The whole thing was a gag. And the art world fell for it.

    The risk with reissuing the book now is that, since everyone knows the punch line (it's described on the back cover), the joke will fall flat. No fear. Being in on the ruse takes away the gotcha moment, but allows the reader to appreciate Boyd's satiric talents.

    Boyd is an excellent writer and the short format of this pseudo-biography - like a museum book published for an artist retrospective - shows him at his pithy best. He blends enough salacious gossip into the biographical detail, along with references to real artists like William de Kooning and Georges Braque, to give an authentic ring to the whole thing.

    Mixed with plenty of photographs and color art plates, Nat Tate is a literary one-off that deserves its reprinting.
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  • Mary Whipple
    3.0 out of 5 stars "[At the gallery] I was shocked by something I had never expected to see... a drawing, "Bridge no. 122"...by Nat Tate."
    Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2011
    In this newly reprinted book from 1998, William Boyd details the life and work of Nat Tate, an artist whose work became highly sought-after in the 1950s. One of the Abstract Expressionists in New York City, Tate could usually be found at his New York studio, at galleries, in conversation with Gore Vidal, Frank O'Hara, or Peggy Guggenheim, or drinking with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and others at the Cedar Tavern. In 1959 he visited Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who became his idol. Every one of his paintings sold almost immediately, most of them before the gallery openings even occurred. Then, unexpectedly, in January, 1960, at age thirty-one, he gathered as many of his works as he could find and incinerated them. At noon, four days later, he had coffee with Frank O'Hara and Todd Heuber, and at five o'clock that day, midway between the Statue of Liberty and the Jersey shore, he jumped off the back of the Staten Island Ferry and committed suicide.

    This small book memorializing Nat Tate is William Boyd's homage to this forgotten artist. With the look and feel of a fine art monograph, this tiny book boasts heavy semi-gloss paper, wide margins, understated design, a great deal of white space, and many photographs of Nat Tate from childhood to his death, along with his friends, family, and associates. At a party to celebrate the publication of this memorial to Tate on April 1, 1998, several hundred artists, dealers, writers, and the glitterati of the New York gathered to hear publisher David Bowie read passages from the book. Another party was scheduled for the book's London release a week later. Then word leaked out: Nat Tate never existed. The book was a fiction created by Boyd, David Bowie, Gore Vidal, Picasso's biographer John Richardson, and David Lister, a journalist from the Independent in London. Lister could not wait to post his scoop, and the whole plan unraveled.

    As Boyd explains in an article he wrote for Harper's Bazaar in April, 2011, "It wasn't planned this way. Nat Tate was created out of a desire to experiment--to see if something entirely fictitious could experience a life in the world as something wholly credible, real, and true." The plan fizzled, but, ironically, the "life" of Nat Tate has never really ended. Three TV documentaries have aired about Tate since 1998, and Boyd's "biography" has now been translated into French and German and j=has now been reprinted in the US and UK. Amazingly, an authenticated drawing by "Nat Tate" is now scheduled to be auctioned in London in the next few weeks.

    As I was reading this book, knowing in advance that Nat Tate never existed, I found myself really wishing he had existed. I wanted him to achieve the posthumous success he never enjoyed in his lifetime. I could think of many wonderful artists, people I know and love, whose work is every bit as good as that of much more famous artists, but who have never made the publicity connection, or the connection to the right New York gallery, or who were not able to "play the game" of the famous and successful. It is for those people that I wanted Nat Tate to be remembered. Perhaps he will have another life with this short reprint. Mary Whipple
    7 people found this helpful
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  • L. G. Piper
    5.0 out of 5 stars Another good book by William Boyd
    Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2019
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    William Boyd is one of my favorite authors. I've been re-reading my collection by this author and was looking for something new when I bought this book. Although this book was shorter, it was a pleasure to read. Recognize it is a work of fiction. And enjoyed the references to characters from Boyd's other novels.
    One person found this helpful
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  • G. Alexander
    4.0 out of 5 stars William Boyd's look on An American Artist
    Reviewed in the United States on June 7, 2011
    William Boyd must have had a delightful time writing Nat Tate; it's a very creative book.

    I believe if William Boyd wrote the book to prove a point he most certainly was able to do so, if only to he and Susan (whom the book is dedicated to).

    Nat Tate, an American Artist is exactly what it was meant to be, a fictional character. It's about an artist brief life which was summed up in less than 68 pages which has an equal amount of writing and photos.

    I really enjoyed the way he introduces the Nat Tate biography, the very descriptive art scene of the huge reception of critics and artist hosted by David Bowie to pay tribute to the late artist. William Boyd and David Bowie must have really enjoyed the joke.

    I would love to have a William Boyd doodle to frame and just to say that I have a Nat Tate original.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • Pat Devenish
    2.0 out of 5 stars Not up to his usual standard
    Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2020
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    Not up to his usual standard
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Eugene Woods
    5.0 out of 5 stars Clever, clever
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 19, 2012
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    Possible spoiler - beware. Boyd's elaborate practical joke (with David Bowie and Gore Vidal playing along) on the art world is a quick, enjoyable read. With Boyd one is always in safe literary hands, and this imagined history is no exception. The writing is deft -- no wasted words here -- elegant and slyly droll. With an appearance from Logan Mountstuart it reads a little like a side bar to Any Human Heart.The photo and art works add to the cunning deception, I only wish I had read it without being aware it was a hoax.
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  • Peter McCarthy
    4.0 out of 5 stars Fictional or fact?
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 7, 2023
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    As always a terrific read. Boyd has the unique ability to create real life fictional characters that absorb one's mind.
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  • Mike Thomas
    3.0 out of 5 stars A short novella charting the rise and fall of an artist in mid-century New York
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 29, 2021
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    William Boyd is always a fascinating writer. Apparently this short biographical sketch of an imagined artist became notorious for hoaxing the literati when first published. Over time the satirical intent may have lost its edge, but remains a pertinent comment on the values and conceits of the art world.
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  • Eileen Shaw
    4.0 out of 5 stars "December 4th. Nat Tate came round unannounced last night - not drunk..."
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 30, 2013
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    There never was an artist called Nat Tate and this book is, therefore, a fabrication, a trick, a joke within a joke, except everyone who knows William Boyd's work is in on the joke from the first mention of Logan Mountstuart, the star of his groundbreaking work, Any Human Heart.

    Yet it must, at the outset, have been meant as a joke on the world of Art. There is a cover foreword from David Bowie, and a gnomic quote from Gore Vidal; straight-faced? Perhaps not. It's hard to believe they weren't in on the joke. The book was put together using photographs and paintings, the former from Boyd's own photographic collection, and the latter paintings were done by Boyd himself.

    `I'm not sure who this book was written for. Un-literary art aficionados? Apparently "a legion" of arty poseurs reckoned they had heard of him, liked his work etc. So was the book meant as a satire on the gullibility of the art world? But the story of Nat Tate is written like an encomium, straight, and, indeed, rather touching. It's the sad story of an artist who, after he visited Bracque, the real-life artist, came home and made bonfires of his own work and then jumped into the sea. Except of course, he didn't, since he never existed. The success of the ploy, therefore, means the joke is squarely on the New York art world.
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  • ed
    1.0 out of 5 stars Nat Tate on Kindle
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 8, 2012
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    Badly let down by appalling typesetting on the Kindle. Why are so many words wrongly hyphenated? I have just turned to a page at random and seen "remem-bered"! I have stopped reading it on the Kindle because the frequent errors are spoiling it for me. I will buy a paperback copy. Does anyone else find Kindle typesetting to be a problem?
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