RB Kitaj started painting The Architects in August of 1979 to celebrate the remodelling of his home by MJ Long. Painted largely without the models themselves present, this portrait of his friends against the backdrop of the stepped bookcase designed for him by MJ marks a transition in Kitaj's development as an artist.

Kitaj: The Architects profiles an artist at work from a unique and very personal perspective. The book collects the diary entries of Kitaj s subjects through each sitting season, from the first preliminary sketches to the final delivery of the painting in late 1981. Providing an insightful and telling insight into Kitaj s artistic method, Colin St John Wilson and his wife MJ Long s observations capture the creative process through the explorations of initial ideas, happy accidents, compositional struggles and dissatisfactions, to the finished artifact. Fragmentary traces of conversations within the entries bring the relationships between artist and models to life, providing telling glimpses into the artist s thinking of the work and how he positioned it with regards to art history in his mind. Photographs of the canvas from various stages of the painting capture the gradual build up of layers, the subtle shifts in composition and Kitaj s refinements of his subject s characteristic poses.