Van Gogh (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)
by Mike Venezia
from Children's Press (CT)
Presents a biography of Van Gogh
Monet (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists)
by Mike Venezia
from Childrens Press Chicago
Impressionism: Art, Leisure, and Parisian Society
by Robert L. Herbert
from Yale University Press
Critical Readings in Impressionism and Post-Impressionism: An Anthology (Ahmanson-Murphy Fine Arts Books)
from University of California Press
The essays in this wide-ranging, beautifully illustrated volume capture the theoretical range and scholarly rigor of recent criticism that has fundamentally transformed the study of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Readers are invited to consider the profound issues and penetrating questions that lie beneath this perennially popular body of work as the contributors examine the art world of late nineteenth-century France--including detailed looks at Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Degas, Cézanne, Morisot, Seurat, Van Gogh, and Gauguin. The authors offer fascinating new perspectives, placing the artworks from this period in wider social and historical contexts. They explore these painters' pictorial and market strategies, the critical reception and modern criteria the paintings engendered, and the movement's historic role in the formation of an avant-garde tradition. Their research reflects the wealth of new documents, critical approaches, and scholarly exhibitions that have fundamentally altered our understanding of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. These essays, several of which have previously been familiar only to scholars, provide instructive models of in-depth critical analysis and of the competing art historical methods that have crucially reshaped the field.
The Painting of Modern Life
by Timothy J. Clark
from Princeton University Press
The Paris of the 1860s and 1870s was supposedly a brand-new city, equipped with boulevards, cafés, parks, and suburban pleasure grounds--the birthplace of those habits of commerce and leisure that constitute "modern life." Questioning those who view Impressionism solely in terms of artistic technique, T. J. Clark describes the painting of Manet, Degas, Seurat, and others as an attempt to give form to that modernity and seek out its typical representatives--be they bar-maids, boaters, prostitutes, sightseers, or petits bourgeois lunching on the grass. The central question of The Painting of Modern Life is this: did modern painting as it came into being celebrate the consumer-oriented culture of the Paris of Napoleon III, or open it to critical scrutiny? The revised edition of this classic book includes a new preface by the author.
Mary Cassatt: A Life
by Nancy Mowll Mathews
from Yale University Press
One of the few women Impressionists, Mary Cassatt (1844-1926) had a life of paradoxes: American born, she lived and worked in France; a classically trained artist, she preferred the company of radicals; never married, she painted exquisite and beloved portraits of mothers and children. This book provides new insight into the personal life and artistic endeavors of this extraordinary woman.
Post-Impressionism to World War II (Blackwell Anthologies in Art History)
from Wiley-Blackwell
Post-Impressionism to World War II is an exciting anthology of the best art history writings of the Post-Impressionist period. Several key essays by critics including Benjamin, Greenberg and Bürger knit together primary sources and classic, “canonical” criticism.
- Collects the most important writings on art history from Post-Impressionism to the mid-20th century, covering both canonical and contemporary perspectives
- Offers a chronicle of avant-garde practice during an especially creative, if volatile, period of history
- Features several key essays by critics including Benjamin, Greenberg and Bürger
- Includes recent critical interventions from a range of methodological perspectives – both well-known and less familiar
- Organizes material thematically, and features introductory essays to each of the five sections
- Provides a valuable, stimulating resource for students and teachers alike and offers new ways to think about and teach this important period in art history.
Post-Impressionism to World War II is an exciting anthology of writings by artists, critics, and historians. The texts include primary sources from the 1880s to the eve of war in the late 1930s, knit together by classic analyses from critics such as Benjamin, Greenberg, and Burger. The volume also includes more recent critical interventions from a range of methodological perspectives, both well-known and less familiar. Introductory essays explore the key themes raised by the texts. The result is a vivid chronicle of avant-garde practice in Europe during an especially creative, and volatile, period of history.
Degas and the Art of Japan
by Jill DeVonyar
from Reading Public Museum
Many celebrated pictures by Edgar Degas (1834–1917)—showing ballet dancers, popular performers, and bathers, for example—were indebted to Japanese images of similar contemporary subjects. Degas and his generation were captivated by Japanese culture: he assembled his own collection of Ukiyo-e prints and several of his friends were leading authorities on artists such as Hokusai, Utamaro, and Hiroshige.
Degas and the Art of Japan explores the French Impressionist’s lifelong fascination with the work of his Japanese counterparts. Adding substantially to previous studies, the authors propose new links between some of Degas’s characteristic themes, such as laundresses and horse racing, and the woodblock designs of Ukiyo-e masters. Fresh light is also shed on another signature trait of the artist—his fascination with women in their public and private lives—which is echoed in the prevalence of female subjects in Japanese woodblock imagery. Equally significant are revelations about Degas’s access to specific Japanese prints belonging to collectors and dealers in Paris.
Works by Degas in all media are considered—paintings, pastels, drawings, lithographs, etchings, monotypes, and sculpture—and juxtaposed with Japanese prints, illustrated books, and decorated fans. Comparable human predicaments and parallels in visual language are all part of this wide-ranging analysis, which deepens our understanding of one of the world’s greatest artists.
Modernity and Modernism: French Painting in the Nineteenth Century (Modern Art Practices and Debates)
by Francis Frascina
from Yale University Press
Claude Monet: The Magician of Colour (Adventures in Art)
by Stephan Koja
from Prestel Publishing
Claude Monet was a true magician of light and of colour. Yet it is not only his painting that fascinates us, but also the interesting life he led with his family and many friends. This book tells the tale of an unusual artist and his wonderful pictures.
+++
