When the original edition of this book was published, John Russell hailed it as a massive contribution to our knowledge of one of the most fascinating and mysterious episodes in the history of modern art. It still remains the most compact, accurate and reasonably priced survey of sixty years of creative dynamic activity that profoundly influenced the progress of Western art and architecture.

This standard edition of the Discourses on Art delivered by Sir Joshua Reynolds is now reissued in a new format and with improved illustrations. It has long been recognized as a fundamental text for the study of eighteenth-century English painting, and this edition is generally considered to be the definitive one.Robert R. Wark was Curator of Art Collections at the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art

Discover the history of design with this gorgeous visual celebration of key pieces, movements, and designers, from the Arts and Craft movement to the digital age. Arranged chronologically, Design traces the evolution of design from its roots to the present day, from early chairs, pottery, and homewares to cars, graphic design, and product design. It introduces all the key designers, manufacturers, and objects, illustrating how and why different styles emerged and became popular. It also provides a fascinating insight into design movements, showing how each one began and explaining its philosophy and visual style, from the Arts and Crafts movement to mid-century modern and contemporary. Featuring expert analysis, stunning photography, and a huge range of objects both familiar and extraordinary, Design explains what makes a truly great design and reveals the hidden stories behind the everyday things all around us. With profiles of famous designers and manufacturers, such as William Morris, the Bauhaus, Alvar Aalto, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Vitra, and stunning images of iconic buildings and interiors, it provides a glorious and comprehensive view of classic design across the last two centuries.

The group of young painters and writers who coalesced into the Pre-Raphaelite movement in the middle years of the nineteenth century became hugely influential in the development not only of literature and painting, but also more generally of art and design. Though their reputation has fluctuated over the years, their achievements are now recognised and their style enjoyed and studied widely. This volume explores the lives and works of the central figures in the group: among others, the Rossettis, William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, Ford Madox Brown, William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. This is the first book to provide a general introduction to the Pre-Raphaelite movement that integrates its literary and visual art forms. The Companion explains what made the Pre-Raphaelite style unique in painting, poetry, drawing and prose.

In 1883 Paul Gauguin abandons his prominent banking career and decides that "from now on I will pai nt every day". The co - founder of Synthetism and trailblazer of Expressionism turns his back on the bourgeois world, leaves his wife and children, and, in 1891, sets out for the South Sea, financing his journey through the sale of thirty paintings. His thou ghts on art, his existential worries, his discovery of color and his search for paradise come to life again in the excerpts from his letters and statements compiled in this volume. Together with some forty color reproductions of his works, his biography, a nd a preface by an expert, the book introduces readers in a very special way to Gauguin's universe.

Hudson River School artists shared an awe of the magnificence of nature as well as a belief that the untamed American scenery reflected the national character. In this new work, color reproductions of more than 115 paintings capture the beauty and illuminate the aesthetic and philosophical principles of the Hudson River School painters. The pieces included in this volume reflect a period (1825-1875) when American landscape painting was most thoroughly explored and formalized with personal, artistic, cultural, and national identifications. Judith Hansen O'Toole reveals the subtleties and quiet majesty of the works and discusses their shared iconography, the ways in which artists responded to one another's paintings, and how the paintings reflected nineteenth-century American cultural, intellectual, and social milieus. Different Views is also the first major study to examine closely the Hudson River School artists' practice of creating thematically related pairs and series of paintings. O'Toole considers painters' use of this method to express different moods and philosophical concepts. She observes artists' representations of landscape and their nuanced depictions of weather, light, and season. By comparing and contrasting Hudson River School paintings, O'Toole reveals differences in meaning, emotion, and cultural connotation. Different Views in Hudson River School Painting contains reproductions of works from a range of prominent and lesser-known artists, including Jasper Francis Cropsey, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Asher B. Durand, Frederic Edwin Church, Albert Bierstadt, John Frederic Kensett, and John William Casilear. The works come from a leading private collection and were recently exhibited at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

The Courtauld Collection: A Vision for Impressionism accompanies a landmark exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris exploring Samuel Courtauld’s role as one of the great collectors of the twentieth century. The catalogue and exhibition showcase Courtauld’s extraordinary collection, which will be on display in Paris for the first time in over sixty years. One of the finest collections of Impressionism anywhere in the world was assembled by the English industrialist and philanthropist Samuel Courtauld (1876-1947). During the 1920s, Courtauld acquired seminal works by all of the major Impressionists, from Renoir’s early masterpiece La Loge to Manet’s last great work, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. His collection grew to include such iconic works as Gauguin’s great Tahitian nude Nevermore and one of Van Gogh’s most famous paintings, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. Courtauld was particularly devoted to Cézanne and put together the largest collection of his work in the United Kingdom, including the epic Montagne Sainte-Victoire with Large Pine and one of the celebrated Card Players. After a decade of collecting, Courtauld gave the majority of these remarkable works to establish The Courtauld Institute of Art and Gallery in London. This will be the first time that Samuel Courtauld’s collection has been shown in Paris in over 60 years. The landmark exhibition will bring together masterpieces from The Courtauld Gallery alongside works formerly in Courtauld’s collection and now dispersed internationally. It will be a unique opportunity to enjoy some of the greatest modern French paintings of the 19th century and will shed light on Courtauld’s pioneering role in shaping public taste for Impressionism in the United Kingdom. The lavishly illustrated catalogue presents new research on the personality of Samuel Courtauld as well as his taste, collecting habits and wide-ranging philanthropy. It also explores afresh his network of dealers and places him within the wider context of contemporary collectors of Impressionism throughout Europe and the United States. The exhibition features almost a hundred works, each given its own entry and enhanced with close-up images and comparative illustrations to provide an in-depth exploration of this extraordinary collection.

The story of their salt-glazed pottery that has a special place in the history of ceramic art.

Erika Szivos places the fine arts and their practitioners in the political, cultural, and social context of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. She investigates the influence of European patterns on the public role of the arts and the changing status of the artist in fin-de-si?cle Hungary.

Charles Reiffel (1862-1942) is widely regarded today as one of the foremost figures of the California plein air school of landscape painting. This book, accompanying an exhibition of the same name at The San Diego Museum of Art and San Diego History Center, aims to reevaluate Reiffel as a leading practitioner of Post-Impressionism in the United States.

Charles Reiffel trained as a lithographer and traveled, worked, and studied in Europe before establishing himself as an independent artist in Silvermine, Connecticut. He finally settled in San Diego in 1925. There, he immersed himself for the remainder of his life in the landscape of Southern California, its coast and rolling hills, discovering in its unique contours new motifs for his striking mix of Post-Impressionist and Expressionist brushwork.

"Charles Reiffel: An American Post-Impressionist" proposes a fresh assessment of the artist, firmly reestablishing his place as a national figure in the canon of American painting and shedding light on a splendid page in the history of American Post-Impressionism and Expressionism.

Ariel Plotek is assistant curator at the San Diego Museum of Art. Other contributors include Bram Dijkstra and Keith Colestock.

Russian portraiture enjoyed a golden age between the late 1860s and the First World War. While Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were publishing masterpieces such as Anna Karenina and The Brothers Karamazov and Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov were taking Russian music to new heights, Russian art was developing a new self-confidence. The penetrating Realism of the 1870s and 1880s was later complemented by the brighter hues of Russian Impressionism and the bold, faceted forms of Symbolist painting. In providing a context, author Rosalind P. Blakesley looks in the first and second chapters at the portrait tradition in Russia: the rise of secular portrait painting following the founding of the Academy of Arts in St Petersburg in 1757; the shifting tastes of patrons and publics; the reception of portraits in exhibitions and collections (including those of the tsars); and the role of portraiture in the cultural politics of imperial Russia. Starting with the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867, at which a distinct Russian school of painting was recognised for the first time, the third chapter examines developments in theatre and music, the rising Realist aesthetic and the powerful voices of wealthy patrons from the worlds of industry and commerce, such as Pavel Tretyakov. Chapter Four looks at the rise of novel forms of visual expression through experimentation, from Impressionism to Symbolism, and the World of Art Movement, with its conscious reconnection with artistic developments in the West. The last chapter charts creative responses to political turmoil and social unrest in the early twentieth century, the new artistic societies and manifestos of the avant-garde and the dialogue between figurative painting and abstraction in the twilight of imperial rule.

Artisans of Israel is a very special book on crafts. Author Lynn Holstein is in search of a national identity in the artisanry of the still young country - and she finds it in the unifying pursuit for innovation. Forty artists, including Jews, Muslims and Christians, tell their stories and show in five different trades how emancipation can be promoted through creativity. Working with one's hands stands unfailingly at the centre of this reflection. From the hybrid of cultural and religious backgrounds emerges a unique compilation that brings together the fields of metalwork and jewellery, ceramics, textiles, paper and wood. This compilation portrays a sensitive and inspiring portrait of Israel and its inhabitants. This book accompanies an exhibition at The Open Museum, Tefen (IL), in January 2018. Text in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Herschel B. Chipp's Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book By Artists and Critics is a collection of texts from letters, manifestos, notes and interviews. Sources include, as the title says, artists and critics-some expected, like van Gogh, Gauguin, Apollinaire, Mondrian, Greenberg, just to name a few-and some less so: Trotsky and Hitler, in the section on Art and Politics. The book is a wonderful resource and insight into the way artists think and work.

The Arts and Crafts Movement was a reaction to the brutality of working life and the sterility of industrial design in Victorian Britain. Although Arts and Crafts was initially a mediaeval revival, the movement was always about the artist craftsman and the appropriate use of materials, rather than any single design tradition. The movement was inspired and led by William Morris, whose company was founded in 1861 and produced a full range of interior furnishings, including tiles. These were designed by Morris himself, and also by leading artists and architects of the day such as Edward Burne Jones and Philip Webb. The term Arts and Crafts was formalised in the late 1880s, and many designers, artists and craftsmen joined Morris in this new movement, and leading designers including Walter Crane and C. F. A. Voysey produced distinctive and now highly collectable ceramic tiles that were used to decorate the bathrooms and the fireplaces of the wealthy and discerning. This book, with its companion on the work of William de Morgan, is the first complete introduction to British Arts and Crafts tiles from 1860 to 1920.

A captivating and definitive account of the final days of Van Gogh's life and the incredible story of what followed. Divided into three parts, the book first examines the eventful days from the artists' departure from the asylum in Saint-Remy and arrival in Auvers until the shooting which brought his life to an end. During this time Van Gogh completed 70 paintings in 70 days. The second part delves deeper into the story of the artist's death, which has intrigued both experts and the public for years, revealing little-known stories and uncovering overlooked accounts. We then follow the story of how Van Gogh subsequently rose from relative obscurity to international renown and ultimately fame as one of the most recognisable and popular artists in the world. Leading Van Gogh specialist Martin Bailey writes with insight and intelligence, bringing these fateful days to life with colour and character as well as historical expertise, capturing the real sense of a tragic but meaningful life truly lived.

""Desire and Excess" is one of the most exciting and sophisticated books I have read for some time. It is capaciously learned, sensitively researched, and wonderfully graceful and witty. By reconsidering the institutions and aesthetics responsible for the culture of the museum in modernity, it offers a new history of art-historical discourse."--Isobel Armstrong, Birkbeck College, London

""Desire and Excess" tells about the time a dazzling company of poets got lost inside the Louvre, and only got out once they had together created the giant figure of the Artist. Jonah Siegel's brilliance is continually breathtaking, so it's lucky that he has placed such solid ground beneath our feet by his luxurious, intricately wrought scholarship."--Elaine Scarry, author of "On Beauty and Being Just"

"A timely book on the relationship of art and experience to the hallowed sanctuaries of museum collections. Jonah Siegel is right on target in dealing with this hugely important issue. I can only admire the vast range of themes and the quiet display of learning so apparent in this text. The book kept me constantly alert and informed."--Robert Rosenblum, New York University

"This ambitious and fascinating work traces the relations between the development of the museum, the history of taste, and the figure of the artist/author in nineteenth-century England. Here Jonah Siegel reads the long collapse of neoclassicism as a productive crisis in the modern conception of originality. His argument is remarkably rich, subtle, learned, and provocative."--Ian Duncan, University of Oregon

""Desire and Excess" marks the emergence of a powerful and distinctive critical sensibility, remarkable both for itsrange of erudition and for the extraordinary quality of reflection brought to bear on the works explored here. Jonah Siegel mingles exacting close analysis and broad, confident historical and cultural reference in a manner that is almost unfailingly persuasive. The book will appeal to readers interested in the intellectual, artistic, literary, and cultural histories of Britain from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries, as well as to those engaged in postmodern critical reflection on art institutions and artistic agency."--James Eli Adams, Indiana University

Thanks to its very nature, performance enters into natural dialogue with art, new media, politics, and the social sphere as a whole. Always happening in the here and now, and with a unique freedom and openness to the unknown, performance is a medium with a special ability to question its own subjects, materials, and languages. As a result, it is often best reflected in the dynamic character of contemporary art and contemporaneity in the broadest sense of the word. Points of Convergence explores these ideas and investigates critical approaches to performance, ultimately aiming to stimulate new discussion between theorists and practitioners. With twelve essays by leading figures in the field of performance arts, this illustrated volume is structured in two parts. The first, authored by academics in the discipline, features an introduction to key areas of scholastic research. The second part, authored by curators and other researchers, then focuses on an account of individual traditions of performance. Taken together, the contributions identify new possibilities for interaction between the theoretical aspects of performance art and the ways performance plays out within local contexts.

Nineteenth Century British Painting provides a succinct and informative chronological survey of a century of British painting which produced a great variety of work. It progresses from the beginnings of Romanticism in the late eighteenth century to the British adoption of Impressionism in the late nineteenth, dividing this prolific period into nine parts. In each part the work of the major figures in particular movements or genres is discussed and analysed, and each painter is presented in a biographical context. The artists are set in the framework of their historical, social and economic background. The majority of the paintings and drawings that are examined in detail are reproduced in the 323 plates, 82 of them in colour. The book is intended to be used more as an introduction, and where appropriate as a textbook, than as a work of reference, although its arrangement will enable readers to obtain fuller information about individual artists, with longer sections devoted to such major figures as Lawrence, Turner, Constable, Rossetti, Leighton and Whistler. The last decade has seen a growing interest in nineteenth century British art in this country, and also in the United States and on the Continent. During this time much has been published in the field and there has been a succession of important exhibitions. Even so, there is no up-to-date and comprehensive survey of the whole century on the market. Nineteenth Century British Painting fills the gap, meeting the need for such a book among undergraduate and graduate students, and among connoisseurs and collectors. It will also have a strong appeal for people with a general interest in the period.

In this bold exploration of the political forces that shaped Impressionism, Albert Boime proposes that at the heart of the modern is a "guilty secret"--the need of the dominant, mainly bourgeois, classes in Paris to expunge from historical memory the haunting nightmare of the Commune and its socialist ideology. The Commune of 1871 emerged after the Prussian war when the Paris militia chased the central government to Versailles, enabling the working class and its allies to seize control of the capital. Eventually violence engulfed the city as traditional liberals and moderates joined forces with reactionaries to restore Paris to "order"--the bourgeois order. Here Boime examines the rise of Impressionism in relation to the efforts of the reinstated conservative government to "rebuild" Paris, to return it to its Haussmannian appearance and erase all reminders of socialist threat.

Boime contends that an organized Impressionist movement owed its initiating impulse to its complicity with the state's program. The exuberant street scenes, spaces of leisure and entertainment, sunlit parks and gardens, the entire concourse of movement as filtered through an atmosphere of scintillating light and color all constitute an effort to reclaim Paris visually and symbolically for the bourgeoisie. Amply documented, richly illustrated, and compellingly argued, Boime's thesis serves as a challenge to all cultural historians interested in the rise of modernism.

Many people know that Vincent van Gogh (1853-90) was a 19th-century Dutch artist, a leading light of the Post-Impressionist movement who painted 'Sunflowers' and cut off his own ear. What, perhaps, they don't know is that he sold, in his lifetime, only one of the 2,100 artworks he painted; that, in 1998, his work 'Self- Portrait Without Beard' sold for $71.5 million; that he wrote over 800 letters; and that he sent that famous ear wrapped in brown paper to a brothel. Biographic: Van Gogh presents an instant impression of his life and work, with an array of irresistible facts and figures converted into infographics to reveal the artist behind the pictures.

One of the most important British graphic artists of the nineteenth century, George Cruikshank (1792-1878) illustrated over 860 books, including several by Charles Dickens, and produced a vast number of etchings, paintings, and caricatures. The ten essays collected here first appeared in a special limited edition. In a new preface written for this paperback edition, Robert Patten shows how the insights of these seminal essays have been amplified by recent exhibitions and scholarship. The introduction by John Fowles has been retained and an index has been added. In addition to the many Cruikshank illustrations reproduced in the volume, there are original drawings by contemporary artists David Levine and Ronald Searle.

Elegant representations of nature and the four seasons populate a wide range of Japanese genres and media-from poetry and screen painting to tea ceremonies, flower arrangements, and annual observances. In Japan and the Culture of the Four Seasons, Haruo Shirane shows how, when, and why this practice developed and explicates the richly encoded social, religious, and political meanings of this imagery. Refuting the belief that this tradition reflects Japan's agrarian origins and supposedly mild climate, Shirane traces the establishment of seasonal topics to the poetry composed by the urban nobility in the eighth century. After becoming highly codified and influencing visual arts in the tenth and eleventh centuries, the seasonal topics and their cultural associations evolved and spread to other genres, eventually settling in the popular culture of the early modern period. Contrasted with the elegant images of nature derived from court poetry was the agrarian view of nature based on rural life. The two landscapes began to intersect in the medieval period, creating a complex, layered web of competing associations. Shirane discusses a wide array of representations of nature and the four seasons in many genres, originating in both the urban and rural perspective: textual (poetry, chronicles, tales), cultivated (gardens, flower arrangement), material (kimonos, screens), performative (noh, festivals), and gastronomic (tea ceremony, food rituals). He reveals how this kind of "secondary nature," which flourished in Japan's urban architecture and gardens, fostered and idealized a sense of harmony with the natural world just at the moment it was disappearing. Illuminating the deeper meaning behind Japanese aesthetics and artifacts, Shirane clarifies the use of natural images and seasonal topics and the changes in their cultural associations and function across history, genre, and community over more than a millennium. In this fascinating book, the four seasons are revealed to be as much a cultural construction as a reflection of the physical world.