A unique and intimate look into Claude Monet's outstanding personal collection of paintings, drawings, and sculptures by fellow artists Claude Monet (1840-1926) was the founder of French Impressionism and remains one of the world's best-known and most beloved painters. His works are on view in many of the finest museums, and details of his storied life are well documented. Less well known are Monet's activities as an art collector; Monet as Collector is a sumptuously illustrated volume that traces this history, and in the process reconstitutes the artist's private collection. The masterpieces he assembled throughout his life form an outstanding, unique ensemble, one that has never before been analyzed in its entirety. The collection includes paintings, drawings, and sculptures by such artists as Delacroix, Corot, Boudin, Jongkind, Manet, Renoir, Caillebotte, Cezanne, Morisot, Pissarro, Rodin, and Signac, and offers a new kind of insight into the artistic tastes and vision of this legendary artist. Distributed for Editions Hazan, Paris Exhibition Schedule: Musee Marmottan Monet (09/14/17-01/14/18)

Paul Cezanne - a solitary genius who overcame opposition from his family, friends and the official Salon - made painting the sole preoccupation of his life. He worked unceasingly to realize his vision of a 'harmony parallel to nature', investigating the logic of colours and re-creating space. Mocked by Parisian critics, he withdrew to Provence where he laboured quietly until a later generation hailed him as the father of a new art. Here is his story, told in his own words, in those of his friends, and in the accolades of great artists, philosophers and critics.

I AM THE FIRST CONSCIOUSNESS OF CHAOS collects the key "noirs" - lithographs, etchings and charcoals - of Odilon Redon, perhaps the most enigmatic and esoteric figure in the artistic lineage that leads directly from Symbolism to Surrealism. Never previously available in a single trade volume, the majority of Redon's noirs - over 250 illustrations - are finally collated here, along with illuminating excerpts from the decadent texts which inspired their creation. Authors featured include J-K Huysmans, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Baudelaire, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, St John the Divine, Edgar Allan Poe and others; the book also includes an autobiographical introductory essay by Redon himself. With proclamations such as "everything in art occurs through voluntary submission to the advent of the unconscious" and "my originality consists in putting the logic of the visible at the service of the invisible," Odilon Redon (1840-1916) established a theoretical legacy which now places him as one of the key precursors of Surrealist thought. And along with Gustave Moreau and Georges Seurat, Redon was one of the first painters to excite the imagination of a young Andre Breton. A contemporary of the Impressionists, Redon chose to align himself with literary Symbolism, demonstrated by his friendship with Stephane Mallarme and his visual interpretations of the "decadent" texts of such writers as Baudelaire, Flaubert, Poe, and others. His reputation as a purveyor of phantasmic visions was sealed by the description of his work included in J-K Huysmans' decadent bible A Rebours, in 1884, and his rise to prominence in the 20th century was precipitated by the inclusion of many of his works at the controversial Armory Show, held in New York in 1913."

In December 1888, Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear. It is the most famous story about any artist in history. But what really happened on that dark winter night? In Van Gogh's Ear, Bernadette Murphy reveals the truth. She takes us on an extraordinary journey from major museums to forgotten archives, vividly reconstructing Van Gogh's world. We meet police inspectors and cafe patrons, prostitutes and madams, his beloved brother Theo and fellow painter Paul Gauguin. Why did Van Gogh commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious 'Rachel' to whom he presented his macabre gift? Did he really remove his entire ear? Murphy answers these important questions with her groundbreaking discoveries, offering a stunning portrait of an artist edging towards madness in his pursuit of excellence. BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK PRIMETIME BBC2 DOCUMENTARY WITH JEREMY PAXMAN

This vibrant examination of Paul Gauguin's life and work features more than fifty pieces from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek collection in Copenhagen, including paintings, wood carvings, and ceramics along with Oceanic art and Gauguin's works on paper from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco's permanent collections. Each piece is reproduced in exquisite detail, offering a superb opportunity to enjoy Gauguin's groundbreaking use of color, line, and form. Essays examine Gauguin's relationships and reveal the struggles, indulgences, awakenings, and betrayals of his personal and professional life. Other essays provide new insights into Gauguin's travels to the far reaches of the French colonial empire in the Pacific and explore his cultural identity, sexuality, and spirituality. Beautifully designed to complement Gauguin's extraordinary oeuvre, this book offers a refreshing take on an artist whose life and work continue to fascinate to the present day.

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, Cezanne, 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. Contributors of this title include: Carol Armstrong, T. J. Clark, Stephen F. Eisenman, Tamar Garb, Nicholas Green, Robert L. Herbert, John House, Mary Tompkins Lewis, Michel Melot, Linda Nochlin, Richard Shiff, Debora Silverman, Paul Tucker, and Martha Ward.

In this delightful memoir, Jean Renoir, the director of such masterpieces of the cinema as "Grand Illusion" and "The Rules of the Game," tells the life story of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the great Impressionist painter. Recounting Pierre-Auguste's extraordinary career, beginning as a painter of fans and porcelain, recording the rules of thumb by which he worked, and capturing his unpretentious and wonderfully engaging talk and personality, Jean Renoir's book is both a wonderful double portrait of father and son and, in the words of the distinguished art historian John Golding, it "remains the best account of Renoir, and, furthermore, among the most beautiful and moving biographies we have."
Includes 12 pages of color plates and 18 pages of black and white images.

Modern matters: A blow-by-blow account of groundbreaking modernismMost art historians agree that the modern art adventure first developed in the 1860s in Paris. A circle of painters, whom we now know as Impressionists, began painting pictures with rapid, loose brushwork. They turned to everyday street life for subjects, instead of overblown heroic scenes, and they escaped the power of the Salon by organizing their own independent exhibitions.After this first assault on the artistic establishment, there was no holding back. In a constant desire to challenge, innovate, and inspire, one modernist style supplanted the next: Symbolism, Expressionism, Futurism, Dada, Abstract Art, renewed Realism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop, Minimal and conceptual practice.This indispensable overview traces the restless energy of modern art with a year-by-year succession of the groundbreaking artworks that shook standards, and broke down barriers. Introductory essays outline the most significant and influential movements alongside explanatory texts for each major work and its artist.About the series: Bibliotheca Universalis Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, the name TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing. Bibliotheca Universalis brings together nearly 100 of our all-time favorite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.Bookworm s delight never bore, always excite!"

Paul Cezanne, whom Pablo Picasso called `the father of us all', is widely considered to be 20th-century modernism's presiding genius. Cezanne's pioneering synthesis of a theory of form with the visual immediacy of Impressionism in the late 19th century inspired Henri Matisse and the Fauves and led to the development of Cubism by Picasso and Georges Braque. This latest volume in the MoMA Artist Series guides readers through ten of Cezanne's most memorable achievements, selected fromThe Museum of Modern Art's substantial collection of his work. His iconic figure paintings The Bather and Boy in a Red Vest are featured, along with emblematic still lifes and landscapes from earlier and later years. A lively essay by Carolyn Lanchner accompanies each work, illuminating its significance and placing it in its historical moment in the development of modern art.

VINCENT VAN GOGH

Few artists command such fervent devotion amongst art lovers and such high prices in the salerooms of the art world. Love him or hate him, Vincent van Gogh is one of a handful of artists who is now a cultural event.

Stuart Morris's study concentrates on the paintings first, and employs van Gogh's eloquent letters as an aesthetic reference point. Much of the book is concerned with metacriticism - the way van Gogh has been critically received over the years.

Vincent van Gogh is one of the most celebrated of painters. It's a bit of a mystery. The mystery (or irony) is that his paintings have commanded the highest prices in the auction rooms of the contemporary art world (88 million dollars, 53 million dollars, and so on), yet he only managed to sell one painting during his lifetime, and he lived in poverty (with financial support from his brother Theo).

Why is Vincent van Gogh so popular? His legend has developed relatively rapidly. His art is loved by the critics and public. The crazy prices paid for single oil paintings are the manifestations of the fervour that van Gogh seems to generate. He is one of the handful of painters who cause great excitement every time exhibitions of his work are put on. One thinks also of Claude Monet, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonaroti and Pablo Picasso. These are artists that the public go mad for, so that when they are exhibited, there are huge queues trailing around the block.

The 1990 centenary celebrations of 'poor Vincent' showed how much he is exalted. There were films about him, discussions and conferences, TV documentaries, magazine articles, reviews, letters, and much merchandize was sold, to the great glee of the manufacturers: posters, tea towels, calendars, mugs, souvenirs of all kinds. What would the dishevelled, obsessive man who painted those small canvases in the years up to 1890 in Southern France make of the amazing fuss that now surrounds his work? What would van Gogh think of just one of his paintings being bought for 88 million dollars? It is a huge sum even in today's expensive world. You could build a hospital or two with the money. Imagine it Did Vincent know that when he painted those blue irises on that small, standard-size canvas, that it would one day be 'worth' millions of dollars?

I shall count myself very happy if I can manage to work enough to earn my living, for it worries me a lot when I think that I have done so many pictures and drawings without ever selling one.

Like the workers he depicted in numerous images, Vincent van Gogh himself worked very hard to improve his art. With a dogged determination van Gogh copied the Old Masters, as well as Japanese prints. His determined self-education and self-improvement paid off, resulting in more than 800 paintings in about 8 years. The years of van Gogh's art are relatively few - nearly all of the important works were made in the decade 1880-90. Hence his paintings are credited in art history books with the month and sometimes the day as well as the year of production. For most artists, 1889 would suffice. For van Gogh, the credit is October 1889. Producing 800 paintings in 8 years is an average of a hundred per year, or one every three and a half days. More likely, van Gogh would have worked on a number at the same time, or within a short space of time.

"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 Burger 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 Burger
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.

Celebrations of city streets; tranquil vistas of the countryside and seashore; enchanting images of the leisured classes in domestic interiors or at fashionable Parisian cafes -- the work of the Impressionists gives pleasure to art lovers everywhere. But while Impressionism today may appear 'natural' and effortless, contemporaries were shocked by the loose handling of paint and the practice of painting out-of doors. In defiance of the conservative official Salon, the Impressionists -- led by Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas -- sought to capture the immediacy of experience.

This fascinating, comprehensive study brings together the most recent research on Impressionism. James Rubin makes accessible its philosophical, political and social context. As well as the acknowledged masters, our attention is drawn to lesser known Impressionists such as Berthe Morisot, Mary Cassatt and Gustave Caillebotte.

This is a fascinating look at one of the defining images of the Impressionist movement. Manet Paints Monet focuses on an auspicious moment in the history of art. In the summer of 1874, Edouard Manet (1832-1883) and Claude Monet (1840-1926), two outstanding painters of the nascent Impressionist movement, spent their holidays together in Argenteuil on the Seine River. Their growing friendship is expressed in their artwork, culminating in Manet's marvelous portrait of Monet painting on a boat. The boat was the ideal site for Monet to execute his new plein-air paintings, enabling him to depict nature, water, and the play of light. Similarly, Argenteuil was the perfect place for Manet, the great painter of contemporary life, to observe Parisian society at leisure. His portrait brings all the elements together - Manet's own eye for the effect of social conventions and boredom on vacationers, and Monet's eye for nature - but these qualities remain markedly distinct. With this book, esteemed art historian Willibald Sauerlander describes how Manet, in one instant, created a defining image of an entire epoch, capturing the artistic tendencies of the time in a masterpiece that is both graceful and profound.

Medardo Rosso (1858-1928) is one of the most original and influential figures in the history of modern art, and this book is the first historically substantiated critical account of his life and work. An innovative sculptor, photographer, and draftsman, Rosso was vital in paving the way for the transition from the academic forms of sculpture that persisted in the nineteenth century to the development of new and experimental forms in the twentieth. His antimonumental, antiheroic work reflected alienation in the modern experience yet showed deep feeling for interactions between self and other. Rosso's art was transnational: he refused allegiance to a single culture or artistic heritage and declared himself both a citizen of the world and a maker of art without national limits. In this book, Sharon Hecker develops a narrative that is an alternative to the dominant Franco-centered perspective on the origin of modern sculpture in which Rodin plays the role of lone heroic innovator. Offering an original way to comprehend Rosso, A Moment's Monument negotiates the competing cultural imperatives of nationalism and internationalism that shaped the European art world at the fin de siecle.

Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) is arguably one of the most important artists in the development of modern art, being as he was a key bridge between the stirrings of airy abstraction in Impressionism and the solid redefinition of space espoused by Cubism. Exhibiting with - but often apart - from the Impressionists, always striving to please the establishment and yet ultimately following his own path to find new ways of representing visual experience, his work is suffused with life and colour but also retains its power in the knowledge of its influence. This gorgeous book introduces the reader to Cezanne through an accessible discussion of the artist in context, his life, work and legacy, followed by a curated selection of full-page reproductions of his most representative and impressive work, from his many portraits and still lifes to his figure groups (the iconic bathers) and landscapes (his precious Montagne Sainte-Victoire).

Fifty years ago, Canada celebrated its hundredth anniversary of Confederation. At Expo 67, in communities across the country, we celebrated our coming of age as a modern, bilingual, bicultural nation-a place where anyone from any culture could thrive. But beneath the applause and the cheerful music was a darker note. In his public address at the festivities, Chief Dan George lamented what Canada's centennial did not celebrate: the colonization and marginalization of Indigenous peoples who lived on these "good lands." Now in the year of Canada's 150th birthday, we honour a new understanding of our past. We have begun-at long last-to share in a process of national reconciliation and to come together to reimagine our contribution to a global future. Artists give form and meaning to both the land and the invisible landscape of the spirit, both the past and the future. The works of Canada's artists-both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, historical and contemporary-invite us to see our country and our place within it with new eyes. This book celebrates their visions, as well as the good lands we have shared and shaped for millennia that, in turn, have shaped us.

A century after the death of Paul Gauguin, our knowledge of his life and work has made huge strides.
The present work covers the youth and early maturity of this pioneering artist and attempts a summation. It also offers a complete catalogue of the paintings, in the process thoroughly updating the original Wildenstein catalogue of 1964. These first two volumes take the reader through to the end of 1888, a year of profound upheavel in French painting. That was the year in which Gauguin and his friends, by a collaborative effort, arrived at Synthetism and, by rejecting representation in depth, freed Western painting of laws that had governed it since the Renaissance.
But Synthetism was also a form of primitivism. The society in which Gauguin lived was--already--a technical and materialist one, which contained the seeds of all that the 20th century became. Gauguin was one of the first to seek, in reaction to this civilization, a form of inspiration deriving from the timeless origins of humanity.
Although these two volumes are the product of rigorous research, they are studded with illustrations and are by no means intended for specialists alone. Commentary on each work offers a step-by-step analysis of Gauguin's artistic development, while reconstructing the artist's experience and the aesthetic and socio-cultural issues of his times.
The lively detail of the chronology describes the events of Gauguin's life, along with those of his friends; thanks to extensive research in unpublished archives, it also casts completely new light on Gauguin's ancestry.
The introduction offers an analysis of the period and an in-depth portrait of this great artist.
This exhaustivework is carefully designed so that each entry and insert can be read in isolation, though a system of cross-referencing ensures the continuity of the work and restores the overall trajectory of Gauguin's development.

Throughout his career, Henri Matisse used imagery as a means of engaging critically with poetry and prose by a diverse range of authors. Kathryn Brown offers a groundbreaking account of Matisse's position in the literary cross-currents of 20th-century France and explores ways in which reading influenced the artist's work in a range of media. This study argues that the livre d'artiste became the privileged means by which Matisse enfolded literature into his own idiom and demonstrated the centrality of his aesthetic to modernist debates about authorship and creativity. By tracing the compositional and interpretive choices that Matisse made as a painter, print maker, and reader in the field of book production, this study offers a new theoretical account of visual art's capacity to function as a form of literary criticism and extends debates about the gendering of 20th-century bibliophilia. Brown also demonstrates the importance of Matisse's self-placement in relation to the French literary canon in the charged political climate of the Second World War and its aftermath. Through a combination of archival resources, art history, and literary criticism, this study offers a new interpretation of Matisse's artist's books and will be of interest to art historians, literary scholars, and researchers in book history and modernism.

Michael Doran has gathered texts by contemporaries of Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)--including artists, critics, and writers--that illuminate the influential painter's philosophy of art especially in his late years. The book includes historically important essays by a dozen different authors, including Emile Bernard, Joaquim Gasquet, Maurice Denis, and Ambroise Vollard, along with selections from Cezanne's own letters. In addition to the material included in the original French edition of the book, which has also been published in German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese, this edition contains an introduction written especially for it by noted Cezanne scholar Richard Shiff. The book closes with Lawrence Gowing's magisterial essay, "The Logic of Organized Sensations," first published in 1977 and long out of print. Cezanne's work, and the thinking that lay behind it, have been of inestimable importance to the artists who followed him. This gathering of writings will be of enormous interest to artists, writers, art historians--indeed to all students of modern art.