A major reassessment of a critical moment in the work of one of the 20th century's most important artists The works that Henri Matisse (1869-1954) executed between late 1913 and 1917 are among his most demanding, experimental, and enigmatic. Often sharply composed, heavily reworked, and dominated by the colors black and gray, these compositions are rigorously abstracted and purged of nearly all descriptive detail. Although they have typically been treated as unrelated to one another, as aberrations within the artist's oeuvre, or as singular responses to Cubism or World War I, Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917 reveals the deep connections among them and their critical role in an ambitious, cohesive project that took the act of creation itself as its main focus. This book represents the first sustained examination of Matisse's output from this important period, revealing fascinating information about his working method, experimental techniques, and compositional choices uncovered through extensive new historical, technical, and scientific research. The lavishly illustrated volume is published to accompany a major exhibition consisting of approximately 125 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and prints. It features in-depth studies of individual works such as Bathers by a River and The Moroccans, which Matisse himself counted as among the most pivotal of his career, and facilitates a greater understanding of the artist's innovative process and radical stylistic evolution. Distributed for the Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Schedule: Art Institute of Chicago (March 20 - June 6, 2010) Museum of Modern Art, New York (July 18 - October 11, 2010)

Celebrates one of the giants of French Impressionism with luxurious, large-format images Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919) was one of the founders of Impressionism and a friend of Monet, Pissarro and Sisley. He worked side-by-side with Monet on the banks of the Seine, sharing his concern with light and colour, but landscape painting never displaced his enduring love of figure painting. Delighting in the ample curves of the nudes he painted increasingly frequently in his later years, Renoir was also a master at capturing the spirit of Parisian life. His art is filled with optimism - his lifelong philosophy was that he painted because it gave him pleasure, and he shares that pleasure with those who see his work. It is almost always summer in his pictures, and in paintings like Moulin de la Galette, The Dance at Bougival and The Luncheon of the Boating Party he gives us an enduring record of contemporaries relaxing and enjoying their leisure.

A rich vein of the artist's mature work, depicting the foundations of landscape and place From the mid-1860s until shortly before his death, Paul Cezanne (1839-1906) created 27 canvases that take rock formations as their principal subjects. This is the first publication to focus exclusively on these extraordinary works. It illustrates all of Cezanne's mature paintings of rock formations, including scenes of the terrain of the forest of Fontainebleau, the Mediterranean coastal village of L'Estaque, and the area around Aix-en-Provence, alongside examples of his watercolors of these subjects. An introductory essay by John Elderfield assesses these paintings in terms of their character, development, and relationship to Cezanne's other works; their critical interpretations; and their geological and corporeal associations. Faya Causey's essay examines the Provencal context of Cezanne's rock and quarry paintings, as well as the status of geology in France during the second half of the 19th century. The catalogue section, introduced by Anna Swinbourne, chronicles the sites, presenting details of where specifically the paintings were made and of the features that they represent, together with technical aspects of particular works. Distributed for the Princeton University Art Museum Exhibition Schedule: Princeton University Art Museum

In the late 19th century, numerous Russian artists found inspiration in the style of French Impressionist painters. Often, a journey to Paris acted as a catalyst for their burgeoning interest in the movement. They developed a preference for working en plein air and aimed to capture transitory effects through a spontaneous and free handling of the brush. Many leading painters of the later Russian avant-garde arrived at their individual styles due to studying the Impressionist use of light. This lavishly illustrated volume explores the many-layered ways French Impressionism influenced the evolution of Russian art from the 1880s to the 1920s, including the work of painters as diverse as Ilya Repin, Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin, Natalia Goncharova, and Kazimir Malevich. Essays by many of the leading scholars in the field provide rich new insights into one of the most intriguing chapters of Russian modernism.

The Yellow House: Van Gogh, Gauguin and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Arles is art critic Martin Gayford's account of the tumultuous nine weeks in which the famous nineteenth century artists Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin shared a house in the small French town of Arles. Two artistic giants. One small house. From October to December 1888 a pair of at the time largely unknown artists lived under one roof in the French provincial town of Arles. Paul Gauguin and Vincent Van Gogh ate, drank, talked, argued, slept and painted in one of the most intense and astonishing creative outpourings in history. Yet as the weeks passed Van Gogh buckles under the strain, fought with his companion and committed an act of violence on himself that prompted Gauguin to flee without saying goodbye to his friend. The Yellow House is an intimate portrait of their time together as well as a subtle exploration of a fragile friendship, art, madness, genius behind a shocking act of self-mutilation that the world has sought to explain ever since. 'Gayford's fascinating depiction of the Odd Couple of art history is both moving and riveting' Daily Mail 'Masterly...a wonderfully alert and moving portrait' Mail on Sunday 'Profoundly absorbing. Gayford has reconstructed these tumultuous weeks...the reader lives them day by day, almost minute by minute. Delightful, utterly fascinating' Independent on Sunday Martin Gayford is a celebrated art critic and journalist who has written for the Spectator and the Sunday Telegraph and is the current Chief European Art Critic for Bloomberg. In his other book, Constable in Love: Love, Landscape, Money and the Making of a Great Painter, Gayford tells the true story of Romantic painter John Constable's life and loves.

It's well known that Claude Monet was a gourmand as well as an artistic genius. His culinary journals are filled with detailed recipes and notes about what he ate and with whom he shared his meals. Now, sixty of those recipes are gathered in this elegantly produced book brimming with the colors and flavors of Giverny, France. Each chapter features recipes that were served in Monet's famed yellow dining room, eaten al fresco in the gardens at Giverny, or at several of the fine restaurants along the Seine in Normandy. Beautiful reproductions of Monet's art compliment the recipes, along with photographs of the artist enjoying these dishes with his family, friends, and fellow artists. The recipes themselves, selected for their rustic appeal and use of only the freshest ingredients, range from simple galettes and hearty casseroles to fine souffle s, seafood dishes, and delicious tarts, cakes, and other pastries. A fitting tribute to the painter and his legendary aesthetic, this cookbook is the next best thing to sitting at Monet's table.

The late 19th century in France represents an extraordinary period of artistic achievement in the history of Western art. The successive artistic revolutions of Realism, Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism are here charted through more than 300 biographies of the most important painters, sculptors, and graphic artists of the time. Extensive surveys examine the life, training, work, personality, and influence of the renowned leaders of each movement, from Millet and Courbet to Monet, Manet, Renoir, and Degas, and Cezanne and Gauguin. With further in-depth articles on the lesser-known artists, this dictionary is the most comprehensive and authoritative guide to one of the most popular periods of art.

The Grove Art series, focusing on the most important periods and areas of art history, is derived from the critically acclaimed and award-winning The Grove Dictionary of Art. First published in 1996 in 34 volumes, The Dictionary has quickly established itself as the leading reference work on the visual arts, used by schools, universities, museums, and public libraries throughout the world. With articles written by leading scholars in each field, The Dictionary has frequently been praised for its breadth of coverage, accuracy, authority, and accessibility.

Tracing the arc of van Gogh's career, this volume presents his portraits and self-portraits, landscapes, and haunting interiors. Readers will learn details of van Gogh's complicated personal life including his struggles with mental illness and his close but difficult relationship with his brother, Theo. Also included here are an anthology of paintings, information on the museums where they reside, a timeline of the painter's personal and artistic highlights, and bibliography. Overflowing with impeccably reproduced images, this book offers full-page spreads of masterpieces as well as highlights of smaller details - allowing the viewer to appreciate every aspect of the artist's technique and oeuvre. Chronologically arranged, the book covers important biographical and historic events that reflect the latest scholarship. Additional information includes a list of works, timeline, and suggestions for further reading.

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. "Brilliant, lively life of long lived American Impressionist."-Kirkus Reviews "Rich in historical and archeological detail, thoroughgoing in its resurrection of the contexts and conditions of Cassatt's life as an artist."-Carol Armstrong, New York Times Book Review "Mathews informatively and entertainingly documents Cassatt's tumultuous relations with various members of both the American and Parisian avant-garde. . . . An impressive biography."-Siri Huntoon, New York Newsday "A superb piece of scholarship."-Ruth Johnstone Wales, Christian Science Monitor "In this admirable biography, art historian Mathews . . . presents a compelling portrait of this contradictory woman."-Publishers Weekly "Authoritative, unsentimental, clear as a bell, this is a model of the new biography by and about talented women."-Kennedy Fraser "This will probably be the definitive biography for our generation."-John Wilmerding, Princeton University

A landmark retrospective that examines William Merritt Chase and his lasting contribution to the history of modern art The history of modern art owes a great debt to William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), one of America's influential artists and educators. Chase was a leading member of the international artistic avant-garde and was best known for his mastery of a wide range of subjects in oil and pastel, including figures, landscapes, urban park scenes, interiors, and portraits. As a teacher and founder of the Shinnecock Summer School of Art and the New York School of Art, Chase mentored a new generation of modernists, including Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, and Joseph Stella. A century after his death, the breadth and richness of Chase's career are celebrated in this beautifully illustrated publication. Five essays by prominent scholars of American art offer new insights into Chase's multi-faceted artistic practice and his position in the international cultural climate at the turn of the 20th century. Published in association with The Phillips Collection Exhibition Schedule: The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. (06/04/16-09/11/16) Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (10/09/16-01/16/17) Ca'Pesaro-Galleria Internazionale d'Arte Moderna, Venice (02/11/17-05/28/17)

Is there such a thing as "Impressionist sculpture"? Since 1881 when Edgar Degas presented Little Dancer Aged Fourteen at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris, the term has existed along with the discourse around it. This book is dedicated to the extensive examination of the question what it would mean to translate the characteristics of Impressionist painting, such as light, colour, ephemerality, and the ethereal, into sculpture. The book features a selection of artists including Edgar Degas, Auguste Rodin, and Medardo Rosso and examines the artistic processes that traverse genres in which one medium is enhanced by others. This valuable, fascinating resource offers a unique addition to the scholarship on the Impressionist era.

Lampooned during his lifetime for his style as much as his subject matter, French painter Edouard Manet (1832-1883) is now considered a crucial figure in the history of art, bridging the transition from Realism to Impressionism. Manet's work combined a painterly technique with strikingly modern images of contemporary life, centered on the urban Paris experience. He recorded the city's parks, bars, and cabarets, often delighting in the frisson of underground or provocative content. The Paris salon rejected his Dejeuner sur l'herbe with its juxtaposition of fully dressed men and a nude woman, while the steady gaze and unabashed pose of the prostitute Olympia, a very modern reworking of Titian's Venus of Urbino, caused a society scandal. This richly illustrated book introduces Manet's work and his uniquely influential combination of Realism, Impressionism, and reworked Old Masters that would become paradigms of a brave new world for generations of modernists to come. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

This publication celebrates for the first time the important creative collaboration between the artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) and his muse, the dancer Jane Avril (1868-1943). Avril was one of the stars of Moulin Rouge in the 1890s, and was nicknamed 'La Melinite' after a form of explosive. She was known for her alluring style and exotic persona, and her fame was assured by a series of dazzlingly inventive posters designed by Lautrec.

Paul Cezanne challenged convention and pioneered new possibilities in painting. He was remarkable for his ability to perceive and paint aspects of everyday life in ways that revealed dynamic yet deeply harmonious visions of the world. But the intellectual and emotional difficulties of his achievements were considerable. Mainly self-taught, most of his career was plagued by rejection. The critics, and the public, disliked his paintings, and in 1884 Cezanne declared that Paris, the centre of the nineteenth-century art world, had defeated him. Repeatedly, he retreated into self-doubt and bad temper. This book follows Cezanne on his extraordinary artistic journey, focusing on his formative discoveries, made not in the flashy, fashionable metropolis of Paris but in provincial and rural France, often in isolation.

<div>Steven Z. Levine provides a new understanding of the life and work of Claude Monet and the myth of the modern artist. Levine analyzes the extensive critical reception of Monet and the artist's own prolific writings in the context of the story of Narcissus, popular in late nineteenth-century France. Through a careful blending of psychoanalytical theory and historical study, Levine identifies narcissism and obsession as driving forces in Monet's art and demonstrates how we derive meaning from the accumulated verbal responses to an artist's work.</div>

The joy that permeates Renoir's paintings was created by a complicated person. Even close friends and family members were often baffled by the multi-faceted and contradictory artist. Having known Renoir for over twenty years, Camille Pissarro complained in a letter to his son Lucien: `Nor can I understand Renoir's mind - but who can fathom the most changeable of men?' Here, the world's leading authority on the life and work of Auguste Renoir presents an intimate biography of this great Impressionist artist. Her narrative is interspersed with over a thousand extracts from letters by, to, and about Renoir, of which 452 come from unpublished letters. Through these words, the reader gains direct contact with Renoir, as an artist, friend and father. Renoir became hugely popular despite great obstacles: thirty years of poverty followed by thirty years of progressive paralysis of his fingers. Close friendships with scores of people who helped him with money, contacts and companionship enabled him to overcome these challenges to create more than 4,000 optimistic, life-affirming paintings. Barbara Ehrlich White brings a lifetime of research to bear in her biography to provide an unparalleled and intimate portrait of this complex artist.

Bradford Collins has assembled here a collection of twelve essays that demonstrates, through the interpretation of a single work of art, the abundance and complexity of methodological approaches now available to art historians. Focusing on Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, " each contributor applies to it a different methodology, ranging from the more traditional to the newer, including feminism, Marxism, Lacanian psychoanalysis, and semiotics. By demonstrating the ways that individual practitioners actually apply the various methodological insights that inform their research, "Twelve Views of Manet's "Bar"" serves as an excellent introduction to critical methodology as well as a provocative overview for those already familiar with the current discourse of art history. In the process of gaining new insight into Manet's work, and into the discourse of methodology, one discovers that it is not only the individual painting but art history itself that is under investigation. An introduction by Richard Shiff sets the background with a brief history of Manet scholarship and suggestions as to why today's accounts have taken certain distinct directions. The contributors, selected to provide a broad and balanced range of methodological approaches, include: Carol Armstrong, Albert Boime, David Carrier, Kermit Champa, Bradford R. Collins, Michael Paul Driskel, Jack Flam, Tag Gronberg, James D. Herbert, John House, Steven Z. Levine, and Griselda Pollock."

"Art is not what you see, but what you make others see." Edgar Degas Covering every era and over 650 artists, this comprehensive, illustrated guide offers an accessible yet expansive view of art history, featuring everything from iconic works and lesser-known gems to techniques and themes. Offering a comprehensive overview of Western artists, themes, paintings, techniques, and stories, Art: A Visual History is packed full of large, full-colour images of iconic works and lesser-known gems. Exploring every era, from 30,000BCE to the present, it includes features on the major schools and movements, as well as close-up critical appraisals of 22 masterpieces - from Botticelli's Primavera to J. M. W. Turner's The Fighting Temeraire. With detailed referencing, crisp reproductions and a fresh design, this beautiful book is a must-have for anyone with an interest in art history - from first-time gallery goers to knowledgeable art enthusiasts. What makes great art? Discover the answer now, with Art: A Visual History.

Van Gogh Irises Wire-O Journal from Galison is the perfect companion notebook. The cover features a Van Gogh's famous painting Irises, lined pages, and a large functional spiral binding.

Original compilation of 41 full-page and six half-page drawings-some finished sketches; others, studies for future works-depict dancers on stage, in the classroom, and at rehearsals. Charming, spirited views of dancers pirouetting, executing grand battements and ports de bras, practicing at the barre, adjusting their costumes in moments of repose, and more. Delightful drawings to be enjoyed by lovers of art or the dance.

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!"

In this magisterial book, Henri Dorra synthesizes more than fifty years of study to present a comprehensive examination of Paul Gauguin's symbolism. Drawing on his profound grasp of the artistic and social contexts in which Gauguin worked, Dorra provides new, complex insights into and interpretations of Gauguin's multilayered symbolism. "The Symbolism of Paul Gauguin" is lavishly illustrated with a major visual compendium of the artist's prodigious output. The highly readable narrative, based on a sophisticated understanding of Gauguin's oeuvre, offers a masterly interpretation of recurrent images and their interrelationships in the contemporaneous artistic and social context. Dorra discusses Gauguin's iconography and the artist's treatments of similar themes in various media, from prepatory drawings for paintings to related ceramics and wood carvings. He traces Gauguin's meanings in literary sources from classical mythology and the Bible to late ninetheenth-century literature. He also links the form and content of the artist's work to his unusual ancestry and upbringing. As the final scholarly work by an internationally recognized expert on nineteenth-century French symbolism, this book provides a profound new perspective on Gauguin and his work.