Impressionism

Fülszöveg

In 1874, a group of young artists decided that they would show their works to the public direct, through exhibitions which they would organize themselves, rather than submit any longer to the authority of the Salon and the Aca-démie. The most important members of this group were Pissarro, Degas, Sisley, Cézanne, Monet, Renoir, and Morisot, and they have entered art history as "Impressionists". Continuing Manet's independent spirit, they were regarded immediately as avant-garde, and their first exhibition was a milestone in the development of modern art.
Pictures that appear to us today as accomplished depictions of nature still exhibited the incomplete character of something new at the time of origin. The present volume shows the effect of the paintings by the "luminarists" on contemporary critics and artists. Some of the reviews of the pictures have become almost as famous as the works themselves. This book tells the story of Impressionism by means of pictures and textual... Tovább

Fülszöveg

In 1874, a group of young artists decided that they would show their works to the public direct, through exhibitions which they would organize themselves, rather than submit any longer to the authority of the Salon and the Aca-démie. The most important members of this group were Pissarro, Degas, Sisley, Cézanne, Monet, Renoir, and Morisot, and they have entered art history as "Impressionists". Continuing Manet's independent spirit, they were regarded immediately as avant-garde, and their first exhibition was a milestone in the development of modern art.
Pictures that appear to us today as accomplished depictions of nature still exhibited the incomplete character of something new at the time of origin. The present volume shows the effect of the paintings by the "luminarists" on contemporary critics and artists. Some of the reviews of the pictures have become almost as famous as the works themselves. This book tells the story of Impressionism by means of pictures and textual records — the personal battles, the debates, the problems and their solutions, which were connected with the new manner of painting, one leading in unforeseen directions and breaking with traditional styles of depiction through its reference to the variable chaos of reality. The experiences bound up with this are clearly set forth, both through the letters and comments of the artists themselves and in the texts by friends and contemporary critics, many of whom were writers and poets, among them Baudelaire, Zola, Valéry, Mallarmé, Huysmans, Laforgue and Mirbeau. The subsequent interpretation of Impressionism up to and including changed art and art criticism in the 20th century is made apparent through texts by such artists as Légér, Kan-dinsky, Masson, Matisse and Hofmann. Today's critics, philosophers and art historians, among them Meyer Schapiro, Gaston Bachelard, Clement Greenberg and Lawrence Gowing, are also given a chance to speak.
The volume includes 116 colour plates — four of them large-format fold-out pages - and 117 black-and-white reproductions of photographs, documents, and contemporary sketches, prints and drawings. Thanks to the textual records that it contains from the most varied areas of private and cultural life, this work goes beyond the customary bounds of such an account, rendering it a comprehensive contribution to the history of Impressionism. Vissza