From Manet to Manhattan: The Rise of the Modern Art Market

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Our current understanding of the paintings of Manet is so heavily filtered through the lens of Impressionism that in many ways, his contributions to art history have been obscured. Called the "first modernist," his paintings marked a break with the past and paved the way for what we've come to accept as modern art in the treatment of the canvas as a flat surface. But during his time, Manet's modernist innovations were the object of ridicule. "It's flat, it isn't modeled," said Courbet of the nude in the painting Olympia. "It's like the Queen of Hearts after a bath." In Manet's Modernism, Michael Fried has set out to see Manet as his contemporaries would have seen him and to gain a more accurate reading of Manet's place in history.

Book Description

Manet's Modernism is the culminating work in a trilogy of books by Michael Fried exploring the roots and genesis of pictorial modernism. Fried provides an entirely new understanding not only of the art of Manet and his generation but also of the way in which the Impressionist simplification of Manet's achievement had determined subsequent accounts of pictorial modernism down to the present. Like Fried's previous books, Manet's Modernism is a milestone in the historiography of modern art.

"Beautifully produced. . . . [Fried's] thought is always stimulating, if not provocative. This is an important book, which all students of modernism, in the broadest sense, will find rewarding."—Virginia Quarterly Review

"An astonishing piece of scholarship that will cause readers to rethink their understanding of Manet's influence, ambition, and achievement."—Gary Michael, Bloomsbury Review

"An audaciously brilliant book, long awaited and as essential reading for philosophers as for art historians."—Wayne Andersen, Common Knowledge

"Art history of the highest originality and distinction."—Arthur C. Danto, New York Times Book Review

Customer Reviews:

Returning to the Cardinal Manet Resource: An Appreciation .......2007-01-10

Michael Fried published his magnum opus 'Manet's Modernism: or, The Face of Painting in the 1860s' in 1996, the compendium of three books, actually, that remain the most significant resource of the study of the much maligned painter Edouard Manet. In Manet's time he was essentially hidden in the rise of the more popular Impressionists, garnering criticism form his colleagues and critics alike for works that appeared to mannered, too posed, to unnaturally lighted. But fine author and historian Michael Fried introduces some new ideas about the painter that could just place him in the echelon of the first of the Modernists.

Fried 'suggests' that Manet's paintings were for the most part tableaus created in his studio from professional and non-professional models wearing costumes suggestive of the many allegories and historical events that Manet painted. That fact, in and of itself, does not venture Manet much further thatn say, Caravaggio et al, but it is the interplay between the subjects and the painter (and hence the observer) that Fried alls to our attention. The lighting of his paintings seem to have its source from the front as opposed to the back lighting or streams of side lighting usually chosen by other painters. And to make the controversy even more interesting, Fried suggests that this studio technique coupled with various observances of his models' features (eg. barefeet that suggest having worn contemporary type shoes) may - and the important word is 'may' - represent the uses of photography as the tool Manet used! Horrors! you say? But then by the time of the painting period of the 1860s that Fried is exploring, photography was well known and fairly widely used as a means of documenting history, battles, families etc. So why should an artist of Manet's importance not include this new tool in his painting paraphernalia?

It is an interesting concept and one that in today's widely used techniques among artists of not only using photographs to reference 'sittings' for later solo studio work but also to include photography in the canvases (witness Rauschenberg, etc) makes complete sense. Gone are the prejudices against photography as not being 'pure'. And it just may be that Manet, if he indeed used photographs in his painting preparation, is more important in the overall history of painting advancement than he has been regarded! A fascinating book (even at 676 pages) and a fine addition to the library. Grady Harp, January 07

Manet, Baudelaire and Photography Book 1

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Manet, Baudelaire and Photography Book 1
Larry Leroy Ligo
Manufacturer: Edwin Mellen Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Photography | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books
ASIN: 0773456953
Release Date: 2007-02-28

Product Description

This book represents a radical reappraisal of the life and work of ??douard Manet. Through a thorough examination and interpretation of nearly every major painting (and many of the prints) Manet exhibited publicly between 1861 and 1882, the author arrived at the following conclusions. First, Manet was vitally and consistently concerned with the iconographical content of his major work; second, the iconographical content of Manet s work throughout his career was determined by a single underlying set of principles; third, the underlying principles from which Manet s iconography consistently derived had their origins in the aesthetics of Charles Baudelaire; fourth, the form of Manet s Baudelairean content was consistently derived from the appearance and ontology of mid-nineteenth century photography; fifth, Manet consistently presented emblematic, veiled self-portraits in his work; and sixth, the particular feature of Baudelairean aesthetic employed by Manet at any given time in his career was determined, to a large extent, by autobiographical concerns. The author argues that Manet s widely acknowledged adaptation of japonisme and impressionism can also be seen as further manifestations of his underlying Baudelairean cosmology.

Manet, Baudelaire and Photography Book 2

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An astute iconology of Manet

Manet, Baudelaire and Photography Book 2
Larry Leroy Ligo
Manufacturer: Edwin Mellen Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 077345697X

Customer Reviews:

An astute iconology of Manet.......2007-07-03

Manet, Baudelaire and Photography Book 1 &
Manet, Baudelaire and Photography Book 2 by Larry Leroy Ligo (Edwin Mellen Press)
The point [of the interpretive act] is . . . not to add one more interpretation to the good-enough pile, but to invite one to see something which is right there in the text. --Jonathan Lear
In order to appreciate Larry L. Ligo' s monograph we need to see it in the larger context of Manet studies in particular and of the current state of art historical methodology in general. Since the early 1970s, the discipline of art history has been undergoing a number of seismic changes that Manet scholarship, including the book at hand, exemplifies.
Broadly speaking, from its origins in the second quarter of the nineteenth century to the early 1970s, art history was characterized by two competing methodological approaches. The first, grounded in the work of Immanuel Kant and, more particularly, Georg W. F. Hegel, conceived art as a sphere separate from ordinary life, one whose developments, like those in philosophy and the sciences, were essentially internal and teleological, at least in its particular historical episodes. In short, Hegel's "Zeitgeist," the spirit of the entire age, became "Kunstwollen," art's autonomous developmental will. In this conception the artist was not an individual who expressed either his own concerns or those of his patrons but a "genius" capable of channeling larger art historical forces into aesthetically compelling masterpieces. In short, biography, social history, and art history were separate spheres. The major early figures in this "formalist" tradition included Alois Riegel, Heinrich Wolfflin, and Erwin Panofsky.
Panofsky is best known, however, as the father of iconography and iconology, the study of the symbolic features of art. His pioneering work in this field, Studies in Iconology: Humanist Themes in the Art of the Renaissance (1939), was published four years after his emigration to the United States. Panofsky apparently thought of iconography/iconology as the necessary complement to stylistic analysis.
Although in the post war period Panofsky became the authoritative model for American art historians, the chief spokesperson for the "Hegelian" tradition during those years was Clement Greenberg, an art critic. Greenberg's defense of the Abstract Expressionists and their heirs was grounded in the conviction that the history of modernist art was that of art's teleological evolution away from depiction towards the purity and certainty of its own means, which for Greenberg began with Manet's elimination of half-tones. Greenberg's ideas were embraced by a generation of American modernists, including, Michael Fried, whose considerably reworked 1962 doctoral thesis, Manet's Modernism: or, The Face of Painting in the 1860s (1996) represents the survival of that current. (Fried argues that Manet's work played a pivotal role in art's two-century-long struggle to defeat theatricalization.)
The second approach, which developed in reaction to Hegel, conceived art as a product of a particular socio-political context. Its chief practitioners during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were Jacob Burckhardt, Anton Springer, and Aby Warburg. Its major spokespersons following WWII were Marxists, particularly Arnold Hauser and Frederick Antal.
Until the early 1970s, the social historians of art played only a marginal role in the practice of art history in Britain and the U. S. At the dawn of the decade art history graduate students at the leading English-speaking institutions (with the exception of Columbia, where Meyer Schapiro taught) could choose between style and iconography as their focus.
By the end of the decade, however, the situation had completely changed. Those committed to the social history of art, which they cleverly called "the New Art History," had completely routed those committed to stylistic or iconographic analysis, which they dismissed as "the Old Art History." Dissatisfaction with the conception of art as something apart from the life of its makers and users, which had been steadily mounting, climaxed during the decade as a result of two symbiotic developments. One was the feminist social movement that found sympathetic voices among women art historians eager to participate in the improvement of women's status by resurrecting ignored or underappreciated female artists and by analyzing art as evidence of how women had been (mis)treated in history. Because of Manet's interest in women as subjects, feminists have found his work a particularly fertile terrain. See, for example, the essay by Griselda Pollock in Bradford Collins' collection, Twelve Views of Manet's 'Bar' (1996).
The second development was the emergence in England of a less mechanical brand of Marxist analysis, one that conceived the artist as an individual responding to social conditions, not merely reflecting them. This neo-marxism was brought to the United States by a number of British expatriates, including, most prominently, T. J. Clark. His most important study is perhaps The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers (1984), wherein he makes a persuasive case for Manet as the first painter of the particular nexus of problematic experiences, including alienation and estrangement, that have come to characterize life in the modern industrial (i. e., capitalist) city.
During this heady, contentious decade a number of art historians reacted, in turn, to what they perceived as the neo-marxist failure to acknowledge the way artists have used their art to address purely personal concerns. Working on the assumption that the modern artist, at least, works primarily to satisfy him- or herself, one issue that must always be asked with regard to any modern art work is how it may have served the psychological needs of its maker. This question has given rise to another camp of art historians, loosely referred to as Freudians. Despite the absence of the kinds of primary documents on which such practitioners usually depend, Manet has also been the subject of considerable scholarship of this type. Nancy Locke's tantalizing study, Manet and the Family Romance (2001), is perhaps the best-known example.
Because the neo-marxists, Freudians, feminists, and their various offshoots (from the multi-culturalists to those devoted to so-called queer studies) relied so heavily on the theoretical writings of sundry authoritative "father" or "mother" figures, theory itself became a recognized branch of the discipline. The most controversial facet of this new emphasis depended on post-structuralist literary theory, particularly the writings of Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, which emphasize the impossibility of recovering authorial meaning because all communication is vague and meaning depends not on what was intended by the author/artist but on how his or her statement/image is subjectively interpreted by the viewer.
The combined fashion for "readings" and the tendency of both feminists and neo-marxists to care more about social progress than about historical accuracy have themselves created a growing backlash. An increasing number of art historians are committed to a corrective pendulum swing that would refocus attention on recovering what Umberto Eco calls intentio operis. These reformers insist that knowledge of the past may be imperfect, but it is not impossible. And to say that interpretation is conducted by a subject is not to say that a considerable degree of objectivity is not possible. According to Eco the key to a legitimate objective interpretation of artistic intent is to check it against the text as a coherent whole . . . Any interpretation given of a certain portion of a text can be accepted if it is confirmed . . . by another portion of the same text. In this sense the internal textual coherence controls the otherwise uncontrollable drives of the reader. (The Limits of Interpretation, Indiana University Press)
Ligo's monograph is an exemplary demonstration of what Eco recommends. His specific controlling device is the consistent iconography to be found throughout Manet's "text", his oeuvre. While much of the "Old Art History" needed to be discarded, Ligo demonstrates that iconography, at least, must remain an essential hermeneutic tool for inviting the viewer "to see something which is right there in the text"--which is undoubtedly the strength of Ligo's work. More specifically, what Ligo persuasively reveals is what Manet himself seems consciously to have intended. By focusing on that aspect of Manet's work Ligo's study nicely complements those of historians such as T. J. Clark, Nancy Locke, and others, who have focused more on what the artist unconsciously achieved.
Excerpt: Abundant evidence does exist, in the iconographical content of the work itself. The lion's share of the present study, therefore, will be devoted to a systematic, chronological study of Manet's work from the vantage of its iconography. Before beginning, however, I shall introduce, in Part One, the theoretical foundation upon which my iconographical interpretation of Manet's work has been based.
The first chapter examines all the known instances in which Baudelaire directly discussed Manet's work, either in his writing or in statements attributed to him and recorded by others. Although few, they are very informative. Baudelaire said nothing about Manet' s work that would contradict the basic thesis of the present study and, in fact, said much to support it. Although Baudelaire nowhere specifically affirmed that Manet's painting took the same aesthetic position as his poetry (which at the time could have meant the kiss of death for Manet's career), he did acknowledge that Manet's work included a number of features that were essential if it was to be considered modem, in Baudelaire's definition of the word.
The second chapter presents a brief outline of Baudelaire' s aesthetic: in order to recognize the Baudelairien content of Manet's iconography it will be necessary first to recognize such Baudelairien content when we see it.
The third chapter examines those features of the Baudelairien aesthetic that could have led Manet to consider photography as a logical channel through which he could transform Baudelaire's aesthetics of poetry into an aesthetics of painting. This chapter also examines how Manet may have reconciled Baudelaire's well-known antipathy toward photography with his decision to adopt photography as the
fundamental "form" from which to hang the "content" of his work.
Part One concludes with a brief chapter summarizing the many photographic features of Manet's oeuvre as they emerged in the 1860s and continued until his death in 1883.
Part Two is a systematic, chronological examination of the Baudelairien content of Manet's oeuvre as manifested in the form of photography, from 1859 to 1870. Part Two concludes with 1870 for two basic reasons. First, the war between France and Prussia, declared in August of that year, enforced a hiatus in Manet's career and, consequently, an opportunity for summation and evaluation. Second, and more important, a number of events associated with the Salon of 1870 suggest that Manet's long struggle had finally been acknowledged and appreciated.
Part Three is a brief discussion of each of the paintings Manet submitted to the Salon between 1872 (the first Salon to be held following the Franco-Prussian war) and the Salon of 1882 (the last Salon to which Manet submitted work before his death) in light of the central thesis presented in this book. The evidence reveals that in every major painting produced during these years, including his summation painting of 1882 A Bar at the Folies-Bergere (fig. 146), Manet remained faithful to the same aesthetic position he had formulated years earlier in 1859-60. We will see that Manet ended his career as he had begun it twenty-three years before--as a Baudelairien painter-photographer of modern life.

The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers

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Rutting In Nascent Pop Culture
As perfect as the paintings he discusses?
An Art History Book For Anyone Interested in History

The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers
T.J. Clark
Manufacturer: Princeton Univ Pr
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Impressionism | Schools, Periods & Styles | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0691002754

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

Rutting In Nascent Pop Culture .......2004-11-10

Seurat's,'La Grande Jatte' spelled the limits of petti-borgeoise modernity. For the previous 20 years, the Impressionists, led by the incomparably gifted, Manet, had attempted to make images describing this class, their appearance & behaviour. However,the Impressionists were bourgeoise & inevitably more aligned to their own class, and with the simultaneous rise of the dealer-critic system. Thus the steady sequence of shows, interviews & promotional literature issuing from managed,'creative' artists became the commonplace we experience in the arts today. The new class disappeared from Impressionist art when it was absorbed into the bourgeoise.Witness Monet's shrewd disavowal of the figure as he opted for his less offensive, touristy canon of landscapes. The detatchment of Manet's barmaid at the Follies, 1882,and the inanimate, even catatonic people in Degas's pictures of this period exemplify the new class. Clark argues that the emergence of this class was a product of the rebuilding of Paris by Baron von Haussmann. The old work centre of the city was guttered during the rejig, the trades & graves moved to new peripheries, and commercial entertainments, leisure & pleasure grew in their place to cater for this new white-collar mass public. The questionable role of prostitution is crucial to Clark's claims for this class and it is on this question that Manet is pre-eminent. This era announced the rise of capitalism and the spectacle society of which Clark is a major critical voice. Prodigious scholarship, marvellous insights, with fascinating, rarely reproduced 'secondary' art works to flesh out the theme; I can't think of a better way of teasing back the past to view the present.

As perfect as the paintings he discusses?.......2003-03-08

As a student of nineteenth century French painting, I think this may in fact be the finest book ever written on Parisian painting in the time of Haussmanization. Clark manages to offer an intelligent Marxist-based claim about class and the emerging Parisian landscape in the 60's without losing sight of the paintings themselves. While most scholars feel the genius of this book lies in his wonderful discussion of "what couldn't be seen in Olympia", I find the first chapter "Environs of Paris" equally fascinating in its discussion of Manet's Exposition Universelle of 1867. A MUST read for any lover of Parisian history or Manet.

An Art History Book For Anyone Interested in History.......2001-06-12

I like to think of myself as a person who is curious about a wide range of things, especially in the realm of culture and the arts. Most art history books, however, put me right to sleep, with their endless catalogs of curatorial details about brushstrokes and paint textures and influences and provenance. These detailed analyses almost never situate the paintings in any sort of context and almost never explain WHY we should be interested in these details, other than to prove ourselves worthy connoiseurs to others in the know. Clark's book is a refreshing change from such mandarin drivel. Clark begins with a lengthy discussion of the social context of the paintings he is about to discuss and only then proceeds to extended analyses of particular paintings. Clark is interested in the larger ideas and trends of the period and, most important of all, actually USES the details of the paintings as evidence in the course of making an ARGUMENT about what the paintings mean (hint to other art historians: having an argument contributes significantly to the interest of a book or article). In addition, Clark's argument about the nature of the social changes occuring in France in the 1860's and 70's is compelling and thought-provoking (be forewarned: some Marxism is involved). I found myself actually learning things about the paintings Clark discusses, and looking at them over and over again, trying to find more in them, in much the same way as I would go back to a book or a poem after reading a good piece of literary criticism. I think this book will appeal to anyone who wants to learn more about either 19th-century French painting or 19th-century France. Clark is a stimulating and perceptive guide to this crucial period in the history of painting. Bravo!

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Manet by Himself
Juliet Wilson Bareau , and Juliet Bareau
Manufacturer: Little Brown UK
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Degas by Himself (Artist by Himself)

ASIN: 0316876364

Book Description

This comprehensive work offers a unique opportunity to grasp the essential unity of the art and life of Edouard Manet, recognized as the most important avant-garde artist of his generation and the leader of the group which later became known as the Impressionists. Includes the artist's correspondence as well as 240 superb color reproductions and all 38 works submitted to the Paris Salon.

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Not Just An Art History Book
Flee this Book
A Marvelous Example of the Many Approaches to Art History

Twelve Views of Manet's Bar

Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0691036918

Book Description

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-Bergère, 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.

Customer Reviews:

Not Just An Art History Book.......2005-04-30

As a lawyer who has clients involved in the art world, and has Manet (reproductions) on his wall, I have actually recommended this book to people who are thinking about applying to law school. While this may not make immediate sense to a non-lawyer (and may turn you non-lawyers off about the book), the different methodologies, lenses, sensibilities and sometimes inflexible dogmas through which the art historians view this iconic and enigmatic painting find amazing parallels in the wildly divergent theories and perspectives in which legal philosophers, professors and judges view and interpret the complex combination of factors (cultural, societal, class-based, psychological, political, authoritarian, libertarian, scientific, agrarian, industrial, religious, racial, tribal, etc.) through which what we call "the law" develops.

Flee this Book.......2002-10-19

This is the sort of book that gives art history--especially the "new" art history--a black name. Most of the articles are written in deliberately inpenetrable prose, always hiding the the most inept questions and comments (i.e., "Did Manet really intend to paint the mirror that way?") Only Griselda Pollock's article shows any sign of intelligence. Another title for this book: "12 Ways to Kill any Interest in a Work of Art."

A Marvelous Example of the Many Approaches to Art History.......1999-12-30

This is one of those books that art history students should use to learn the complexity of the field and the many different approaches to art currently practiced by art historians. For lovers of Impressionism, this is one of the deepest and richest studies of a single work-- and what a work! Manet's BAR is one of the most mysterious and gripping works of western art, and it's hard to imagine a work more deserving of this deep treatment.

Sheer Presence: The Veil in Manet's Paris

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Sheer Presence: The Veil in Manet's Paris
Marni Reva Kessler
Manufacturer: Univ Of Minnesota Press
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Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0816647828

Book Description

Tamar’s instrument of seduction in the Hebrew Bible, Penelope’s shroud in Homer’s Odyssey, accessory of brides as well as widows, and hallmark of the religious and the wealthy, the veil has historically been an intriguing signifier. Initially donned in France for liturgical purposes and later for masked balls and as a sun- and windscreen at the seashore, face-covering veils were adopted for fashionable urban use during the reign of Napoleon III. In Sheer Presence, Marni Reva Kessler demonstrates how this ubiquitous garment and its visual representations knot together many of the precepts of Parisian life. Considering the period from the beginning of Napoleon III’s rule in 1852 to 1889, when the Paris Universal Exhibition displayed veiled North African Muslims and other indigenous colonial peoples, Kessler deftly connects the increased presence of the veil on the streets and on canvas to Haussmann’s massive renovation of Paris. The fashion of veil wearing, she argues, was imbricated with broader concerns: fears of dust and disease fueled by Haussmannization and class mixing on the city streets, changes in ideals of youth and beauty, attempts to increase popular support for imperialism, and the development of modernist art practices. A veil was protection for the proper woman from the vices associated with the modern city, preserving—at least on the surface—her femininity and class superiority. Kessler explores these themes with close readings of paintings by Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, and Edouard Manet—including Manet’s perplexing portraits of artist Berthe Morisot—as well as photographs, images from the popular press, engravings, lithographs, and academic paintings. She also mines French fashion journals, etiquette books, novels, and medical publications for clues to the veil’s complex meanings during the period. Positioning the veil directly at the intersection of feminist, formalist, and social art history, Kessler offers a fresh perspective on period discourses of public health, seduction and sexuality, colonial stereotypes, and, ultimately, an emerging modernity. Marni Reva Kessler is assistant professor of art history at the University of Kansas.

Manet to Matisse Impressionist Masters from the Marion and Henry Bloch Collection

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Manet to Matisse Impressionist Masters from the Marion and Henry Bloch Collection

Manufacturer: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Showcasing one of the nation's finest collecitons of American art, this remarkable two-volume set features 267 exceptional paintings reproduced in full color and illuminated with never-before-published research findings. Works span American history from the colonial period through the close of World War II and are by many of the nation's best-known artists, including Mary Cassatt, Thomas Cole, Childe Hassam, Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Pre-1900 subject strengths reside in portraiture with canvases by John Singleton Copley, John Singer Sargent, and Henry Ossawa Tanner; still lifes by John Peto and Severin Roesin; and landscapes from the brush of Frederic Edwin Church, Martin Johnson Heade, Fitz Henry Lane, Thomas Moran, and others. Scenes and portraits by artists including John Steuart Curry, Robert Henri, Peter Hurd, Maurice Prendergast, and John Sloan provide honest, enduring assessments of early 20th-century American life. A stunning sample of early Modernism is seen in important canvasses by Albert Bloch, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, and Marsen Hartley, to name a few. Volume 1 includes 140 extended essays on the most important canvases in the collection, which are represented in full-page color reproductions. Volume 2 reproduces in color all the works in the collection and is accompanied by thorough technical notes based on recent object examination, complete provenance, listings of directly related works, adn exhaustive exhibition and publication histories. American Paintings is an outstanding resource and a beautifully illustrated record of our country's history and culture.

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the People Magazine version
A flawed history of a fascinating time.

Olympia: Paris in the Age of Manet
Otto Friedrich
Manufacturer: Touchstone
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 0671864114

Customer Reviews:

the People Magazine version.......2005-01-12

This book is mostly a collection of spicy anecdotes, with a little historical narrative thrown in. If you're looking for any kind of in-depth analysis of the era, or of Manet's art, look elsewhere; if you want a light read, it's OK.

A flawed history of a fascinating time........2003-07-02

Paris during the reign of Louis Napoleon was a fascinating period, and its figures were larger than life: Napoleon, Eugenie, Berlioz, Wagner, Hugo, Zola, Manet, Monet and the "great horizontals". Americans, English, Germans, Italians and Russians went to Paris for culture, art and, let's face it, a little bit of sex. Unfortunately, this period needs a first-rate historian and Otto Friedrich is not that. You read "Olympia" in spite of the writer, as the history of a fascinating time and the men and women who made it great.

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