Modern Art 19th And 20th Centuries

This chronologically organized and comprehensive anthology of readings tells the whole story of art in America from 1900 to the present. It focuses on the themes, issues, and controversies that occurred throughout the century--using selections that are contemporary with the art--by artists, critics, exhibition organizers, poets, politicians, and other writers on culture. Some recurring themes and issues include issues of identity; the changing nature of modernism and modernity; nationalism; art as individual or community expression; the nature of public art; and the role of criticism, censorship, and government intervention. Texts by well-known writers include Meyer Schapiro, Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried, Donald Kuspit, and Kate Linker. A guide for those interested in both the standard interpretations of American art and in alternative readings.

This revised edition of Meyer Schapiro's exceptional collection of essays includes a new preface by Adrienne Baxter Bell. Considered the master of the essay, Meyer Schapiro approached scholarship with a great deal of imaginative historical perception, as well as an "unashamed passion for the works of art before him," rendering his writings highly engaging and appealing to a broad range of readers. A rich diversity of writing can be found within this collection, which offers studies of individual artists (Cézanne, Picasso, Mondrian, and Seurat) as well as essays on the reception and social meanings of modern art. Yet, even in his most aesthetic analyses, Schapiro never lost sight of the heroic efforts of the individual artists and of the cultural contexts in which their works were made and received. Modern Art won the National Book Critics Circle Award (1978) and the Mitchell Prize for Art History (1979) and was a nominee for a National Book Award (1979).

This Tiny Folio book highlights some of the most celebrated European and American paintings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that are part of the permanent collection at The Art Institute of Chicago. Included in this collection are numerous masterpieces of Realism, Impressionism, Post–Impressionism, Surrealism, Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, and other aspects of Modernism. Today a number of these paintings are revered as icons of modern Western culture, emblems of the inspired experimentation that has taken place on both sides of the Atlantic. For the last century, the Art Institute has supported the achievements of the most distinguished artists from Europe and America, acquiring and exhibiting now–beloved works of Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, and others. This folio is presented as both an introduction to this collection and as a survey of the styles, subjects, and themes of Western art of the last two centuries, from the linear classicism of Jean–Auguste–Dominique Ingres through the optical studies of Claude Monet and the Impressionists; from the lyrical, colorful abstractions of Vasily Kandinsky to the fractured picture planes of Pablo Picasso and the Cubists; from the enigmatic compositions of Salvador Dali and the Surrealists to the media–appropriated Pop–art portraits of Andy Warhol. These magnificent paintings eloquently narrate the discussions of the nature of art, quality, innovation, style, and form that have defined the modern era in art history.

The examples convey not only these major themes but also the painters' belief in the progress of civilization through science and industry. The book thus expands the scope of Impressionist celebrations of modernity to include what might be called Impressionism's "other landscape" and proposes that in the Impressionists' effort to forge a modern landscape art, those signs of modernity defined their vision most clearly."--BOOK JACKET.

Comprehensive, authoritative, highly readable and generously illustrated, Herbert Read's text has been rightly acknowledged as "by far the best introduction to the subject" (Alan Bowness) and "throughout, lively and closely packed" (Hugh Casson). Here is modern painting from its roots in the work of Cezanne, through Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism and Dada in the early decades of the twentieth century and on to Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s. The works of Frank Stella, Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg, amongst many others, are discussed and analyzed by Caroline Tisdall and William Feaver in a lively final chapter that brings us up to present times and points to exciting new developments.