Origins of Impressionism
Origins of Impressionism

Author: Gary Tinterow

Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 0870997173

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"This handsome publication, which accompanies a major exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, is a lively and engaging account of the artistic scene in Paris in the 1860s, the years that witnessed the beginnings of Impressionism. For the first time the interactions and relationships among the group of painters who became known as the Impressionists are examined without the overworn art historical polarities commonly evoked: academic versus avant-garde, classicist versus romantic, realist versus impressionist. A host of strong personalities contributed to this history, and their style evolved into a new way of looking at the world. These artists wanted above all to give an impression of truth and to have an impact on or even to shock the public. And they wanted to measure up to or surpass their elders. This complex and rich environment is presented here - the grand old men and the young turks encounter each other, the Salon pontificates, and the new generation moves fitfully ahead, benignly but always with determination." "Origins of Impressionism gives a day-by-day, year-by-year study of the genesis of an epoch-making style." "Bibliographies and provenances are provided for each of the almost two hundred works in the exhibition, and there is an illustrated chronology. With more than two hundred superb colorplates, this informative survey is an essential work for both the general reader and the scholar."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Paintings of Lucas Van Leyden
The Paintings of Lucas Van Leyden

Author: Elise Lawton Smith

Publisher:

Published: 1992

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13:

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"Lucas van Leyden (1494?-1533) was a remarkably versatile artist. His art, noted for its realism, dramatic power, and careful execution, ranges from the small half-length narratives of his youth to the carefully constructed, multifigured representations of his later years." "Until quite recently Lucas's oeuvre was inflated with inferior copies or stylistically unrelated works, leading one scholar to describe his painting career as inconsistent and illogical. Within the last fifteen years, however, his production and development as a painter have been redefined. Despite this renewed interest, The Paintings of Lucas van Leyden is the first comprehensive appraisal of Lucas's paintings." "Smith's survey of the biographical data focuses on Lucas's disputed birth date, his artistic training, and his travels to the southern Netherlands, which brought him into contact with two of the most significant northern artists of the early sixteenth century, Albrecht Durer and Jan Gossaert. Smith reveals the influence of their work, along with the prints of Marcantonio Raimondi, on Lucas's stylistic development. His paintings are also examined with reference to recurring thematic motifs. The early allegorical genre panels - with depictions of gaming, fortune-telling, and betrothal scenes - constitute an important transition in the movement of Netherlandish art away from its roots in the medieval church, providing Lucas with themes that reappeared in his later years. Most significant, the underlying topos of the Power of Women, with its corollary warning against the temptations of the flesh, was repeated in certain of his Old Testament paintings." "The catalogue raisonne contains entries on the extant originals as well as the numerous sixteenth- and seventeenth-century copies after lost works. These inclusions double the number of compositions firmly in Lucas's oeuvre, providing us with a richer understanding of his accomplishments as a painter." "This book will be an important addition to the history of Netherlandish art, as well as an aid to students of Flemish, German, and Italian art. In addition, it should appeal to cultural historians who are concerned with issues such as the representation of women, allegories of gaming, and artistic responses to the Reformation."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Faustian Bargain
The Faustian Bargain

Author: Jonathan Petropoulos

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2000-03-30

Total Pages: 416

ISBN-13: 0199880948

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Nazi art looting has been the subject of enormous international attention in recent years, and the topic of two history bestsellers, Hector Feliciano's The Lost Museum and Lynn Nicholas's The Rape of Europa. But such books leave us wondering: What made thoughtful, educated, artistic men and women decide to put their talents in the service of a brutal and inhuman regime? This question is the starting point for The Faustian Bargain, Jonathan Petropoulos's study of the key figures in the art world of Nazi Germany. Petropoulos follows the careers of these prominent individuals who like Faust, that German archetype, chose to pursue artistic ends through collaboration with diabolical forces. Readers meet Ernst Buchner, the distinguished museum director and expert on Old Master paintings who "repatriated" the Van Eyck brother's Ghent altarpiece to Germany, and Karl Haberstock, an art dealer who filled German museums with works bought virtually at gunpoint from Jewish collectors. Robert Scholz, the leading art critic in the Third Reich, became an officer in the chief art looting unit in France and Kajetan Muhlmann--a leading art historian--was probably the single most prolific art plunderer in the war (and arguably in history). Finally, there is Arno Breker, a gifted artist who exchanged his modernist style for monumental realism and became Hitler's favorite sculptor. If it is striking that these educated men became part of the Nazi machine, it is more remarkable that most of them rehabilitated their careers and lived comfortably after the war. Petropoulos has discovered a network of these rehabilitated experts that flourished in the postwar period, and he argues that this is a key to the tens of thousands of looted artworks that are still "missing" today. Based on previously unreleased information and recently declassified documents, The Faustian Bargain is a gripping read about the art world during this period, and a fascinating examination of the intense relationship between culture and politics in the Third Reich.