An exhilarating journey through a pivotal moment in art history conducted by a captivating docent.
Monumental in scope and size, Rau’s coffee-table book tells the story of “art that changed the world” through stunning, full-color reproductions and comprehensive essays.
The practice of classifying paintings “into styles and subjects” started in the 1800s, a century that also saw the rise of journals and critics, who expanded the dialogue, the audience and, most importantly, the field of collectors for art. By breaking his study into “Movements” and “Motifs,” Rau places “artists in the tradition they best embodied,” presenting work by category, not chronology. The first nine chapters explore the stylistic camps of Europe, from the Napoleonic Wars through the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. The remaining chapters survey the transformative era’s fascinations: the Orient, animals, ships and the newly exposed politics of the Catholic Church. Although Paris was the epicenter, Rau notes the accomplishments of the Newlyn School in England, the magnificence of Venetian View Paintings and the Belle Époque’s long reach, from Copenhagen to Florence. His efforts to represent unsung female painters of the era add a unique perspective, as does his ability to connect the dots between styles and artists. He explains how painters, such as Corot—drawn to the town of Barbizon—heightened the reputation of landscape painting and how the work of students, Monet, Renoir and Pisarro—with the invention of zinc-based paints—led to the “plein air tradition” of impressionism. He notes the influence of Millet’s realist peasant paintings on post-impressionist Van Gogh. Rau leavens his scholarly tone with lively anecdotes. At the end of each chapter, brief, dynamic bios describe the artists. Although the collapse of the Academie, the rise of photography and the devastation of World War I interrupted the “freedom of thought and action” that artists of the fin de siècle were establishing for future artists, Rau resurrects their importance.
An exhilarating journey through a pivotal moment in art history conducted by a captivating docent.Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-1851497300
Page Count: 684
Publisher: Antique Collectors Club Dist
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.
A potent series of “notes” paints a multidimensional picture of Blackness in America.
Throughout the book, which mixes memoir, history, literary theory, and art, Sharpe—the chair of Black studies at York University in Toronto and author of the acclaimed book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being—writes about everything from her family history to the everyday trauma of American racism. Although most of the notes feature the author’s original writing, she also includes materials like photographs, copies of letters she received, responses to a Twitter-based crowdsourcing request, and definitions of terms collected from colleagues and friends (“preliminary entries toward a dictionary of untranslatable blackness”). These diverse pieces coalesce into a multifaceted examination of the ways in which the White gaze distorts Blackness and perpetuates racist violence. Sharpe’s critique is not limited to White individuals, however. She includes, for example, a disappointing encounter with a fellow Black female scholar as well as critical analysis of Barack Obama’s choice to sing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a hate crime at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. With distinct lyricism and a firm but tender tone, Sharpe executes every element of this book flawlessly. Most impressive is the collagelike structure, which seamlessly moves among an extraordinary variety of forms and topics. For example, a photograph of the author’s mother in a Halloween costume transitions easily into an introduction to Roland Barthes’ work Camera Lucida, which then connects just as smoothly to a memory of watching a White visitor struggle with the reality presented by the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. “Something about this encounter, something about seeing her struggle…feels appropriate to the weight of this history,” writes the author. It is a testament to Sharpe’s artistry that this incredibly complex text flows so naturally.
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780374604486
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
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