Bernard Buffet (1928 ndash; 1999) is an artist who was once feted as being one of France's most important painters and the legitimate successor of Picasso. As the 'painter of existentialism' and the man who found the images to describe post-War sensitivities, Buffet's works had a visual presence and renown in West Europe that almost no other painter has achieved since. This immense popularity in the 1950s and 1960s was followed by critics and the institutional art world both rejecting his work most incisively. The vitriolic tone of this rejection intimates that Buffet should be considered someone who was suppressed rather than forgotten. He hardly varied his distinctive, expressive style through the decades and with it Bernard Buffet transformed an inconceivable number of themes, be they violent or trivial, into paintings. Edited by Udo Kittelmann, this is the first monograph on Buffet in many years and it re-positions the artist back into the art world. English, German and French text.

"The vibrant late paintings of Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) are considered by many to be among his finest achievements. Working in a small converted bedroom of his villa in the south of France, Bonnard suffused his late canvases with radiant Mediterranean light and dazzling color. Although his subjects were close at hand-usually everyday scenes taken from his immediate surroundings, such as the dining room table being set for breakfast, or a jug of flowers perched on the mantelpiece - Bonnard rarely painted from life. Instead, he preferred to make pencil sketches in small diaries and then rely on these, along with his memory, once in the studio." "This volume, which accompanies the first exhibition to focus on the interior and related still-life imagery from the last decades of Bonnard's long career, presents more than seventy-five paintings, drawings, and works on paper, many of them rarely seen in public and in some cases, little known. Although Bonnard's legacy may be removed from the succession of trends that today we consider the foundation of modernism, his contribution to French art in the early decades of the twentieth century is far more profound than history has generally acknowledged. In their insightful essays and catalogue entries the authors bring fresh critical perspectives to the ongoing reappraisal of Bonnard's reputation and to his place within the narrative of twentieth-century art."--Jacket

The invention of collage by Picasso and Braque in 1912 proved to be a dramatic turning point in the development of Cubism and Futurism and ultimately one of the most significant innovations in twentieth-century art. Collage has traditionally been viewed as a new expression of modernism, one allied with modernism's search for purity of means, anti-illusionism, unity, and autonomy of form. This book - the first comprehensive study of collage and its relation to modernism - challenges this view. Christine Poggi argues that collage did not become a new language of modernism but a new language with which to critique modernism. She focuses on the ways Cubist collage - and the Futurist multimedia work that was inspired by it - undermined prevailing notions of material and stylistic unity, subverted the role of the frame and pictorial ground, and brought the languages of high and low culture into a new relationship of exchange.

Published to complement a 2004 exhibition in Paris, this book presents black and white photo images of French artist Buffet (1928-1996) at work in his studio, from his youthful days as an artist in 1948 through 1996.