Presents a revision of the late Columbia University art historian's lectures given at Indiana University in 1961.

Defining an artistic era or movement is often a difficult task, as one tries to group individualistic expressions and artwork under one broad brush. Such is the case with impressionism, which culls together the art of a multitude of painters in the mid-19th century, including Monet, Cézanne, Renoir, Degas, and van Gogh. Basically, impressionism involved the shedding of traditional painting methods. The subjects of art were taken from everyday life, as opposed to the pages of mythology and history. In addition, each artist painted to express feelings of the moment instead of hewing to time-honoured standards. This description of impressionism, obviously, is quite broad and can apply to a wide array of styles. Nonetheless, it remains a very important school in the annals of art. Any current or budding art aficionado should become familiar with the impressionist movement and its impact on the art world. This book presents a sweeping study of this artistic period, from its origins to its manifestations in the works of some of art history's most revered painters. Following this overview is a substantial and selective bibliography, featuring access through author, title, and subject indexes.

The essays in this wide-ranging, beautifully illustrated volume capture the theoretical range and scholarly rigor of recent criticism that has fundamentally transformed the study of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. Readers are invited to consider the profound issues and penetrating questions that lie beneath this perennially popular body of work as the contributors examine the art world of late nineteenth-century France—including detailed looks at Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Degas, Cézanne, Morisot, Seurat, Van Gogh, and Gauguin. The authors offer fascinating new perspectives, placing the artworks from this period in wider social and historical contexts. They explore these painters' pictorial and market strategies, the critical reception and modern criteria the paintings engendered, and the movement's historic role in the formation of an avant-garde tradition. Their research reflects the wealth of new documents, critical approaches, and scholarly exhibitions that have fundamentally altered our understanding of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. These essays, several of which have previously been familiar only to scholars, provide instructive models of in-depth critical analysis and of the competing art historical methods that have crucially reshaped the field. Contributors: Carol Armstrong, T. J. Clark, Stephen F. Eisenman, Tamar Garb, Nicholas Green, Robert L. Herbert, John House, Mary Tompkins Lewis, Michel Melot, Linda Nochlin, Richard Shiff, Debora Silverman, Paul Tucker, Martha Ward

A History of the Modernist Novel reassesses the modernist canon and produces a wealth of new comparative analyses that radically revise the novel's history. It also considers the novel's global reach while suggesting that the epoch of modernism is not yet finished.

How can we profitably compare art and philosophy? In the first part of this collection of twenty-one writings, many previously unpublished, Schapiro uses specific works of art to elucidate the rich variety of ways in which artists and art movements have been compared with philosophical systems. His highly lucid arguments, graceful prose, and extraordinary erudition offer new opportunities to broaden and enrich our understanding of even the most familiar works of art. In the second part of the collection, Schapiro explores aspects of our everyday experiences with art: the value of modern art, social realism, revolutionary art, art as a cause of violence, the art market, the public support of artists, public art commissions, church art, and others. Here, in essays that range in a period of more than forty years, we witness Schapiro's unfailing dedication both to the liberty of the artist and to the integration of the arts in society. Throughout all of his writings, Schapiro provides us with a means of ordering our past that is reasoned and passionate, methodical and inventive. In so doing, he revitalizes our faith in the unsurpassed importance of critical thinking and creative independence.

Beyond Vision is the first English-language collection of essays on art by Pavel Florensky (1882–1937), Russian philosopher, priest, linguist, scientist, mathematician – and art historian. In addition to seven essays by Florensky, the book includes a biographical introduction and an examination of Florensky’s contribution as an art historian by Nicoletta Misler. Beyond Vision reveals Florensky’s fundamental attitudes to the vital questions of construction, composition, chronology, function and destination in the fields of painting, sculpture and design. His reputation as a theologian and philosopher is already established in the English-speaking world, but this first collection in English of his art essays (translated by Wendy Salmond) will be a revelation to those in the field. Pavel Florensky was a true polymath: trained in mathematics and philosophy at Moscow University, he rejected a scholarship in advanced mathematics in order to study theology at the Moscow Theological Academy. He was also an expert linguist, scientist and art historian. A victim of the Soviet government’s animosity towards religion, he was condemned to a Siberian labor camp in 1933 where he continued his work under increasingly difficult circumstances. He was executed in 1937.

This delightful compendium presents the National Gallery's superb collection of much-loved Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, sculpture, prints, and drawings. 300 full-color illus.