This work presents a fresh perspective on painting in the middle of the past two centuries. Content includes: Ancient and Modern Art Precursors of the New Era Édouard Manet The Early Impressionists Auguste Renoir Paul Cézanne The Neo-impressionists Gauguin and the Pont-aven School Degas and his Circle Henri-Matisse Picasso and Cubism Futurism Synchromism The Lesser Moderns Conclusion

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 early work by S. S. Van Dine was originally published in 1922 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introduction. 'Modern Painting, its Tendency and Meaning' is one of Van Dine's non-fiction works on art. S. S. Van Dine was born Willard Huntington Wright in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1888. He attended St. Vincent College, Pomona College and Harvard University, but failed to graduate, leaving to cultivate contacts he had made in the literary world. At the age of twenty-one, Wright began his professional writing career as literary editor of the Los Angeles Times. In 1926, Wright published his first S. S. Van Dine novel, The Benson Murder Case. Wright went on to write eleven more mysteries. The first few books about his upper-class amateur sleuth, Philo Vance, were so popular that Wright became wealthy for the first time in his life. His later books declined in popularity as the reading public's tastes in mystery fiction changed, but during the late twenties and early thirties his work was very successful.

Essay by Robert Storr. Foreword by Glenn D. Lowry.