by:
Homburg, Cornelia
Childs, Elizabeth C.
House, John
Thomson, Richard

Publisher:
Rizzoli
Published:January, 1901
ISBN:0847823326
Format:Hardcover
Pages:144

Description: Amazon.com
Most people think of van Gogh as a tortured loner, but the engrossing Vincent van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard makes plain his great desire to be part of the art world of his time. Focusing on the years between 1886 (when he came to Paris) and 1890 (the year of his death), four art historians examine the competitive spirit of young radical painters who searched for ways to express their reactions to an industrialized world increasingly remote from the idealized values of peasant life. The painters (who included Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Signac, and and#201;mile Bernard) were vastly different from one another in style and temperament. Yet van Gogh embraced them all as "painters of the petit boulevard"--fellow unrecognized artists toiling in out-of-the-way studios and showing their work in cafés rather than in swank galleries. Dreaming of founding a colony of like-minded painters he called "The Studio of the South," van Gogh decamped to Arles in 1888. But the only artist who joined him, for two stressful months, was Gauguin. Both were loners, and differences loomed large. While van Gogh worked from nature, conveying his physical engagement with thick marks on canvas, Gauguin looked inward, abstracting objects with a thin application of paint. Even on a personal level, Gauguin's swaggering ease with the local women magnified van Gogh's insecurities. Each essay illuminates a different aspect of the complex personal, social, and artistic motivations that fueled each "petit boulevard" artist's search for a personal artistic identity. Lavishly illustrated and fluidly written, this book is the catalog for an exhibition of the same name at the St. Louis Art Museum (through May 13, 2001) and the Stand#228;delsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt (June 8-September 2, 2001). --Cathy Curtis

Product Description:
Parisian avant-garde artists of the late 1880s and early '90s made up the circle Vincent and Theo van Gogh called the "petit boulevard." Among this group of struggling artists, Vincent, Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Emile Bernard, Georges Seurat and others fought, with brilliant results, to establish their careers and create a truly modern art.

Vincent van Gogh and the Painters of the Petit Boulevard is a fresh look at this post-impressionist generation, and the extraordinary array of styles and movements they created. From the pointillist style of Seurat and his group, to the emerging symbolism of Gauguin and his circle, to the unique vision of Vincent van Gogh, this was the most exciting and influential avant-garde in the history of modern art. Bringing a wealth of new scholarship and insights to a neglected moment in art history, this book gathers together masterworks by some of the most popular artists of all time.