by:
Stevens, Maryanne
Stevens, Maryanne
Dumas, Ann
Stevens, Mary Anne

Publisher:
Harry N. Abrams
Published:May 1, 2000
ISBN:0810943034
Format:Hardcover
Pages:448

Description: Amazon.com
At the turn of the last century, academic painters were producing formal works, often with strongly moral overtones, at the same time that a generation of younger artists like Picasso, Matisse, and Kandinsky were exploring revolutionary new methods and ideas. By presenting the range of styles vying for attention at a single point in time, the authors of 1900: Art at the Crossroads challenge the idea of art as a linear progression. The book is the lavish catalog of an exhibition organized by the Royal Academy of London and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Its schizophrenic theme is suggested in the title of the first essay, "Art in 1900: Twilight or Dawn?" The material is organized into concepts established by the French Academy two centuries earlier--still life, the nude, landscapes, and history paintings--plus sections with more modern relevance such as cityscapes and bathers. Arranging works by theme rather than by artist or movement allows for some brilliant juxtapositions: a classical naked Danae by Carolus-Duran is paired with an abstracted Degas nude; a sentimental study of crippled boys by Bastida with a vicious Munch mother-and-child (both paintings titled Inheritance). The preoccupations of fin-de-siècle society emerge; several different treatments of Salome with the severed head of John the Baptist, for example, embody male fears of the femme fatale and her threat to bourgeois values. The book ends with a useful 70-page section of artist biographies. 1900 is a beautifully produced and stimulating study of a pivotal point in European art history. --John Stevenson

Product Description:
Exactly 100 years ago, art was at a crossroads. Painters such as Sargent, Whistler, Homer, and Rouault were widely acclaimed. Czanne, Degas, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Rodin, Munch, Klimt, and other modern masters were in their prime. And the revolutionaries who would go on to change the course of Western art-Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Kandinsky, and Nolde, among others-were just getting started.

This book, the companion volume to a major international exhibition, provides an eye-opening look at what these and other artists were creating in this watershed year. Organized by subject-from bathers, femmes fatales, and self-portraits to rural scenes, religion, and social comment-and featuring more than 300 colorplates, the book presents both famous and less well-known works. By including a wide range of paintings and sculptures executed at roughly the same time, Robert Rosenblum and MaryAnne Stevens illuminate the cultural crosscurrents that were reshaping Western art-including nationalism, psychology, and technology-and help us see familiar masterworks with a fresh eye. More than 500 illustrations, more than 300 in full color, 9 5/8 x 12"

ROBERT ROSENBLUM is professor of fine arts at New York University, a curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and a contributing editor at ArtForum. His 14 previous books include such classics as Abrams' Cubism and 20th-Century Art and, with H. W. Janson, 19th-Century Art.

MARYANNE STEVENS is senior curator at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. She has edited and contributed to many books and catalogues, including Monet in the 20th Century and The Impressionist and the City.