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Post-impressionism
Book by Rewald, John
- GenresArtNonfiction
600 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1962
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October 29, 2016
John Rewald showed, in The History of Impressionism, that narrative art history can be engaging and fun to read. His task in that book was aided by the cohesion of the story he was telling: a group of painters, all contemporaries in and around Paris, facing the same challenges, developing similar solutions, and, in many cases, exhibiting together.
This book covers the period of just seven years immediately following the last Impressionist group show, when a crack, having been rendered in the artistic establishment, widens to allow the flood of creativity ultimately descending to our contemporary art. Rewald's task is more difficult here, since he is tracing the development of three simultaneous movements: Seurat's neo-impressionism/divisionism, Gauguin's synthesism, and van Gogh's experiments known only by his own name. Yet, there is still a well-constructed (if cross-cutting) narrative that makes this book, again, a pleasure to read.
One artist who was certainly important in this period but seems to have fallen through the cracks in dividing the story between the three movements mentioned above is Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Perhaps Rewald meant to discuss him further in his planned third volume, "Post-Impressionism: From Gauguin to Matisse", which was sadly not published before the author's death in 1994.
This book covers the period of just seven years immediately following the last Impressionist group show, when a crack, having been rendered in the artistic establishment, widens to allow the flood of creativity ultimately descending to our contemporary art. Rewald's task is more difficult here, since he is tracing the development of three simultaneous movements: Seurat's neo-impressionism/divisionism, Gauguin's synthesism, and van Gogh's experiments known only by his own name. Yet, there is still a well-constructed (if cross-cutting) narrative that makes this book, again, a pleasure to read.
One artist who was certainly important in this period but seems to have fallen through the cracks in dividing the story between the three movements mentioned above is Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Perhaps Rewald meant to discuss him further in his planned third volume, "Post-Impressionism: From Gauguin to Matisse", which was sadly not published before the author's death in 1994.
Displaying 1 of 1 review