Search results for ""Author Simon Kelly""

The nineteenth century in France witnessed the emergence of the structures of the modern art market that remain until this day. This book examines the relationship between the avant-garde Barbizon landscape painter, Théodore Rousseau (1812-1867), and this market, exploring the constellation of patrons, art dealers, and critics who surrounded the artist. Simon Kelly argues for the pioneering role of Rousseau, his patrons, and his public in the origins of the modern art market, and, in so doing, shifts attention away from the more traditional focus on the novel careers of the Impressionists and their supporters. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book offers fresh insight into the role of the modern artist as professional. It provides a new understanding of the complex iconographical and formal choices within Rousseau’s oeuvre, rediscovering the original radical charge that once surrounded the artist’s work and led to extensive and peculiarly modern tensions with the market place.

Read more less

Holding up a mirror to the present, the exhibition homes in on our current conflicts – from right-wing populism to identity politics. It allows us to ask, from the distance of a generation, what time we are actually living in. Is Postmodernity really over – or are we in the middle of it? The year 1967 marked the beginning of our present: Modernism, which had presumed that everything could be sorted out through equal housing, furniture and rights for all, was abandoned, and from its ruins a bizarre, eccentric world was born. Architects declared the amusement park the new ideal city; designers shook off the yoke of good taste, and the conflict between the two dominant political systems gave way to the struggle for self-realisation. New media synchronised the globe, and images became the arena in which contests for style and recognition were waged. Showcasing spectacular examples of design, architecture, cinema, pop, philosophy, art and literature, the exhibition chronicles the dawn of the information society, the unleashing of the financial markets, the great age of subcultures, disco, punk and techno-pop, shoulder pads and Memphis furniture. It also chronicles the sudden surge in the construction of museums, the new temples of art and culture, to which we owe the largest exhibit, the Bundeskunsthalle itself. When the Bundeskunsthalle opened in 1992, the Cold War was over, and Francis Fukuyama published his famous book, in which he proclaimed ‘the end of history’ as such. Thirty years later, it is clear that history did not come to an end, and Postmodernism is once again a matter of considerable debate.

Read more less

A monumentalizing portrayal of a peasant bowed over by brutal toil, "Man with a Hoe" (ca. 1860–62) by Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) is arguably the most art historically significant painting in the J. Paul Getty Museum’s collection of nineteenth-century European art. This volume situates the painting in the arc of Millet’s career and traces its fascinating and contentious reception, from its scandalous debut at the 1863 Paris Salon to the years following its acquisition by American collectors in the 1890s. The essays examine the painting’s tumultuous public life, beginning in France, where critics attacked it on aesthetic and political grounds as a radical realist provocation; through its transformative movement in the art market during the remaining years of the artist’s life and following his death; to its highly publicized arrival in California as a celebrated masterpiece. In the United States it was enlisted to serve philanthropic interests, became the subject of a popular poem, and once again became embroiled in controversy, in this case one that was strongly inflected by American racial politics. This is the first publication dedicated to the work since its acquisition by the Getty Museum in 1985

Read more less

An intensely intellectual painter, Robert Motherwell is renowned for his distinctive Abstract Expressionist style. The seminal artist permeated his gestural works with an expressionism and austerity reflective of the human psyche; at the same time his oeuvre addressed political and humanitarian themes. Robert Motherwell: Pure Painting is an in-depth exploration of his artistic practice. Leading art scholars examine the American artist’s turn from Surrealism to abstraction and analyze the major series that developed over his fifty-year career. The catalogue studies the dialogue between Motherwell’s art and the nineteenth-century French painting tradition, investigates his relationship to Spanish techniques and processes, with an emphasis on their underlying political significance, and delves into Motherwell’s use of ochre pigment, with its evocation of both deep geological time and avant-garde practices.

Read more less

An insightful overview of how Millet influenced and inspired many modernist artists that followed him Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) was one of the most important artists of the Barbizon School. Through his publicly exhibited works and their critical reception, Millet was of crucial significance to modernist painters. Millet’s modernity is evident in his varied subjects—from peasant themes to landscapes to nudes—and his anti-academic, rough paint application. He also produced highly inventive pastels and drawings.Jean-François Millet examines the international range of artists whom he influenced. For instance, Millet was an artistic hero for Vincent van Gogh, whose treatment of numerous motifs—including The Sower and Starry Night—was directly inspired by the older artist. Van Gogh even painted a remarkable series of 21 “copies” after Millet’s work while living in the south of France in the final year of his life. Other artists on whom Millet had a profound impact include Camille Pissarro, Georges Seurat, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Winslow Homer, and, in the 20th century, most notably Edvard Munch and Salvador Dalí.Published in association with the Van Gogh Museum and the Saint Louis Art MuseumExhibition Schedule:Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (October 4, 2019–January 12, 2020)Saint Louis Art Museum (February 16–May 17, 2020)

Read more less

A novel look at the relationship between Impressionist painting and photography and the forging of a national identity in France between 1850 and 1880 Between 1850 and 1880, Impressionist landscape painting and early forms of photography flourished within the arts in France. In the context of massive social and political change that also marked this era, painters and photographers composed competing visions of France as modern and industrialized or as rural and anti-modern. Impressionist France explores the resonances between landscape art and national identity as reflected in the paintings and photographs made during this period, examining and illustrating in particular the works of key artists such as Édouard Baldus, Gustave Le Gray, the Bisson Frères, Édouard Manet, Jean-François Millet, Claude Monet, Charles Nègre, and Camille Pissarro. This ambitious premise focuses on the whole of France, exploring the relationship between landscape art and the notion of French nationhood across the country’s varied and spectacular landscapes in seven geographical sections and four scholarly essays, which provide new information regarding the production and impact of French Impressionism.Distributed for the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the Saint Louis Museum of ArtExhibition Schedule:Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art(10/19/13-02/09/14)Saint Louis Art Museum(03/16/14–07/06/14)

Read more less