San Antonio College Library

This volume examines the ways pictures are interpreted, discussing the practices of interpretation that inform the modern discipline of art history in contrast to those that prevailed in earlier periods. As an introductory text on the traditions and principles of interpretation, the book explores key methods and shows how the personalities and backgrounds of particular art historians have contributed to the character of their writings.

"The Joy of Life investigates the significance of the idyllic in French painting from the early 1890s to World War I, considering a fascinating series of pastoral, mythic, and utopian landscapes. Responding to rapid artistic and social shifts in this period, French artists shaped a dreamlike imagery of mythic community, individual fantasy, and sensual joie de vivre in the midst of mass society. This illustrated study focuses on three exemplary imaginings...

"The devotion of Henri Matisse to the human figure led him to make portraits of many different sitters - members of his family, fellow artists, professionals in other fields, partrons, and various others. At key points in his career he was also an obsessive observer of himself, creating intense series of self-portraits. This book, with some 200 illustrations, offers the first comprehensive account of Matisse's activity as a maker of portraits and...

Duchamp's Nude Descending a Staircase is, with Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon, an essential step in the 20th-century artistic revolution. But in spite of its worldwide reputation, the painting has never been commented on in-depth. This program is the first to completely dedicate itself to Duchamp's masterpiece. It asks what exactly the painting represents, and to what extent it is possible to analyze the work and dissect its symbolism.

This book examines the working method, experimental techniques, and compositional choices Matisse used in works created between 1913 and 1917. The works that Henri Matisse (1869-1954) executed between late 1913 and 1917 are among his most demanding, experimental, and enigmatic. Often sharply composed, heavily reworked, and dominated by the colors black and gray, these compositions are rigorously abstracted and purged of nearly all descriptive detail....

This volume offers a complete, thematic reappraisal of Paul Cezanne's still life paintings, looking at them both within the broader context of his complex artistic and psychological development and within the wider history of the development of still life in France and early 20th-century modernism.

"A pre-eminent scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French art, Robert L. Herbert has written extensively on aspects of this subject during his long career. This book brings together some of his most important essays, works that discuss the artistic and social issues that lie behind the surfaces of notable prints and paintings by such artists as Millet, Courbet, Daubigny, Monet, Pissarro, Signac, Delaunay, Leger, and Ernst. In a preface prepared...