Book Description

With a text by the artist's grandnephew, Bonnard brings a special intimacy to the exuberant, beautiful domestic interiors, pastoral landscapes, still lifes, and portraits of the French artist Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947), whose vibrant, colorful palette drew streams of art lovers to a recent retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

173 illustrations, 112 in full color ... Read more

Reviews (1)

BONNARD THE MASTER OF COLOR
Having missed the 1998 NEW YORK exibition because i live 400 milles from the city, i could catch up with that book that i found well done. PIERRE BONNARD is one of the artist i admire the most. For those of you unfamiliar with him, i suggest you buy ANTOINE TERRASSE's book. It's not to expensive and it is worth it.His works often have a dreamlike atmosphere to them ,and his wife MARTHE has been represented in the bathtub many times.Among BONNARD's friends were the NATHANSON:THADEE the editor of the REVUE BLANCHE and his beautiful WIFE MISIA, who was fond of artists;VUILLARD was his lifelong friend, and PIERRE had a long correspondance with HENRI MATISSE. When they met, they used to compare eachother's works. ... Read more

Book Description

The French artist Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947) was a successful painter, draughtsman, photographer, printmaker, illustrator, and interior designer and his works continue to surprise and overwhelm new generations of art lovers. This handsome catalogue brings together more than 110 paintings, drawings, lithographs, and photographs, concentrating on works from both public and private collections, and focusing on the evolution of Bonnard's artistic career in the twentieth century.

It follows the artist's stylistic and iconographic development, giving a comprehensive view of Bonnard's career from his early Nabi works of 1890-1900 to his large decorations of 1905-1912 and his various nudes, portraits and landscapes of the 1920s and 1930s. The book closes with a group of stunning paintings and works on paper--predominantly still lifes, sublime nudes, portraits, and Mediterranean landscapes--created in the late 1930s through World War II.

Pierre Bonnard offers new insights into one of the most complex yet highly consistent artists of the twentieth century whose work was and still is influential on modern painters. From a contemporary perspective, Bonnard appears to many as a profoundly radical artist whose works have an extraordinary power to fascinate and inspire the viewer. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (1)

Good Book on an Underrated Painter
"Early and Late" is the book that accompanied the Phillips Collection's 2002 exhibit on Bonnard's early and late works.The exhibitition was beautiful.The book, of course, doesn't do justice to the colors in the originals, but the book's prints, particularly the details, are very good.

The book includes a chronology of Bonnnard's life, three excellent essays, and some notes from Bonnard's journals.One essay discusses Bonnard's innovations, especially early on and especially his use of photography as a way to prepare for his paintings.Another essay shows how Bonnard's paintings were influenced by his reformed education.A final essay demonstrates Bonnard's debt to Japanese art.

Bonnard's longevity, I think, has kept him from having more of a reputation as an innovator.A quick overview of Bonnard's work shows that he was still painting postimpressionism toward the middle of the 20th Century.His use of different points of view and contrasting colors, and the subservience of the object to the idea make him more than a late impressionist.Basically, I like this guy's work, and this book helped me answer my question, "What is it about this man's painting that I like?" ... Read more

Reviews (2)

BONNARD IS A BIBLE FOR ART LOVERS
Bonnard is hot and getting hotter. You can't pick up a novel without reading that one of the characters either has a Bonnard, is getting ready to steal a Bonnard, or simply desires one.

This book has great photos and the biography, which definitely belongs with the art, is extremely well written. This is a fine book and I like it so much that when my son, who is an artist, wanted to borrow it, I simply bought him his own copy. I keep mine for myself. Selfish, but true..and tells you how much I treasure it.

The Internal Paradise
Nicholas Watkins comprehensive overview of the work of Bonnard deals with the rich interplay between the quiet domesticity and the radiant, transcendental quality of the painter's art. The book covers the early years of Bonnard's work and his use of photography. The phases of the artist's work are covered in clear chapters with references to the excellent reproductions. It is especially helpful to see Bonnard's small, seemingly offhand pencil sketches, alongside the paintings. This gives a sense of the trasformative and magical quality of his observations. The many reproductions are vibrant in comparison to those seen in some other books currently available.

Bonnard fell between eras, as a post impressionist, always up against the fame of the cubists, and always compared (unfavorably, and unfairly) with the genius of Picasso. He was a quiet force, a colorist of the highest order, bringing us the light of southern France forever. This book is a great gift for an art lover, a treat for the eyes and the mind. ... Read more

Book Description

Bonnard found early fame among the Nabis, the radical young disciples of Gauguin, and went on with Vuillard to create a new intimist art of psychologically charged interiors. But from 1900 he turned back towards Impressionism, and his art recreates moments of heightened subjectivity, color, and space. His greatest works explore his claustrophobic relationship with Marthe, his wife; in his seventies he also completed some of the most poignant self-portraits in Western art. This new account shows how these beautiful and lyrical pictures sometimes emerged from terrible circumstances. As Bonnard himself wrote shortly before his death in 1947, "one does not always sing out of happiness." Shaped in the 1890s by Mallarm and Symbolism, by Jarry and anarchism, and by the philosophy of Bergson, Bonnard's complex art took on full conviction only in the 1920s. His reassessment over the past thirty years has centered on these extraordinary late pictures, which are among the most enduring images of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Amazon.com

Beginning with the "Vive la peinture! [Long live painting!]" that Matisse writes to Bonnard, this little volume of correspondence between two artists and friends reveals a common vision about aesthetics and renders their personal and artistic struggles and triumphs. The book includes 23 black-and-white illustrations (including photos taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson) depicting the artists at work and at home, as well as facsimiles of their handwritten correspondence--something to savor in this day of answering machines and electronic mail. ... Read more

Book Description

Another title from The Crown Art Library, the most useful monographs available on a wide range of significant artists. Each volume is written by an internationally recognized authority and is generously illustrated with full-color reproductions of the artist's paintings and two-color reproductions of sketches and line drawings. ... Read more

Amazon.com

This wholly delightful book, with beautiful pictures, graceful design, and a deft and telling text, is one of four in a new series for children that includes volumes on Chagall and Matisse. Each book lightly skips through the alphabet, teaching a bit of French along the way--A is for "Avocat" (lawyer)--as it tells the life story of a great artist in brief but vivid glimpses. (The books are translated from the French.) The writing is designed to draw readers (and young listeners) in: "January, 1887. It is extremely cold in the Law School. To warm himself, the professor, sporting an unruly mustache, paces back and forth while he lectures. In the fourth row, a thin, serious student takes notes. He is 20 years old and his name is Pierre--Pierre Bonnard." This you-are-there reportage style sweeps toward the inevitable: Bonnard, whose notebooks contain "more drawings than notes," enrolls in art school.

The Harry Potter books have amply demonstrated that children appreciate mellifluous writing, and those who also love art will find both here. In spite of the abbreviated format, no essential is left out. In the Bonnard alphabet, for example, M is for Marthe, who "does not yet know that by entering into Pierre's life she will penetrate to the heart of his work. Henceforth, she will be his only model." Adults who become entranced by this elementary series may go on to more complex biographies of Bonnard, such as Timothy Hyman's. But for a mesmerizing first glimpse into the life of this painter of color and light, Bonnard from A to Z is a treasure. --Peggy Moorman ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from New Criterion, published by Foundation for Cultural Review on October 1, 1998. The length of the article is 3015 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: The paintings of Pierre Bonnard, who died in 1947, continue to arouse controversy in a 1998 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, New York. Bonnard saw his work as a responsibility to sensuously communicate design and colors, and this arouses a response in modern critics Bonnard once called "the stupidities." Bonnard influenced a generation of painters, including the Abstract Expressionists.

Citation Details
Title: Bonnard and "the stupidities".
Author: Hilton Kramer
Publication: New Criterion (Magazine/Journal)
Date: October 1, 1998
Publisher: Foundation for Cultural Review
Volume: 17Issue: 2Page: 18(1)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more