Book Description

Georges Seurat, one of the most popular and admired of post-Impressionist painters, has been the focus of much attention in recent years. This book by Paul Smith views the artist in a new context and explodes some of the myths that have grown up about him. ... Read more

Book Description

The Van Gogh and Friends Art Game combines play and learning with a deck of 36 museum-quality cards and an art book full of fun and fascinating facts about the artists, packaged in a treasure box. With 90 color photos, the Post-Impressionist era comes alive in this lavishly produced game and book set. Anyone who plays these classic card games will be introduced to over 100 great works of art. "Smart and beautiful ... if you missed Art History 101, this is a sneaky, fun way to catch up." — San Francisco Chronicle ... Read more

Book Description

Georges Seurat, painter of Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte, hada meteoric career that ended in 1891 with his death at age 31. In this generouslyillustrated book, the leading specialist on Seurat examines the entire range of the artist'swork, focusing on individual paintings and drawings and interpreting the personal andsocial meanings of their subjects.

Robert L. Herbert closely examines Seurat's early oil panels of rural and suburbansettings, early drawings of Parisians at work and leisure, and later canvases and drawingsof café- concerts and circuses. Showing that Seurat's work drew on classical tradition aswell as on popular arts, Herbert reevaluates the artist's painting technique and argues thatindividual pictures reveal artistic craft and trial and error rather than a "scientific" nature.And he demonstrates that although Seurat's drawings and paintings have striking formalstructures, they are not "abstract," but rather poetic distillations of social andpsychological meanings.

This collection of the most influential of Herbert's writings on Seurat, long out of print,bear out the praise he has received for "his ability to mix a deep knowledge of paintingsand drawings as physical objects with an acute awareness of the way they embody ideasand can be understood as social documents" (Jack Flam, New York Review of Books).This attractive book will appeal both to the general reader and to the student of Frenchnineteenth-century art. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Dot Mode
Impressionist and post-Impressionist authority Pierre Courthion says that first tries often show the full range of an artist's talent: "Man at a parapet," aka "The invalid," painted harmonious curves, modulated planes, and straight lines; and "Head of a girl" brushstroked dark against light with the turned away face of an Italian painting and without contour lines. In fact, GEORGES SEURAT became the first painter to draw boundaries as spreading surfaces in lighted areas and as silhouettes in shaded areas. He went on to paint Impressionist-style themes of bourgeois city and countryside life, cafe and circus scenes, seashores and summer landscapes with dots blending into shimmering light and subtle color variations at a distance. The book's 40 colorplates, along with John Russell's SEURAT, show the most important of his 700 drawings and 200 paintings: the blue of "Bathing at Asnieres" and the immense scale of "Bec du hoc" from Bruegel the Elder; the dancing diagonals and slanting double bass of "Le chahut"; "The circus" clown, horse and lady rider galloping and jumping before a captivated audience in a composition of ellipses, ovals and trapezoids worthy of Raphael's "Transfiguration"; the frontal sunset of "Evening, Honfleur" hallmarking a great artist; the ancestors of abstract art in "Port-en-Bessin" and "Rue Saint-Vincent"; the differently brushstroked beach, cliff, mist, sea, ships and vegetation of "Shore at Bas-Butin"; and the David-Pierre Humbert de Superville-styled plumbline straight figures among sultry summer lights and shadows of the masterpiece "A Sunday afternoon on the island of La Grande Jatte". Readers can put pointillist art in context with Bernard Denvir's POST-IMPRESSIONISM, Walter S. Gibson's BRUEGEL and Wolfgang Stechow's PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER. ... Read more

Book Description

Seurat was the leader of the neo-impressionist movement. He developed a technique called pointillism or divisonism using small dots or strokes of contrasting color to create the subtle changes contained within the painting. Seurat was an art scientist in that he spent much of his life searching for how different colors and linear effects would change the look or texture of a canvas. This twelve-month calendar collects Seurat's most recognized and adored works, including the masterpiece, "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte."

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Book Description

When Seurat first exhibited his Bathers at Asni_res in 1884, it perplexed but fascinated the few critics who noticed it. Today the picture is one of the most famous and popular works in the world. Yet the extraordinary appeal of this painting is not easily defined. In Seurat and the Bathers the authors discuss the various choices Seurat made with regard to subject, format, and technique in preparing this monumental painting. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A simply masterful presentation of Seurat's work
This beautiful catalog from an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1992 is an excellent anthology of Seurat's work, juxtaposing finished works with sketches, and includes a large selection of sketches as a student. The size allows the works to be displayed in all their glory. If you like Seurat, buy this! ... Read more

Book Description

Georges Seurat (1859-1891) literally "got to the point" in a career that lasted little more than a decade but revolutionized painting technique. He spearheaded a new movement (Neoimpressionism) and brought a degree of scientific rigor to investigations of color that would prove profoundly influential. This book surveys the master pointillist's life and work. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Seurat Review
This book gives a good overview of Seurat's work. It contains a wide array of his paintings and gives great background information on them. ... Read more

Book Description

Each of the affordable, trim, pocket-size volumes in the Pocket Painters series showcases a single artist through 20 of his most famous paintings. The high-quality full-color reproductions are faithful to the original works, and the accompanying commentaries foster a better understanding of the art and its creator. ... 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

Book Description

This book will appeal to both children and adults as it presents the work of Post-Impressionist luminaries. Providing fun facts about the artists, how they lived, and what life was like in France during the industrial revolution of the 1800s, Van Gogh and Friends includes full-color reproductions throughout. It is a great way for readers of all ages to familiarize themselves with this momentous period in art history. ... Read more